The author does a good job of laying out the fundamental differences between the Jeffersonian and Hamitonian approaches to solving the "knowledge problem" of platforms creating such massive sets of data as to become a threat to any society in which they exist, but misses in terms of thinking out the consequences of several approaches.
For instance, there is a perverse disincentive in the Hamiltonian approach to relinquish control. The input which would "theoretically" increase the quality of a Hamiltonian regulator is more data. This means the regulator has a greater incentive to act as a data vacuum than those they are regulating. Furthermore, there comes a point at which when the data sets get large enough, there will tend to be no accountability to be found. See the banking crisis.
"Oops. We accidentally the economy. We promise we won't do it again."
"What did you even do?"
"We don't know off hand, but we won't do it again!"
The Jeffersonian approach is very much a precautionary approach. Where a Hamiltonian goes all in, the Jeffersonian steps back, limits scope, and sees what happens. It is better to advance the state of the art slowly and methodically without creating a point where a failure could propagate through the entire system, than to take the risk that the SCRAM (Safety Cut Rope Axe Man, the man responsible for triggering the active safety mechanisms in a non-passively safe nuclear reactor design) falls asleep at a bad time.
Do one thing, do it well. You don't need a Leviathan to build a functional, thriving society, but it sure helps if you are looking to destabilize and destroy one.
Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance observes that, “when third-party sellers post new products, Amazon tracks the transactions and then starts selling many of their most popular products.”
However much that practice may increase economic productivity, it does so at the unacceptable cost of concentrating power in one firm while discouraging entrepreneurship outside it. Policymakers should protect vulnerable sellers against it.
How the platforms can both play platform and participant is really the disturbing part. I get that a lot of platforms have to start off as both to get started. It's probably better in the beginning to be the a really good chicken and start selling eggs. The let others sell their eggs to.
Just the middleman is replaced. The producer is still in the game. It would be more of a problem if Amazon started manufacturing the same product.
I see that it can concentrate power on Amazon (as a merchant), but it's debatable that it would reduce incentives to enterpreneurship. If platforms like Amazon didn't exist at all, there would be even less incentives to sell online. One current alternative is simply not to sell products at Amazon in the first place. What I find most disturbing is that this Amazon tactic is not clear to third-party sellers, which leads to the same old problem of disclosing what they do with the data they capture.
In a recent podcast, the socialists of Chapo Trap House joked that they were happy to see Amazon consolidate power. Once it takes over every business in the country, it will be easy to “cut off the head” and simply impose government control over the economy.
For instance, there is a perverse disincentive in the Hamiltonian approach to relinquish control. The input which would "theoretically" increase the quality of a Hamiltonian regulator is more data. This means the regulator has a greater incentive to act as a data vacuum than those they are regulating. Furthermore, there comes a point at which when the data sets get large enough, there will tend to be no accountability to be found. See the banking crisis.
"Oops. We accidentally the economy. We promise we won't do it again."
"What did you even do?"
"We don't know off hand, but we won't do it again!"
The Jeffersonian approach is very much a precautionary approach. Where a Hamiltonian goes all in, the Jeffersonian steps back, limits scope, and sees what happens. It is better to advance the state of the art slowly and methodically without creating a point where a failure could propagate through the entire system, than to take the risk that the SCRAM (Safety Cut Rope Axe Man, the man responsible for triggering the active safety mechanisms in a non-passively safe nuclear reactor design) falls asleep at a bad time.
Do one thing, do it well. You don't need a Leviathan to build a functional, thriving society, but it sure helps if you are looking to destabilize and destroy one.
However much that practice may increase economic productivity, it does so at the unacceptable cost of concentrating power in one firm while discouraging entrepreneurship outside it. Policymakers should protect vulnerable sellers against it.
I see that it can concentrate power on Amazon (as a merchant), but it's debatable that it would reduce incentives to enterpreneurship. If platforms like Amazon didn't exist at all, there would be even less incentives to sell online. One current alternative is simply not to sell products at Amazon in the first place. What I find most disturbing is that this Amazon tactic is not clear to third-party sellers, which leads to the same old problem of disclosing what they do with the data they capture.