Edit: a follow-up thought. If the answer is no or "it's too hard", then is it possible have something along the same lines, is it possible for the proposed system to self-correct away from monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies should they form?
We need to centralize around protocols/standards and decentralize ownership of data. If somehow each piece of data on a user were exponentially more expensive to keep, that might be possible. But that would be a very strange law…
Dave and I agree with your diagnosis, and we would like to propose a solution. Who is Dave? Well you know him, and I know that you know him and I know that when we both talk about Dave we must be talking about the same person.
(mLuby I probably don't really know you, this is just a hypothetical).
A casual observer could not approach our common understanding by adding more data. There's so many Daves after all. In fact they'd need to subtract all but the right data.
So the solution is a protocol in which increased data adds noise faster than it adds signal. Such a protocol requires 1000s times more plausible yet incorrect noise for every signal. Digital chaff.
Are you saying that nobody can know which Dave we're talking about unless we identify him as Dave-with-cell-5551234567? I don't think that's true, since human social circles are pretty easy to figure out; see the humorous hypothetical collection of data about US Founding Fathers. http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/phone-spying-paul...
there are a few other things too like only being charged to upload files once vs paying a subscription for the rest of your life, or only needing one password for all sites.
> 50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.
Wikipedia also fixes the definition of Price's Law to be specifically around authors and their publications [0]. I can see the relationship that author is trying to make, but I'm uncomfortable to how the article conflates the generalization with original definition. The original definition is also related to Lotka's Law, which is also about publications [1].
I also just watched the Jordan B Peterson lecture linked in the article, and it sounded to me that he chose to make the same generalization [2]. He correctly calls it out as being restricted to creative work, but then goes on to make connections to goals scored in team sports like hockey and basketball. I think part of the problem in all of this is the attribution of effort with the overall outcome.
Taking Peterson's example with hockey, you can try to have an all-star team of just goal-scorers be on your hockey team including your extra players, but good luck trying to qualify for a championship. "Alright fine", you say and you get two-or-three bespoke goalies on your team. You more likely to qualify now, but given the typical builds of goal-scorers and how often they get injured, and comparing that to players who play defense, now your problem becomes having a team that more injuries than average, and suffering performance-wise as a result.
Certain kinds of success can be acquired through iterative attempts at amassing fractional results into one pot. Other kinds hinge binary do-or-die outcomes. Resilience and longevity comes from striking the correct balance between the two in any situation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_J._de_Solla_Price#Scient...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%27s_law
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=16&v=UmUdcWk6Vfw
Fund the development of software and not the distribution. It would realign incentives to the consumers.
I really want to see more people taking this seriously. Open sourcing the productive world is a radical idea I fear most entrenched businesses owners wouldn’t take seriously, but I think the notion has staggering potential for improving the human condition for generations to come.
There are multiple ways this could be funded. I don't know if any would work.
See "Economies of Scale" [1]
To the degree that efficiency is increased with larger scale, the market will become an oligopoly or monopoly.
Most things are economies of scale: healthcare, social networks, manufacturing, network protocols.
However, even a thousandth of their scale is enough to demonstrate that decentralized scale is possible at the level where there can be economies (or diseconomies).
Google's scale was already huge even when they had merely "more than 10,000 servers" in the years prior to their IPO.
Because things are easier when devices use the same protocols as many other devices.