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Technological self-determination
Competition is a means, not an end.
My latest Locus Magazine column is “Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability,” an essay about the goal of competition and its handmaiden, interoperability, namely, “technological self-determination.”
I don’t fight monopolies because they’re “inefficient.” I fight them because they deprive everyone — workers, users, suppliers — of the right to decide how to live our lives, both by eliminating competitors who might offer superior choices and by locking us into their silos.
A monopolized world is one in which a tiny number of people get the final say over every aspect of your life: where and how you live, work, socialize, shop, politick, love, convalesce — even how you die.
I don’t care how “efficient” or brilliant these self-appointed, unaccountable lifestyle czars are. Benevolent dictatorships are bullshit. No matter how well they work, they always fail disastrously, because dictators are just mediocre humans like you and me and they fuck up.
This is especially important when it comes to tech monopolies, because tech is how we’ll coordinate the movement to smash all…
