it's really weird how facebook and twitter and paypal etc. have like... become de facto public utilities, way faster than regulations could keep up, but are still privately owned and managed
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there's this sort of econ 101 puzzle i occasionally come back to that is like "how can you hurt someone by only freely offering them useful stuff?" and stuff like getting kicked off paypal or fb is a good example: do it long enough and they start depending on it
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iirc when givedirectly started giving poor people money there was some discourse around it and one of the points was like "how could you possibly hurt someone by giving them free money" and again, do it long enough and they start depending on it
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there's a huge difference between giving someone $1000/mo for a few months and credibly promising to give them $1000/mo forever and it's about whether they can freely plan their lives around that money or whether they have to worry about not pissing you off
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There's often an implied leverage-and-taxation/aggression squeeze underlying such dynamics. Centralized services are subsidized, and people need to use the subsidized service to keep up with others, or they lose what little they had before.
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Often this involves outright application of force, legally via foreclosures as rents rise, or through sheer thuggery like the US did to the indigenous peoples.
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