[ants_everywhere]

These are all great ideas, and I echo them. But I do feel like these sorts of collective problems are hard to solve by each person trying to do their own part working alone.

One reason that corporate internet won is that money transfers to a single entity, and that pot of money can be used to coordinate action in some particular direction (for better or worse depending on your view).

Without some coordination mechanism, it seems a a bit too divided. It's unclear to me what the appropriate mechanism is, but I think that's the right sort of way to frame the problem.

[marginalia_nu]

Isn't individual action the only action? The only ones with hands and thoughts are individuals, whether they imagine themselves part of a collective or imagine themselves to be alone.

Yeah sure you may not be able to fix the world yourself, but you can undeniably make it better. Waiting for some grand wave of collective action to arrive and fix the problem seems like it would above all stand in the way of even making an effort and trying.

[rambambram]

I completely agree. And then I saw your username and knew you've put in the work. Thanks for doing something and putting your money/time/energy where your mouth is! A lot of people approach these problems by waiting for the stars to align or waiting until everybody on this planet agrees with them and then take action. It has to be this, it has to be that, no choices, no priorities, no decisions. In their minds they take on all of the world's problems at once.

For a couple of years I have been working on my website software to make the internet more open again (or at least, keep some of the openness around). I'm by no means making any dent in the universe sofar, but I rolled up my sleeves, I bet on the open internet, and started to work. No need to wait for other people.

For me, it has all to do with RSS and the curation of content. Yeah, curation is more work than having someone else's algorithm decide what you eat for infodinner. The internet itself - and the web in particular - already take care of the sharing and distribution of this curated content. With my software, if I 'retweet' an RSS item from a website that I follow on my own 'timeline', it already spreads further than the initial target group of that item. Virality and connectedness is already baked in the internet. The techniques for a social internet are already there, for years.

[velcrovan]

Individual action takes place in a context of social cues and incentives. Those who understand this try to work together to change those things, which in turn changes the “easy defaults” for everyone. This is a million times more effective than limiting your approach to nagging people to do better for ideological reasons.

[marginalia_nu]

> Individual action takes place in a context of social cues and incentives. Those who understand this try to work together to change those things, which in turn changes the “easy defaults” for everyone.

I think this discounts the fact that people are not mindless automatons following the path of least resistance. Individuals are capable of difficult things that fly in the face of collective theory, and time and time again such individual actions have changed history.

> This is a million times more effective than limiting your approach to nagging people to do better for ideological reasons.

This is ultimately a false dichotomy, blind to a third option, which is to act as an indiviual, act according to what you think is good, in spite of what anyone else is doing or thinking.

If you try to do something yourself in such a way, people will flock to tell you to stop trying to change the world, because it is not pointless and cannot be done. If it is indeed pointless, I ask, why must the attempt be aborted?

I haven't had anyone rushing to tell me I must stop watching a 4 hour video essay on youtube, which is surely even more pointless.

[velcrovan]

> I think this discounts the fact that people are not mindless automatons following the path of least resistance.

That is nowhere implied or required by what I am arguing. I am just saying changing incentives is more effective at a broad societal level than nagging people. This is plainly observable and undisputable.

For example, add a mortgage interest deduction to the tax code. Doing so in no way reduces or discounts the ability of every person in that jurisdiction to make financial decisions based on a million factors that are weighted uniquely by each individual. But behavior of the market overall will inevitably change, because the incentives have changed.

[hotnfresh]

Individual action directed toward the problem itself is what you do to feel like you're making a change, often at cost far in excess of the benefit of that change (which is part of why this mechanism often fails, even when a large majority want that change). There's nothing wrong with it, but at a society level, you can't count on it to get much done.

Individual action directed toward affecting policy in organizations that can overcome coordination problems (largely government) is where you focus if you want to have a big effect, but maybe not get as much immediate satisfaction.

It's still individual action.

[ants_everywhere]

> Isn't individual action the only action?

Yes, in an important sense. But, you know, architectural layers something something.

At the end of the day maybe everything is logic gates, but there's a difference between `cat`ing /dev/urandom and computing a trajectory for a plane, say.

Organizations and corporations basically exist (if you squint hard enough) to achieve this sure of layering. And to your point, a lot of what organizations do is manage incentives for individuals so that the collective work gets done.

BTW thanks for marginalia!

[marginalia_nu]

I find this mindset debilitating. Every person on earth, the very people who might accomplish real change, they are all individuals. Yet every one of them can deflect responsibility onto collectives, collectives that in turn consiting of individuals who can do the same, resulting in inaction and indifference.

Someone else is always to blame, someone else is always more responsible, and that someone else isn't even a human being, it's a corporation, a political faction, an ideological movement. None of those entities are of course ever going to seize that responsibility, because there is no agency in any of them to do so.

[ants_everywhere]

Yes, I think we're actually talking about the same problem from different angles.

The problem you mention in the second paragraph is sometimes called "diffusion of responsibility" [0]. A related concept about the difficulties of individual and group action is "belling the cat" [1]. You may be familiar with these, I'm just throwing them out there in case anyone reading is also interested in this topic.

Framing in terms of agency, I guess I'd say I agree with you that each agent has a responsibility or an obligation to take action. But it's not clear to me how to ensure that the actions build on each other rather than canceling each other out in the aggregate. It may take a strong person with a sense of duty to get things started but eventually they will need help.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat

[carlosjobim]

If hackers pray five times per day to the European Union, they will one day step down from the sky regulate and ban all our dreams into being.

Jokes aside, you're completely right, but I think individuals should remember to limit their effort when it's without reimbursement. In order to not burn out and become bitter, etc.

[marginalia_nu]

> I think individuals should remember to limit their effort when it's without reimbursement. In order to not burn out and become bitter, etc.

You're projecting your will onto the world and making it more like how you think it should be. It's nice when other people share your vision and chip in to support the effort, but I don't think that can be a prerequisite. If it is, then you will never be true to your vision, and that is, if anything, recipe for crashing and burning.

[carlosjobim]

Some goals are so great that they can not be reached alone. Space flight for example, was a dream for many, but it required massive joint effort to finally achieve.

Even people seeking hyper-individualistic goals are paid, for example in sports. I don't mean that getting paid is a prerequisite, but if you're struggling alone you have to check after some time if it's really worth doing.

[raybb]

A quote I read today that reminds me of this:

‘Don't be distracted by the myth that “every little [bit] helps.” If everyone does a little, we'll achieve only a little. We must do a lot. What's required are big changes in demand and in supply’ --David MacKay

[StevePerkins]

There was absolutely nothing "collective" about the early web. 180-degrees the opposite. You're not going to recapture that ethos, either for the overall Internet or even for a smaller interested subculture within in, by making it NPR. It would be something else, and likely not any better than the corporate walled garden.

[js8]

I think socialism is the mechanism - one person one vote with the stake of ownership.

I am pretty liberal but it I believe it needs socialism (democracy in economic sphere) to avoid capture by corporations. (And vice versa, socialism needs liberalism to prevent capture by government. They can't survive without each other, being constantly threatened by authoritarianism.)

[pjc50]

I feel the non-profit/co-operative model has been really under-explored, other than the huge successes of Open Source and Wikipedia itself.

On the other hand, even that's vulnerable. The UK used to have customer-owned banks until shareholder banks offered to buy them out. https://www.thenews.coop/85589/sector/big-bang-demutualisati...

[js8]

Yes, the reason it is vulnerable IMHO, because within our mostly liberal system, there is too little support for coops in the law. We do not protect enough against people taking power from others. That's why I believe liberalism (which at least ideologically values this diversity) cannot survive without socialism.

[ants_everywhere]

> one person one vote with the stake of ownership.

I'm not great with the terminology of this stuff. Just to be clear on what you're suggesting, do you mean that each person has a stake of ownership as well as a single vote? So functionally something like a corporation with one kind of stock where no owner owns more than one share?

And do you mean to have restrictions on stock ownership? Like everyone in the country gets a share? Or only employees can own a share? Or anyone can buy a single share? Or something else?

I think there are interesting points to explore along the design space of how we distribute stock shares. I just don't know enough about it to have much intuition, and I'm trying to get a sense of how I could model it.

[js8]

What I am suggesting in practice would be similar to either consumer or worker cooperative. These are similar to publicly-traded companies, except the stakeholders are not some Wall Street randos, but people who actually use company products or employees of the company.

Of course, for this to be truly socialist, the system has to be democratic, i.e. each person involved has equal and non-transferrable vote.

What type a company should be is up to discussion. I believe infrastructure (natural monopolies) are better served by consumer (public) ownership, while companies that can compete on the free market are better served by worker ownership.

As I said elsewhere in the discussion, I think lot of Internet infrastructure should be publicly owned. (And on this infrastructure, businesses could be built.)

Personally, I would prefer an economic system where every company above certain size (say 20 employees) must be either publicly-owned or worker-owned, i.e. democratic in the above sense. Which makes me into a pretty traditional socialist. But that's tangential to the discussion about the Internet.

[ants_everywhere]

Got it, thanks that was very helpful

[hkt]

I'd second this: self hosting and so on is a poor substitute for democratic, socially owned infrastructure. That's the only way we can make social, rather than corporate, networks accessible to everyone in a sustainable way. At the moment the fediverse gets by on goodwill. That isn't sustainable.

[wildrhythms]

Socialism has nothing to do with 'government capture'; it only concerns itself with worker ownership over the means of production.

[senortumnus]

And government protections / mandates toward that end or masquerading as being toward that end

[velcrovan]

So what?

[suoduandao3]

The means of production these days is a laptop or a smartphone. A solar panel or a garden if one is in the physical portion of the economy.

We are kind of already at a point where working class individuals can own the means of production without ever needing to 'smesh capitalism'. I expect as a result we'll see a divergence between people who want to own the means of production and people who want to impoverish the current owners.

[js8]

I think this misunderstands what "ownership of means of production" really means in Marxism. The point is NOT that the capitalist owns the factory, which they then rent to workers, who can choose to do whatever they want with it. The ownership of means of production instead refers to full control over the production process, including the social structure of work that makes production possible. Marx's point is that it is this social structure, primarily, that should be collectively owned (that's why all the discussion about alienation).

It's kinda like "owning a home" doesn't imply just owning the walls, but implicitly also a place with privacy.

So in today's SW world, means of production is not a computer, but rather the datacenters of the cloud, proprietary APIs and control over browser standards. And control over habits of the users, who also participate in production, by generating "content". These things cannot be simply replicated by the workers.

[suoduandao3]

So if someone improves the logistic infrastructure involved in getting the products from the workers to the consumers none of the value they generated belongs to them? That actually explains a lot. Even today, places with food insecurity don't have supply but distribution problems, so it's a pretty hard problem to solve.

I wonder how many Marxists study logistics.

[js8]

If you improve the operation of the worker-owned company, you will get rewarded just like any other employee who improves things.

If you want to improve things by doing things on your own, you will own the fruits of your labor. If you need additional employees to improve things, then you will probably have to share with them.

[js8]

I think you misunderstood my comment. In order for socialism to remain true to its intent of being democratic, it needs liberalism. By 'government capture' I mean the authorities in government taking control over an ostensibly democratic system (as frequently happened in the real-world attempts at socialism). You need to have an ability to rebuild these democratic systems elsewhere, which is provided by liberal freedoms.

[bdw5204]

I'd actually agree to a significant extent that people should own their employment (this is the original American Founding ideal of "free labor" that Jefferson and Lincoln both believed in) but I think you're better off not using the word "socialism" to describe that economic system. People associate that word with "communism" which is defined as a dictatorship where the government operates as a single monopoly under the pretense of representing the will of the people. The word "socialism" is also associated with corporate dominated market systems where the government provides a safety net and some labor rights for working people.

A system where workers are part owners of their companies is probably better described as "distributed ownership" to avoid confusing connotations. If the first thing you have to do is explain to people that you're not advocating a Nordic style welfare state or a USSR/CCP/North Korean style dystopian dictatorship, you're using problematic terminology.

If I'm misunderstanding you and you're advocating that all businesses should be controlled by a (democratic) government rather than by their employees then I'd be against that because most people are not going to have enough time, under any system, to become informed about stuff they have no direct stake in. I don't want politicians or voters responding to a media fear campaign telling businesses what products to produce and such a system would almost certainly devolve into incumbent politicians using the media to keep themselves in power and ensure their preferred successors win. I think it essential that decisions on whether to start new firms or what they are to produce should be mostly depoliticized except where there's a strong public interest that the government needs to regulate (like firms that want to pollute the environment or sell harmful highly addictive products).

An economy completely under the control of a democratic government would allow 50%+1 people who don't like Taylor Swift's music to ban her from singing and deprive 40% of the population who are fans of her music of their right to listen to her sing (or in the case of representative democracy, allow a majority to vote for a "lesser evil" party that includes outlawing Taylor Swift concerts as one of their package deal policies). A more extreme example of why democracy needs to be limited in scope would be how the democratic government of Athens voted, by majority popular vote, to execute Socrates because his constant challenging questions they didn't want to answer were annoying to them.

[js8]

No, the word socialism is correct, it describes pretty much what you call "distributed ownership", although a condition should be it's also democratic. I don't see why to avoid a well-defined term because of a connotation, that's a receiver's and not a sender's problem.

Regarding democracy, this kind of voting (although it's unequal) already exists with publicly traded companies. Interestingly, nobody is worried where billionaires will find the time or interest to vote in many companies they own; it's always the common people being the problem.