<i>Does trickle down economics work? Given that 1% of America has 40% of the nation’s wealth, the answer is no, it doesn’t.</i><p>This is a fallacy based on a complete misunderstanding of trickle down economics. The premise of trickle down economics is that a rising tide lifts all boats, which has occurred. The poor today are considerably richer than even the middle class of earlier eras.<p>The same applies to technology. Open source may not be directly used by consumers in the same manner, but it does directly enable those who do target consumers. For example, historically, a company building a product targeted directly at end consumers based on ease of use would need to devote an entire team to building their own webserver (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOLserver" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOLserver</a>). Nowadays that same organization just uses apache (built by enthusiasts) and the team of engineers no longer devoted to building a webserver instead builds something useful for the consumer.
This doesn't seem like a good analysis to me. How many consumers use Linux? Let's see, how many Android devices are there? And what about Firefox?<p>And then he cites the internet as an example, but dismisses it for no apparent reason.<p>The article reads as very condescending to engineers/technologists. It seems like the author thinks that technologists are out-of-touch geeks and need his e
enlightened guidance to show them back to civilized society.<p>And the end makes no sense to me: "own our own data, tools, and derived intelligence — what I call our digital selves — and avoid becoming a society of digital serfs". So, he wants things to be so easy to use that you don't have to know anything about how they work, but he also wants people to be in control of their digital destiny? It doesn't work like that. Easy to use is great, but without knowing something about how the technology works you will always be a slave to it. No matter how rich you are, if you don't even <i>know how</i> to cook or clean, you will be a slave to your cooks and cleaners.<p>The only thing he has to offer is "Experience Driven Open-Source", which is incredibly vague. I say, go for it, as long as you aren't asking for my money to do it. I hope it produces some amazing things.<p>(I set aside the political garbage at the beginning of the article.)
The reason stated for why trickle down economics isn't working is a non-sequitur, kind of undermines the credibility of the rest of the article. As to the main premise, I mean, open source is obviously a huge bonus to all the freelancers and startups and indie devs, not to mention the proliferation of Android smart phones. I think it clearly is 'trickling down', maybe just not as <i>totally</i> as the author would like.
So much to discuss here:
1) hard numbers; where do I confirm everything you are saying, analogy to economy does not make it true (nor are you proving that the first concept it's true)
2) if you create something specific to A, expecting it to adapt to B magically is wrong, C has to adapt it bringing more work to the flow
3) "Consumers, on the other hand, rarely care about the technology itself but focus instead on what the technology enables them to achieve." Sure, but that would also mean that they are not interested in the enabled features by it so was it interested on the technology or whatever it enabled or not?
4) " How many non‐enthusiasts do you know who use Linux (and who don’t live with an enthusiast who set it up for them and fixes it for them when something goes wrong?)" All android users<p>What if the problem it's actually that there is no goal, therefore tech is irrelevant?
"Experimentation by enthusiasts is of great value and usually results in the creation of great infrastructure. However, we also need people and companies focused on meeting the needs of consumers."<p>Nuanced argument.