| > everything companies provide can be provided for nearly no cost by software Good software is more expensive than you seem to think. > [megacorps] are radically inefficient when compared to swarms of freelancers coordinated by and through software That may be true. Or not. It's a big assertion. Lots of projects are more efficient if they have a stable set of maintainers. Could you swap out Linus and his lieutenants in favor of swarms of freelancers and still produce quality Linux kernels? I doubt it. This whole line of thought (why firms and not markets?) is a branch of economics. If you haven't, read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm. "According to Ronald Coase, people begin to organise their production in firms when the transaction cost of coordinating production through the market exchange, given imperfect information, is greater than within the firm." That seems plausible to me. If we're truly interested in deprecating megacorps, we should reduce transaction costs for laypeople, including by making rules, regulations, and laws easier to grok if they are needed at all. |