the_oalrus

the_oalrus wrote

Yeh, i totally agree and i dont think that's a winnable battle. My hope is to build a coalition of the motivated and a movement of idealists to get a nexus of a community. But to win the masses it has to be easier, 'cognitively cheaper', and better content/more entertaining to win. Check out oalrus.com if you are interested. Or the blog I am still working on editing http://oalrus.com/updates/.

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the_oalrus wrote

I dont see a way out of this as long as people are hooked on free tech. Without finding some way for users to at least pay for servers and most likely a degree of development, surveillance capitalism will prevail.

I am interested in creating a mutalism system that is based on voluntary micro-transactions between creators and consumers. And since in the digital realm everyone occupies both roles at different time I think it lends naturally to a self-sustaining community.

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the_oalrus wrote

I hear you but I think most people see these networks and forums as places where they can consume entertainment and perhaps feel like micro-creators. These are not places for connection. Which is a fine thing to want and to enjoy but shouldn't be packaged as some sort of pro-social techno transcendence.

As for being free workers I think that's a core problem for those networks. People give away their labor and their identity for free. I think any sort of sustainable system of group created entertainment like Facebook or Reddit needs to compensate the participants for their work. Which I think ultimately means having users compensate other users in some way so as not to depend on marketers.

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the_oalrus OP wrote

Neat. I am neophyte here and have learned something from your links. Thank you.

The difference I think is that market anarchism is grounded in concerns of physical capital where question of ownership is central. I argue that in digital economies the capital that is most meaningful is human capital and the ownership of that is not in any sort of dispute.

So to me the question for a digital economy is not how move away from ownership and centralization of physical capital but a question of motivating and rewarding individuals for acquiring human capital.

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