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Comment by catgary | Hacker News Reader

Taking ownership of Amazon seems crazy, but I do wonder if there’s some logic to the idea that it might be time to consider “public utility” versions of apps. Like a crown-corporation cloud services provider or a municipality-operated DoorDash.

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> Like a crown-corporation cloud services provider or a municipality-operated DoorDash.

You might be interested in the "Open Network for Digital Commerce" [1] being developed in India. The idea is to lay down protocols and APIs run by public entities that different service providers (sellers, logistics providers, etc) can each plug into.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Network_for_Digital_Comme...

Has ONDC seen any traction so far outside of pilot programs? In my circles people always order from Flipkart or Amazon.

Give it some time to get there, I’d say. The strategy seems to be set start with “hyperlocal” transactions such as mobility, food/groceries, etc and onboard local businesses. If you (anyone) haven’t already tried it, I encourage you to try it out :-)

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/with-zero-com...

Once the kinks are ironed out and the platform scales a bit, I wouldn’t be surprised if the big players are eventually mandated to inter operate with ONDC, just like Visa/Mastercard got integrated into UPI a few years ago.

My personal opinion is that being a more ambitious (multi-sided) effort ONDC might take some time to bootstrap and mature — but I’m hopeful.

Why would a government monopoly on apps be a better alternative?

It's not a monopoly, it's a baseline. Like the postal service or Medicaid. You're always free to choose the non-government option if it suits you better, but the government option guarantees that there is something reasonable on offer for the 10% of people that corporations deem "unprofitable". Old people, sick people, poor people, rural people. It doesn't have to be great, it just has to provide this now-essential service for those who would otherwise fall through the cracks.

> it's a baseline. Like the postal service or Medicaid

I think the interstate highway system might be an even better example. An absolutely essential part of business infrastructure and personal lifestyles, built and maintained largely at government expense, yet hardly anyone is asking for it to be torn down or privatized. Not even the parts that have tolls. (Yes, there are a few who suggest this, but even by right-wing/libertarian standards they're considered a bit crazy.) Just as anyone with a driver's license can drive on an interstate, anyone should be able to participate in the internet. It's not that much of a stretch from there to saying they should be able to participate fully, which means being able to host sites or apps. It doesn't have be be completely free of cost (see: tolls) but should be freely available and run for the public good. That's no crazier than the interstates.

The danger of course is that this turns in to a subsidy for the private interests. If they can avoid serving the unprofitable because the government will pick up the slack, then tax payers are paying for the service of that 10% and private business gets all the profit from the rest.

Either you need industry charges to cover that cost to government, or a mandate that they can't ignore expensive customers.

> Either you need industry charges to cover that cost to government

Like, corporate taxes?

Maybe, but more targeted than that. You could tax health insurance companies to pay for a public system, or you could put a surcharge on phone bills paid directly by the consumer to subsidise service to rural users.

There are lots of options each with their own trade offs.

Even if it's a monopoly (not strictly required), nationalisation means the nation becomes the only shareholder, and the profits are directed to the growth of the nation rather than the business.

Apps are probably not the right target for that, but Amazon might well be — it has expanded to the point it needs its own delivery network because government owned post isn't enough in certain countries.

It would be a massive pain to do this well, certainly more than would fit into a comment box like this. And not just because it's a multinational, and different governments will have different opinions about the process of nationalisation.

What about a collective approach run by the businesses in a town rather than companies that charge high fees on both ends?

Government funded/subsidized but worker-run would be the ideal approach.

Because they'd operate at cost, which is wildly out of alignment with what the market will charge you for a CPU cycle.

I'd bet that <10% of what you pay for an EC2 instance is hardware acquisition and labor and electricity. The other 90 is in support of the never ending zero-sum game that is fighting over market share.

Compare it to municipal internet, in which you usually pay less to get more because you can fire the marketing department.

We already have well trodded solutions for these dominant market players: we don't nationalize, we regulate so as to maintain competition. The railways, phone companies, electricity and water, there are many examples of national services that started out as private, led to market failures, then were nationalized and failed to provide adequate service, then were re-privatized in the 80s and 90s as well regulated monopolies.

There is no fundamental reason we shouldn't to the same for things like the App Store, Amazon, Starlink etc. These are all services with a technical exclusivity, strong fast mover advantage or very large entry barriers that are ripe for monopoly abuse. Regulating them would mean setting maximum fees to reasonable values based on costs, ensuring open and competitive access and preventing the platform from front-running its customers etc. For example, monolithic railways were broken up in Europe into distinct infrastructure and passenger/freight arms, with the infrastructure open to all competitive rail companies. In the same vein, Amazon should not be allowed to front run its own customers, the platform and fulfilling centers should well separated from whatever commerce Amazon itself is doing.

The fact that these digital players remained unregulated for so long is more the result of government inertia as well as national interests - for the first time, we have truly global monopolies, and the benefit US for example reaps from having such dominant champions outweighs the damage to its own consumers, so they let them "innovate", especially since regulating them would mean to open these platforms to foreign competition that is not similarly regulated.

So it should not be surprising that the EU is the most aggressive when it comes to this area, because it largely lacks similar platforms. But to regulate global services effectively, we would need truly global regulators, or at least national regulators of OECD countries acting in concert.

Maybe something like coops?

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