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Comment by daft_pink | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure if that’s true.

As a counterpoint, things we rely on like Amazon are actually a lot of tiny businesses that have ideas and now we are able to get their more tailored products, whereas two decades ago, I just got to buy whatever walmart or bestbuy was willing to sell us.

Also consider youtube, I watch a lot of tiny creators and two decades ago the only thing available was the major tv networks and cable tv.

It may be true that big organizations deliver these things, but big organizations delivered them before and it’s definitely more possible for small organizations to have big impacts now than it was before.

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> Also consider youtube, I watch a lot of tiny creators

Right, but you don't know these people. You're not in a community with them. Tao points to Dunbar's number as a rough boundary between small and large communities; how many of these "tiny" creators have fewer than 150 followers, and how many of them foster close social ties among those followers in ways that couldn't scale to a larger audience?

Before the era of ~2k subscriber youtube passion project channels, people were forced to find people in their area with shared interests and establish social clubs. This necessarily meant a smaller audience, but it also meant actually being friends with the people you were communicating with. Youtube is definitely a different kind of thing.

That said, I do think there's an argument to be made that the Discord- and groupchat-ification of the social media ecosystem is a backswing toward smaller groups.

Two decades ago department stores were not making products. They were and still are leasing shelf space. The only difference between them and modern amazon is that their shelves are finite, so some level of quality control was done to ensure the shelves would be stocked with things people are actually interested in and wouldn’t fall apart and jam up the returns department too badly.

Those tiny businesses are reasonably well-coordinated, so its not really the same type of "small organization" as what Tao is talking about.

Many big corps launch small brands to fake authenticity

> I just got to buy whatever walmart or bestbuy was willing to sell us.

There was a lot of stuff available that was advertised in magazines and stuff as well. To use one niche as an example: I'm thinking of the ads in computer magazines sometimes with hundreds of obscure items crammed into a page.

I think there’s a difference between tiny and small. There are a ton of tiny companies that essentially buy services from fortune 50s and lease from big real estate firms.

Businesses with 50-100 people are pretty rare compared to the past

I think by most objective measures the size and power of large organizations has increased since WWII. For example, the size and scope of Western governments, consolidation in many industries, the portion of the stock market that is representated by the n-biggest companies, increased income/wealth inequality. If you debating the "large organizations have grown in power relative to small ones" part of the thesis I would be interested in what exactly you think would capture that.

There is nuance here. What you say is true but big organizations have grown as well.

I think in the big picture I would say overall it’s the big organizations that have grown dominant. The inductive reason is because it is the goal for small organizations to become big so that’s where things head logically speaking.

From an evidence based standpoint, in the end, look at YouTube and Amazon. In the end the big organizations are in control. YouTube for example can cut off their creator and it’s pretty much over for them no matter how popular they once were.

I'm sorry, but you are very incorrect.

In Amazon... You'd be surprised to know how many brands sell 90% of the products availabile there.

The same applies to Youtube, you'd be surprised to know how many channels per country gets 90% of the views.

It's an illusion. We have billion of people...

I think your comment and claims would be much better if you at least gave some example spitball numbers.

>things we rely on like Amazon are actually a lot of tiny businesses that have ideas

I mean sure, that's one way to describe dropshipping from huge chinese manufactories

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