Losses and Gains in an Age of Oligarchy
THE latest batch of daily links (or "Daily Links" as we've long called the news roundups) contained some good news regarding "net neutrality" and many links about FTC action against Amazon.
On the Net, not just the Web, few firms have long dominated at several levels. They didn't even need to be particularly profitable, they just needed to have the government under their thumb/control.
One high-priority item should be reversing this trend, but maybe it's too late already. Monopolies and price-fixing oligopolies are charging "rents" and instead of properly competing they collude to keep the rents high. Poverty is a manifestation of disproportionate power.
The battle for justice in digital realm won't end any time soon and there will be no absolute victory, just some won (and lost) battles along the way. If, on average, we make more gains than we initially expected, then it means taking action has been a lot more fruitful than taking no action at all. If you don't even try to fix something, there's not even a chance it'll get fixed. █