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Comment by brandon272 | Hacker News Reader

Something has gone seriously wrong when one of our original TLDs, which, from my perspective, should be considered sacrosanct elements of the internet with historical importance, are able to be sold off by interloping individuals, who, for some bizarre reason, feel that they are entitled to capitalize on these TLDs, and who do so purely with their own self-interest at heart.

I'm really just disappointed and angered that this happened.

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Nothing is sacrosanct to those people. They don't care about the technology like we do, it's just a way for them to make their money. They'll destroy all of it just to get their way. They won't lose any sleep over it.

Part of me hopes every TLD gets hit by this so that the exploitation becomes unbearable and people are forced to create a better system. Hopefully we'll end up with something that can't be subverted by these corporates.

Alas the Internet was created in a capitalist world, and capitalism loves rent-seeking.

Rent seeking would require the new owner to not really be doing anything (I.e. not operating the tld nameservers, etc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Just paying recurring fees (e.g. paying rent to your landlord) does not match the definition of rent-seeking.

You are right, however I think rent-seeking in this context is that the owner is able to extract more money without producing any more value. So it would meet the definition. This usage of the term has become quite common when referring to political rent-seeking.

Yes, that's what I meant by it.

Operating the .org domain is not creating new wealth. It’s the same as a VA selling toll roads or someone buys old songs. They all spend some money maximize their income stream. However, that spending is not creating something useful.

Operations spending is required, but does not generate any long term wealth. You keep cleaning a hotel ever day and it does not get ever cleaner over time the way an actual investment does when you keep investing more money.

> that spending is not creating something useful.

operators of a domain are essentially stewards of that domain and ensure that it's operated correctly, that there are no duplicates, and that it can be trusted. They do create value in the same way the American bar association does, by establishing and maintaining trust between end-users and providers of a service.

But couldn’t that all be done by a non-profit? You know, the ones that (are the target) buy(er of) the .org domains?

If that was what people expected the new operators to do, people wouldn't be upset and feel like they are losing the treasured .org.

People do not expect the new owners will operate the domain correctly, meaning ensure that the TLD remains available at reasonable prices and conditions to the current types of users.

Right, right, but that's the same as with the land example usually trotted out. Nothing is ever zero-wealth-creation. It's just that the majority of .org's reputableness comes from the organizations using it and the tenure of the orgs using it. The majority of the growth in .org's wealth will be due to the fact that true wealth creators are participating on it.

It's textbook economic rent.

Would it be any different in a non-capitalist world? If we’re being honest, corruption eventually permeates everything given time. IMO the biggest difference between capitalism and socialism is the massive centralization of power in socialist systems. The effects of corruption tend to be much worse the more power is concentrated. These systems of finite resource distribution are ultimately just hacks to mitigate the real problem: people or individual nodes tend to seek the optimal outcome for themselves even if it’s at the expense of the system as a whole

Everyone tends to forget that sociopaths adapt

How do you compare the centralization of a socialist government against the centralization of power among FAANG? Genuine question.

In a purely socialist system, all power lies in the government itself. All decisions for resource distribution lies with the government itself.

In a capitalist system, power is more distributed between the government and private organizations. The government alone doesn’t get to decide who gets what resources. while these private organizations will collaborate with the gov and vice versa at times, there will always be some tension between the groups since they are constantly competing for power, which results in an adhoc system of checks and balances vs a system of near absolute power

IMO we’ve already tried that experiment. It doesn’t work. Pure socialism and pure capitalism only work in ivory towers

Capitalism is a system created by and for sociopaths. It doesn't get much worse than that.

How so for both? HN isn’t reddit

I think that there's a lot of truth in criticisms of both capitalism and socialism. Running the org nameservers seems like a job best done by a non-profit organization, using some minimal funds from domain renewals. Neither profit-making enterprise or government body seems like an ideal match.

I suppose non-profit organizations can still go bad, so transparency in operations, and some kind of oversight mechanism that can replace the directors if necessary, would be needed.

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