Status, Wealth, & Power: Network Effects Demand a New Social Contract
This reads as though written by someone who has never experienced being on the losing side (the long tail) of all the systems they&#x27;re advocating for. It utterly fails to answer why anyone not at the top of the power curve would want society to be structured this way - most of the described &quot;Social Contract&quot; seems to imply precarity, replacability, and living at the edge of financial disaster for most. Meanwhile, there&#x27;s little mention that those who hold <i>real</i> power in this kind of system are not part of the curve at all but are those choosing the algorithms and AI systems that rank everyone else.<p>Then there&#x27;s this:<p>&gt; Trickle down doesn’t work because it existed in a hierarchical structure based on the scale production technologies of the times before 2000. There was much more friction in that old system. But in a network economy, the means of production have shifted. It’s 10X more fluid, can create wealth at a much higher rate, decrease costs at a much higher rate, and the network can raise all boats.<p>To me this reads as &quot;Trickle down didn&#x27;t work last time, but <i>this time it&#x27;s different</i> and it&#x27;ll definitely work&quot;. <i>How</i> it will work <i>this time</i> is left as an exercise to the reader.