Dude is against open source cuz "it mathematically leads to monopoly" while working for Microsoft.

I don't even need to say this but

FOSS has many, many problems but contributing to monopoly is not among htem.

Do not use the term FOSS, it conflates Free Software with Open Source
- as it should, because open source software should be free. GNU can shove it.
- What term should be used instead?
- I'm confused, are you saying you think FOSS means "Free or Open Source Software"?
open source software has problems such as what?
- The most popular open source licenses are insufficiently militant and just create a new commons for capitalists to loot.
- some open source projects are very gate-kept and dude-bro centric

He's playing into that absurd liberal "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product" false dichotomy.

Here's a hot tip for anyone who still believes that mantra: there's absolutely no reason why you won't become the product while you're also paying for the service. In fact, due to the nature of capitalism, the companies which manage to sell your data or to manipulate you and which manage to get you to pay for it simultaneously are going to be the most successful over time (all things being equal for argument's sake.)

You think that if you're paying you're not going to be manipulated, like it's some sort of social contract in the era of digital media? Lol.

The entire conventional PR industry prior to the advent of computers has been predicated upon both manipulating you and getting you to pay for it. But you only need to look at any Google paid services (e.g. YouTube premium) or Roblox or anything similar to see people both paying for it and getting manipulated and being harvested for data to illustrate that his claim is entirely bogus.

This guy talks like a guru. And I mean that in the most derogatory way possible.

I pay for Spotify, so famously, it does nothing with my data
And this guy works at Microsoft, the company regularly pushing the "you're the customer and also the product" mindset and a frequent loss leader for capital writ large in being hated by literally everyone yet somehow apparently irreplaceable?
Just look at smart TVs. They all sell customer data, and you pay a premium to purchase them.

So-called "intellectual property rights" are literally government enforced monopolies wtf

I've read a couple of his books and he's got serious

which is a shame because he's gotta really good insight into what VR is capable of doing to our minds, but he's been anti-socialism since the days when most hackers were largely anti-capitalist robin hood archetypes. He knows and sees all the horrible shit capitalism and silicon valley does and is going to do, but just sticks his head in the sand and doubles down.

This is from an interview he did with Ezra Klein in 2018. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-interview
Jaron Lanier: The first thing I want to do is just confirm the degree of problem that exists... I still kinda have my meal card in Silicon Valley despite of all the things I say and so I'm in these conversations sometimes and I hear people who have done extremely well and have a lot of influence in Silicon Valley say things that just... send me reeling. Because they're just so appalling. And so a fairly typical line of conversation lately has gone something like this:
Lanier: Well you know, um automation is coming and a whole lot of people are going to be thrown out of work. Many many millions of people, many hundreds of millions because they won't be driving anymore, they won't be doing so many other things. We think we can have our algorithms be better teachers, better nurses. All, even the sort of supposedly human-centric "safe" things. Or in the worst case, we'll only need a little bit of human labor to cover the rough spots of the algorithms. But the question is what to do with all these people and a lot of them have been saying, "Ya know, this Opioid addiction crisis has come up at just the right time because actually it will be easier for everybody if a lot of the people that aren't needed are just sedated all the time." Like this is actually positive.
Ezra: Do people actually say that to you?
Lanier: Yeah, I've heard that a number of times, it's sort of an internal talking point that comes up. Yeah I've heard that. Yeah um. I mean, I always fight it, but yeah sure, I've heard it. And I'm not saying everybody says it, but I'm saying there's... it's the sort of thing that one hears. And one definitely hears that...
Ezra: I'm completely flabbergasted.
LAnier: Yeah, I know, I know.
Ezra: That another human being would make this comment to another human being.
Lanier: Yeah, I don't want to name the specific people who have done it, but they're known names, you know? And uh, similarly with the idea of technology being addicted, of using the different techniques like noisy feedback which is what's used in gambling to make gambling addictive. Of using these things to addict people to information systems, it's a very similar argument. That we need to have the people in some sort of a "spot" where they're not going to just burn everything down when they don't have jobs. And then um, the basic income model is thought of as a kind of a ma.. It's kind of like in the matrix movies, ya know? It's just this way to maintain this population of people who aren't doing anything and aren't needed.

Its just math, bro. You can't argue with it, bro. Long tail of risk made manifest, my dude. We have to be effective altruists, guy. Its really simple but I can't show any of it to you. I just can't show you what's in the box or how it works, because then that would ruin the magic. You don't need to know how any of this stuff works, dawg. Don't look behind the curtain, there's nobody back here. Stop asking all these stupid questions, you're not smart enough to understand, I swear, stop looking or the magic will go away! Dawg, you just gotta trust me, I'm good for it everything is fine, just stop asking how AI works guy dude bro STAWP!

UlyssesT when the tech bros are at it again

It is difficult to get a [person] to understand something, when [their] salary depends upon [them] not understanding it!

I will step in for Ulysses in the mean time :)

Single player economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin

It truly fascinates me how these super mega-brained silicon tech geniuses (in all their genius) just can’t seem to reckon with the fact that capitalism has left a trail of blood like no other. But what are the “bad things?” Worker autonomy? Redistribution? Oppressed people taking back power? Can’t you just admit that you’re arguing from a moral framework at this point? Odd how no one ever does. It just has to be the case that anything but capitalism is evil and bad as a consequence of simply challenging existing ideology.

Jesus fuck. Are we really going to pretend like it’s possible to quantify something as a complex as a monopoly? Economics is not a science no matter how hard you try to make it so, and economists will eventually cave to this if you dig deep enough. I think they’re renowned in the STEM world for the pretty remarkable feat of enrolling in graduate-level courses as a high school student, but they are very clearly not objective. How the fuck can you possibly make a claim about the veracity of something leading to a monopoly? As I’ve said on this site before, I’m the furthest thing from a philosopher, but how is that not an absurd claim?

All the proof you need to know that our collective understanding of intelligence means jack shit. I sometimes think “Yeah, I guess since there’s this general trend of certain people taking a test annd answering logically/computationally complex questions with ease, maybe IQ is somewhat valid.”

But then I think back to people like Hawking and Einstein who would’ve unquestionably performed well on those types of tests but had an entirely different worldview. And I really can’t help but think it all comes down to philosophy, namely ethics and what we ought to do as human beings.

These thoughts brought to you by a brain that just finished reading Bullshit Jobs so I would like to thank David Graeber for his help with this post.

Yer not using enough emotes nor repeating how detached from reality and deep into their own asses these reptiles are to fill Ulysses void
They benefit directly from the system. To question it would mean losing their cushy 6 figure salary where they get to spend all day googling "how do I code this?" and feeling superior to us mere mortals who don't understand the incredible magic of "programming." They have a vested self-interest in defending the status quo, they're modern intelligentsia.

"Single payer economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin"

bad
as in "wicked bad", which means good

Dude is against open source cuz "it mathematically leads to monopoly" while working for Microsoft.

capitalism leads to monpoly. not open source. why does capitalism lead to monopoly? because capitalism is competitive, and competitions have winners and losers. when a loser enterprise is vanquished under capitalism, it is either driven from the market through bankruptcy, or it is absorbed/merged into a winner enterprise. Eventually the winner enterprises get so big that it is prohibitively expensive to enter the market in competition with them, and smaller firms simply become auxiliary forces for the large firms, to be absorbed when the charade of separateness is no longer useful. Once all firms are vanquished/absorbed/made into auxiliaries, you have a vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly enterprise. How do you get rid of this monopoly? Under socialism, you would nationalize it. Under capitalism, you simply "trust bust" it like Teddy Roosevelt did, and force a RETVRN to the state of competition. In both situation,

will complain that you are "punishing winners", of course.

"Single payer economies leads to bad things like Bolshevism and Stalin"

Even if you think Communism is bad, this is idiotic. Single payer policies alone aren't socialism. If an imperialist capitalist state has free health care, Lenin is not going to rise from the grave. And Tsarist Russia, on the eve of the October Revolution did not have a "Single Payer Economy" which led to Bolshevism lmfao.

What led to Bolshevism was the failures of the Tsar and his ministers, the Russo-Japanese War, WW1, the black hundreds, the pogroms, the failure of the 3 dumas, the failure of Stolypin's reforms, the failure of the provisional government and Kerensky, etc. etc. etc. shit this bazinga brain has probably never even read about.

Eventually the winner enterprises get so big that it is prohibitively expensive to enter the market in competition with them, and smaller firms simply become auxiliary forces for the large firms, to be absorbed when the charade of separateness is no longer useful. Once all firms are vanquished/absorbed/made into auxiliaries, you have a vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly enterprise.
Lemme tell you about a lil' something called "Innovation"

Under communism, there is no innovation because everyone is forced to do the same thing or they get shot. Under capitalism, innovation is rewarded by 1 person becoming a billionaire and everyone else also gets richer because capitalism is when people have money. Do you want people to have no money? No innovation? I know what it's like to live in a communist country (I was born in Ukraine in 1999) and let me tell you, you would change your mind very quickly if you experienced the reality of it.
If there was a monopoly under capitalism, the people would simply vote with their wallets to promote healthy competition because capitalism is synonymous with democracy. Arguably the only thing more democratic than capitalism is the blockchain. I have been huffing lead paint for the past 3 hours straight.
- I have been huffing lead paint for the past 3 hours straight.
  just as
  intended
failure of Stolypin’s reforms
His agrarian reform purpose was to entrench kulaks, which was pretty sucessful, though not enough to prevent revolution.
- not enough to prevent revolution.

If its all going to tend to monopoly, then why are there so many Linux distros, even after 30 years? FOSS is based

If open software tends to monopoly, why is there so many communism splinters? Either communism isn't software or that's bullshit
Linux will be centralized by some capitalist cartel once Linus dies
- gah, they better not

Okay... the most charitable interpretation I can give that, is that he means that open source models would lead to monopoly by outcompeting other models, assimilating all other enhancements into an already popular model that has widespread usage. This is in fact the only interpretation that we can go off of because all of the others would just be outright falsehoods. And of course he doesn't say anything more specific to inform us about any other options.

My response is: Yes, I do hope they will. Fuck your profit margins.

Open source software can be coopted by existing monopolies. In what way does it cause them? I’m still listening to the interview to find the clip but my god.

Edit: Oh, I think he’s saying the networks formed by the open sharing of data are unstable and will tend towards the centralization of data transmission. Sounds like a good case for forming a public utility, no?

Context?

Monopolization of what exactly? The use of the FOSS software?

It's not anyone's fault that FOSS is objectively superior in every way.

Monopoly is when my favorite tech giant doesn't own the entire market.
As far as I can tell, his argument is about the instability of distributed networks. The fact that they tend to collapse into centralized hubs isn’t a terrible observation and I’m sure there’s some relevant math about why that happens. It just doesn’t follow that monopolies form because of information exchange. Markets aren’t well modeled by simple networks.