| I wrote a tweet thread about this which I will post here for convenience: Consolidation is a debt. You gain market cap at the cost of introducing systemic weakness and reducing broader market innovation. Once a company becomes a fundamental service they need to be regulated like a utility (I will illustrate with Facebook) Facebook can get the license to operate it but they also need to open up their API’s so others can build on top. These should become web standards governed by w3c. Facebook is an interesting case as this system would remove all the perverse incentives driving their business model (no more ads). It would also crash their stock. That value hasn’t disappeared though, it has been pushed out to the edge nodes of their network (specifically the companies building on top of their API’s). My thesis is that this model will increase the overall pot while reducing the share the largest players have. The knock-on effect of this is that investors will see this as the final outcome and be less incentivised to invest. That may be a problem as we don’t want to stop the emergence of billion scale companies altogether. Therefore a mechanism for the people to buy out the company at a fair legally agreed market value should be in place. This will stop crazy upsides and protect the undesirable downsides. The asset then becomes publicly owned but privately operated according to regulations. AI would fall under the same model. With open API’s and standards anyone can get the data they need to build new AI companies. Especially feasible if we move towards self-sovereign identities and crypto methods of exchange. To facilitate more small tech innovation we need to introduce a UBI. It will allow more people take risks with their time leading to more cottage innovation. In 100 years it will be a fundamental aspect of fiscal policy. Additionally education needs to be refocused on making things. People are not equipped with the skills to build things. There is no better way to learn, grow and generate value. If we want a diversified small tech eco-system economy we need to focus on helping people develop the skills that make it possible. |