[ExI] Capitalistic Corruption

[efc at swisscows.email]

On Sat, 13 May 2023, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:

>> ...The problem is no one sees it unless I pay $8 a month for twitter blue...
>
> On the contrary.  You can still post without Twitter blue and people will still see it if they follow you.
>
> The blue check doesn't mean the payer is credible.  It only means the payer paid.  You can follow non-blue Tweets.
>
> From a business perspective, I don't see how any business can provide a service which costs money without charging something for it.  Do you?  Twitter was within a few weeks of bankruptcy with Musk bought it.  Somehow he has managed to bring it back to at least break-even.
>

I agree with you spike. I have no problem with Musk or twitter as long
as it is voluntary and there are alternatives. For me, there are plenty
of alternatives, so why should I have any quarrel with Musk? It's as
easy as just not using it. =)

But let me give you an example where I am against a private solution.
The swedish premier public digital ID system, Bank ID, is developed and
maintained by a banking oligopoly, supported by the state. There are no
other options, and they early on dropped support for linux, and they keep
raising the requirements for android dropping older phones, and in fact,
it won't let you run the system on an android emulator either.

I am passionately against it since there is no other option, and since
it is a tight cooperation between state backing and banking oligopoly
which means there is no incentive or drive to support niche platforms or
the elderly.

So I do my taxes on paper. Thankfully though, there is a slow awakening
to the fact that elderly who cannot afford phones at 1000 EUR a phone
every couple of years are being excluded from digital IDs, so my guess
is that within 10 years an alternative system will be developed. =)

Best regards, 
Daniel