Thread by @punk6529

1/ On Taxis

Or how the world is centralizing all around you, but why you, fellow citizen, have probably not thought about it at all.

(NYC, 2007 below)

2/ We always start at the beginning and the beginning is that architecture of technology matters, even if the average person spends zero time thinking about it.

The technological equivalent of "the medium is the message" is that "you get the society that your IT stack enables"

3/ Over the last 20 years, three areas have accelerated:

✅the internet
✅smart phones
✅high performance, big data stacks

4/ It is a truism that internet firms have "power law" outcomes aka the biggest firm in a category is by far the most successful and 3rd and beyond basically don't matter.

Google, Ebay, LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, NetFlix, IG and so on

5/ The reason is that "distribution costs" (the cost of distance, the cost of an incremental user logging on) are close to zero online, so, at a first approximation, if you have a 25% better internet service, you don't sign up 25% more people, you sign up *everyone*

6/ This is very counterintuitive, including to early internet theorists, because the physical world does not work this way.

Distance is a dampener to runaway winners.

If you are a 25% better pizza restaurant but you are 1 hour away, you do not get "all the customers"

7/ A second concept to keep in mind that databases are by definition centralized.

There is at the end a database administrator with read/write/delete access and that person (or their boss, Board, shareholders, etc) has absolute authority over that database.

8/ All of the arguments about Twitter and which accounts should be suspended reflect the *technical reality* that ultimately the CEO of Twitter can give instructions to, say, suspend this account.

It is technically feasible and, in the USA, 100% legal.

9/ Also, a reminder: Since 2009 and the invention of BTC and its successors, humanity has had available to it a decentralized database too.

On public, permissionless blockchains, cryptocurrencies, NOBODY has exclusive read/write/delete access

10/ Anyway, what does this have to do with taxis?

Usually, when crypto people talk about centralization, it is about the Federal Reserve or Central Bank Digital Currencies and the like.

But money is an emotional topic both for the government and for people

11/ Governments think about money: "wait, this is how I fund myself, stop crime and smite my enemies"

People think: "I wish I was richer or no way BTC is really worth $25K or my Amex works fine"

And we lose the plot.

So let's go to something unemotional

12/ From many years, I lived in Manhattan and, as such, was an experienced user of the famous Yellow Cab.

It worked like this:

You stood on the street, raised your hand, jumped in, gave driver $20 cash, jumped out.

13/ The "hail a taxi" process was fundamentally decentralized and in the public sphere.

Thousands of taxi drivers, millions of riders, dollars in your wallet, using the public sidewalks to hail the the taxi.

14/ OK, so what?

If the state (or any other party) wanted to stop you from using taxis, what would they have to do?

Well, they would have to arrest you and jail you, the only way to prevent you from walking down the street and raising your hand until someone picks you up.

15/ Because we are a constitutional democracy arresting and jailing someone is very hard.

You have to have probable cause of a crime, a jury of peers have to judge the crime was committed beyond any reasonable doubt, you have a lawyer to mount a defense and so on.

16/ The last time I was in New York in 2021, most people were using Uber and Lyft and the Yellow Cabs had their own ride-sharing app.

What is the apps market share now?

Well over 80%!!! - thanks toddwschneider.com

17/ Now is there anything nefarious about this? Of course not!

Uber and Lyft are helpful and convenient apps, I have them on my phone, I used them when I was in New York the majority of the time.

The executives at Uber and Lyft have normal corporate objectives I'm sure.

18/ But let's go back to our example.

What does it take for the state/Uber or anyone else to prevent you from an Uber?

Oh this is very simple - one command to their database, one field changed to "suspended" and then Uber will never stop again for you in New York City

19/ Did you have to be charged with a crime? go to court? defend yourself with a lawyer?

Of course not, you do not have any of those rights in the private sphere.

you are, strictly speaking, on Uber's property (their servers), not the public streets, when hailing an Uber.

20/ A flip of a switch and you cannot hail an Uber in New York.

Actually, this is inaccurate, a flip of a switch and you cannot hail an Uber in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries around the world.

"taxi hailing" globally is centralizing into <5 databases.

21/ Of course, databases don't just do one transaction at a time.

With, about the same amount of effort, Uber could switch off hundreds or thousands or millions of people who met certain factors internally or who were given to them by a 3rd party.

22/ I would like to ask you to reflect for a moment.

Over the last five years, did you think any of these things to yourself?
✅Wow, global taxi hailing is rapidly centralizing
or
✅Wow, global taxi hailing is moving into the corporate (opaque) sphere

23/ If you are like almost everyone I know, you did not have these thoughts, you did not worry about this, you are not properly sensitivized to what is happening.

The frog (you), is being boiled slowly, distracted by consumer and convenience delights.

24/ Now, am I being paranoid? Is there an issue today? No, today is still OK.

Today, you can still hail a yellow cab.
Today, Uber executives are just trying to hit their quarterly targets (they want "users", not "suspended users")
Today, it is still ok

25/ But what I worry about is the trendline.

How far off are we before the yellow cabs can only be hailed by app, "for everyone's safety?"

5 years? 10 years? It is, for sure, not 100 year away.

26/ And what is concerning is that this is happening in every sphere.

A huge % of internet-based communication and commerce is running through less than 20 companies in the West, for sure less than 100 companies.

And the goal is to replace cash with CBDCs

27/ It is easy to project out 10 to 20 years and imagine that a digitally enhanced, augmented reality, AI-enabled world, where everything is intermediated by a few dozen corporate and governmental databases.

One consumer step at a time, one "for your safety" step at a time

28/ OK, so what? Won't life be more convenient and full of "features" this way?

Why, yes, it probably will be more convenient and full of features because those are the fruits of technology.

But, but, but, but centralizing power always has predictable outcomes

29/ What are the outcomes?

Corporate x2
1. Rent-seeking (aka they will capture some of the networks effects $$$$)
2. Less innovation (they will block competitors)

Political x1
1. Power. Raw unlimited power. The person in control of those databases is a God

30/ Once the infrastructure is there, even if it was put in place for non-political reasons, it will be immensely appealling to the type of person who wants, needs, must, be President or Prime Minister, who lives and breathes for power.

One day, the systems will be compromised

31/ And when those all-seeing, all-powerful systems are eventually compromised by a political leader, that person will have more power than any leader in history.

Micro-level insight into everyone's actions, micro-level ability to control what freedoms they have.

32/ So it is best we preserve some space for freedom, some public commons, some digital lands that are controlled by nobody.

You know the answer, it is crypto, it is NFTs, but just have to figure out how we explain it to everyone else

33/ If this is your first time here, we believe in open metaverse because we believe in democracy and human rights

https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1448399827054833668