TROM

2022-04-28 11:47:52

Diversity is not created by "capitalism"

Many people believe a fat myth of today's world, that capitalism (this trade-based system) is creating diversity. Look at how many chocolates there are, cars, gadgets, software, etc.. But this is a myth. The diversity is in the package/wrapper and not the product itself. Most phones are the same, nothing new for "new releases". Cars brought almost no advantage to transportation overall for the past decades. Products in the supermarket taste quite the same between brands, and clothes are recycled fashion trends. Movies and books are remakes or copy cats of whatever sells best. And so on.

Anyway, here is a search engine we made to showcase how 175 companies own pretty much everything in this world https://www.tromsite.com/tbf/

But I want to focus on 1 particular domain: software.

Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, VK, and maybe 3-4 more, are the ones that are the most used in the world. They do not communicate with each other and are very limited in terms of functionality. It means you choose one or another, or a bunch of them and manage them separately. They are trade-based platforms (you trade your data, currency, attention to them). Full of ads, full of censorship, full of crap overall.

On the other hand the Fediverse is a network of such platforms: Friendica, Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Funkwhale, and so forth. Look at the diversity here https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ - these are made by different organizations and enabled by different people. A ton of diversity in terms of options.

These are video platforms, blog platforms, photo sharing platforms, platforms for musicians, live streaming, events, you name it. And all communicate with each other. If some organization has an account with Peertube (video platform) I can follow and interact with them from my social platform Friendica. How amazing! If I have a Peertube account and a Friendica one, I can easily setup so that when I post on Peertube a video, it goes on my Friendica too, as a post. The options are very diverse.

This "fediverse" is created not to be traded but to be shared. You will not find ads on these platforms (at least not on the vast majority of them), or data collection or any of that crap.

The MacOS and Windows vs Linux is yet another example of how diversity is actually achieved when humans do not sell their stuff and themselves, when you have a community of people who share their work and ideas. Linux comes in so many flavors for so many needs and wants. Look at this:

So if you look at software overall, the "capitalism" world, which is the trade-based world in which people make software to trade it (for data, attention, currency, etc.) is like a handful of options. But when the software is created for the sake of creating it and is shared and anyone can copy these, modify, redistribute, as trade-free, then real diversity is created and a better environment emerges overall.

We should take the software example and try to provide other goods/services in the same manner. But to do that we have to decouple humans from the trade-based society. At least when it comes to their basic needs. Else no one can have the time to engage in such things. Software is easy to create and maintain from the comfort of your home and in your space time, but is difficult when it comes to food or other goods and services. In any case there is still and abundance of such trade-free goods/services out there as we showcase here directory.trade-free.org/. But this is not enough.

So. If we want to create a wonderful society, we first have to decouple humans from this trade-based society by at least providing them with their basic needs as trade-free. That creates a good soil for the emergence of lots of trade-free goods/services, in a positive feedback loop. Imagine how much good we can create in this world. Imagine how much real diversity. Imagine how wonderful this could be.

#tromlive