[liberationtech] They Used Smartphone Cameras to Record Police Brutality—and Change History

[Yosem Companys]

Interesting because what you propose sounds to me very much like an
application of the median voter theorem to SIlicon Valley:
The median voter theorem as developed by Anthony Downs in his 1957 book, “An
Economic Theory of Democracy,” is an attempt to explain why politicians on both
ends of the spectrum tend to gravitate towards the philosophical center.  Downs,
as well as economist Duncan Black, who proposed the theory in 1948, argue that
politicians take political positions are  far as possible near the center in
order to appeal to as many potential voters as possible.  Under certain
constraints/assumptions, Black says, the median voter “wins,” and the outcome
ends up as a Nash equilibrium.
https://econ243.academic.wlu.edu/2017/01/30/the-median-voter-theorem/
I do wonder whether there is a similar trend at work in Silicon Valley as some
posit is occurring in the nation as a whole?
[The median voter theorem is] not much of a theory at all anymore.
Well-organized interest groups like the National Rifle Association and the
National Education Association as well as large donors and ideological warriors
on both sides have more clout than the median voter because they are organized
and focused while most people aren’t.
And in many nonpresidential  elections, the median voter probably isn’t voting
at all. That’s particularly true for low-income people: Election participation
by people in households just below the median income of $52,000 was around 40
percent in 2014, compared with 52 percent for voters in households earning
$150,000 or more.
Applied to Silicon Valley, one would argue that startup entrepreneurs make
products for the mass market rather than for all consumers and startup investors
only tend to invest in such companies, thereby marginalizing those groups that
care about social goods the most but that have been systematically excluded from
the marketplace by not being mass market.
For example, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are mostly white and male may
target their sales and marketing to non-minorities because of these groups'
higher income levels and cultural understandings or to certain ages such as
younger demographics at the detriment of, say, the elderly.

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On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 9:41 PM, fuzzyTew fuzzytew at gmail.com  wrote:
What about the idea stimulates the thought of artificial limits?  I see it as
growing and shaping the options to include everyone's views, rather than
artificially limiting anything at all.
Like if group A likes privacy, group B likes control of their people, and group
C likes complete transparency of communications, you might make a blockchain app
where the ISP can toggle some reviewable privacy feature for their subnetwork to
be set by user consensus, denied subnetwork-wide, or forced on subnetwork-wide.
You'd open the project to any concerns and mediate them all to be fully
included, such that anyone who can communicate with the design process can
massage the product to meet their preferences, no matter who they are.
I'm used to thinking of crowdsourcing funds and developers from potential users,
as opposed to seeking investors. I guess businesses are used to starting with
money, though.

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 2:53 PM The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510] <
drwho at virtadpt.net> wrote:
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, June 18, 2020 10:47 AM, fuzzyTew <fuzzytew at gmail.com> wrote:

Why isn't it seen as a sound business plan to honestly and transparently meet
everyone's concerns and fundraise among anyone who likes the idea?

If I were an investor (angel or otherwise) and I saw that in the business plan,
I'd back away fast.  That means the company
wants to artificially limit their success and profit, which means the return on
my investment would be impacted.  That's not
good business.

The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510]
PGP (new, Protonmail): 4d7d 5c94  fa44 a235
WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time
of monsters.
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