this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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At the same time, we'll have to recognize that a world without megacorps is going to involve a much greater presence of state power in the technological sphere due to the need to standardize communication protocols to facilitate a free market of mutually communicable softwares and hardwares.
The question will stop being about how we stop price gouging for the latest iPhone and more about how we prevent a situation like HIPAA where people are forced to use a less secure less efficient technology because it was the most efficient and secure at the time Congress was last able to get off it's ass to legislate on the matter.
Corporations are doing a bad job at it as well. While Gouvernement standards tend to be slow and stagnant, the free market produces an incomprehensible sea of standards. Like with USB, HDMI, 3/4G signals, cat-X Internet cables. If a single global manufacturer decides to do things slightly different you get a new version of a standard that everybody has to be compatible with.
Additionally, corporations will only invent the standards that they benefit from. A government can introduce requirements that people benefit from.