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Comment by ptah | Hacker News Reader

what if it makes it impossible for the "privately owned" apps to compete and wipes them out completely?

Then that is the best case scenario. Let the exploitative founders and VCs test the market and find fit...then let the workers organize and steal their lunch.

An economist would say that customers and workers are capturing most of the value of the transaction, so that would be close to optimal.

Then we might have found a way to solve most of humanity's problems!

That is as much of a problem in itself as co-ops or literal cottage industries not being competitive with dedicated workforces. Sucks to be them but not a true problem to the economy overall.

If they can't compete with their advantages maybe they shouldn't be in that business. Just being able to do something efficiently isn't an abuse.

Why would that be a problem?

Let me rephrase that question in terms of software -- what happens if someone develops an Open Source product that works better than the proprietary alternative, and the proprietary alternatives get wiped out entirely?

The short answer is that for-profit, privatized entities should not be privileged in competition. Community owned solutions, non-profit solutions, naturally occurring public alternatives to products, worker-owned and volunteer-maintained solutions, and so on -- these efforts are no less legitimate than a traditional Capitalist solution. If they produce better results than a VC-backed or privatized product, then they deserve to win.

In my mind, the difference between a free market and Capitalism is that a free market is OK with Capitalists losing sometimes. It's good for businesses to compete not only with each other, but also with forces and coalitions outside of traditional markets.

And worker-owned businesses aren't even that radical of an idea -- they're just a different way to manage the business and distribute profits. Open Source and nonprofits are much farther outside of traditional Capitalist markets than a worker-owned business is.

I'm all for efforts like this.

All new businesses start out as purely worker-owned. Some of them just find it convenient to sell shares of the business (equity) in exchange for capital, but this need not apply to everyone. Indeed, the typical "app"-driven business has little reason to take any outside capital at all.

> what happens if someone develops an Open Source product that works better than the proprietary alternative, and the proprietary alternatives get wiped out entirely?

Well, we know what happens. Consider the compiler business. In the 80's, compilers cost real money. Today, compilers are free and are far better.

Although in the 80's I once counted 30 independent C compiler vendors. Those companies all dwindled away one by one.

Net gain for humanity

Job done

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