I like that Tim highlights incentives here: profit versus social good
If we could have an overall incentive for businesses that includes social good, regulating different sectors would be so much simpler, and companies would be much freer to innovate and create.
Failing that I think size is important, because businesses lose incentive towards social goods as they get bigger. This is what’s behind ‘think local’ and ‘small is beautiful’, and is one of the attractions of decentralisation of course.
One reason small is beautiful in business, is that small businesses are more likely to have a stake in a community, so their interests align. They are more likely to understand the people they serve, employ, and the people connected through these groups, as well as other businesses. Many different entities together forming an ecosystem where the good of individuals, businesses and the whole are closely aligned. Contrast that with a very large business for whom this small community is not significant, which thinks mainly in terms of much bigger issues and overall profitability, and you have an empathy gap that allows that business to treat such communities as business assets from which value can be extracted, while creating harm to individuals and society as a whole. It is actually very hard for such businesses to behave differently, because of the incentives created for them by the existing business and regulatory frameworks.
In the absence of clever regulation that can incentivise social good, I think that decentralised ownership and control of data, SAFE Network and project Solid for example, can push us firmly towards smaller more accountable business.
So I’ve moved this from off-topic to marketing. I think Tim’s views here, and more generally on decentralised ownership and control of data are very relevant to this project.
I’m still trying to understand how Tim and his team view this, but he believes that there are investors who see this as an opportunity, much like the early Web, and will be early investors who will fund application development and fund new business models.
I think that’s optimistic, but also credible - because as influencers and policy makers look for solutions to the underlying problems being caused by very large Internet businesses, his and our part is to ensure that solutions are available which can demonstrate there is a better approach. This can be a powerful route to adoption, and we already have an example of this in the GDPR which Tim also sees as a driver for the Solid/SAFE Network approach (note MaidSafe’s recent partnership with Identillect which is directed towards opportunities created by the GDPR). 