After listening to Zomordi and Poyant’s podcast I am convinced that there probably never be fair play in the digital world. As long as our government seeks to regulate as opposed to moving to a required open data/source movement the larger companies will continue to amass more wealth and influence which in turn will allow them to gobble up their competition. I agree with Rufus when he proposed his version of a competitive market by having digital companies open their software to even the playing field. I just don’t think that that will ever happen.
His example of a demand-driven market seemed akin to meritocracy. I’m all for a demand-driven market and having the best producer of a service compensated for their work if the playing field is even. Thinking of an even playing field I can recall working for a mobile company when it was in the process of acquiring one of its competitors and one of their marketing strategies was to persuade customers of their competitor that this acquisition would greatly benefit them. The truth is that the customers did not receive better service the acquisition was simply embarked upon to do as Rufus stated to neutralize their competition. New services and products were not implemented, there was zero innovation. In fact, the customers of the acquired company actually lost many of the perks that they enjoyed prior to the acquisition.
Work Cited
Zomorodi, Manoush and Poyant, Jen. 2018. ZigZag Podcast Season 2 Episode 11: If Capitalism and Socialism Had a Baby. https://zigzagpod.com/2018/12/20/s2-ep11-if-capitalism-and-socialism-had-a-baby/
I came across this thread today and immediately thought of your posts on meritocracy and “fair play” here.
https://twitter.com/schock/status/1107606065422761984 reviews a research paper out of MIT on how “meritocracy doesn’t exist, and believing it does is bad for you.”
very relevant to our recent readings/discussions.