Share this comment
The problem is not that everyone has their own printing press, the problem is that the incentive structure for using that tech is terrible (by design). I talk about that here: jonstokes.com/p/web3-th…
Obviously yes, we do need to fix the incentive structure. And no, we haven't tried it my way and it didn't work. My way is decentralization…
The problem is not that everyone has their own printing press, the problem is that the incentive structure for using that tech is terrible (by design). I talk about that here: https://www.jonstokes.com/p/web3-the-rise-of-the-aligned-web
Obviously yes, we do need to fix the incentive structure. And no, we haven't tried it my way and it didn't work. My way is decentralization, and what we have (and what you're complaining about) is centralization.
That idea went around too. The buzzword was "disintermediation" back then. It too failed to a really ridiculous extent. That article, and this one, don't grapple deeply with the problem that journalism is to a large extent a public good. It is NOT something which overall matches its "market value", because the benefits are generally diffuse. There are too many articles which basically fantasize that micropayments will make it work. That's a big problem with supposed solutions of that type.
Micropayments are a particularly bad genre, since the writer usually neglects all the little real-world frictions which drive up the costs of a payment. Just how expensive is it to send a bitcoin transaction these days? I know, the shiny NEW system is going to solve this. Until it doesn't.