“We need policies that keep middlemen weak.”
stood out to me.
Many of my influences have railed against middle men, and I think that’s unfair. I’ve worked with plenty of middle men that made everyone then better off.
I’ve also had the unique displeasure that at least half of all links shared with me in recent years have been to a site called “Instagram”, where I am unable to access the content without an account (which I refuse to make because Zuckerberg is a creepy stalker.)
I find it deeply weird that such a locked ecosystem now controls so much attention.
I find Cory Doctorow’s thoughts on the problem and potential solutions to be both hopeful and cathartic.
So I was spitballing some ideas around this a while back, although I was more focused on income inequality at the time. I think the best idea I came up with was something like a progressive taxation system where a company’s taxes were determined by the highest paid employee (including the value of benefits and things like stock grants) minus the lowest paid employee, divided by the company head count. If executives want to keep bringing in eye watering salaries they either need to pay all their employees significantly more, or hire a hell of a lot more of them at current rates. There’s probably some flaws and things that could be tweaked there, but I think it’s a start.