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Comment by badsock | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered the possibility that there might be more than two ways (Randian capitalism or Marxist communism) to run an economy?

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we're not talking about the economy, but rather a social network that everyone you know is on - all your friends, and all their friends, and everyone you meet.

How is that not going to be a billion dollar company? Like, what do you imagine here?

Only half-kidding: they could pay a dividend to their content-creators rather than their investors. The company would be worth a lot less but the content-creators would be way happier (maybe).

See? Even if your totally out-there half-kidding, hypothetical, it's STILL a billion-dollar company. How would it not be? If the company you just described had everyone on it, it would be worth a billion. Or do you want it to be set up like a charity (like EFF?) Or run by the government?

I am having a lot of trouble imagining how your description is not worth a billion dollars, if everyone is on it. Even under the model you described.

Heh, good point. No doubt having the user base is valuable. But if, hypothetically speaking, 100% of the profits are distributed to users what do the investors have to gain? The profits can't be paid to investors or used to buy back shares. (There are still questions about growth and corporate voting rights not addressed here.)

you've just described a communist utopia. I think we can all agree that this wonderful pipe dream has not been proven to work at scale in practice. Theoretically it's a great idea of course, which is why a quarter of the world tried it.

Email meets those criteria if you define social network loosely enough. I don't see any reason that something more Facebook-like couldn't also work in a decentralized manner.

How is that not going to be a billion dollar company?

Back then we had public utilities. In the Sixties they envisioned the Cloud to be run like a public utility. The scary thing is that this model has become entirely unimaginable to a whole generation.

Well, that would certainly solve those pesky problems with search warrants and encryption.

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