> Crypto gives the ability for the community to actually control and be confident they won’t get slowly squeezed out, because you can actually codify control.
This is nonsense. Sure, on a technical level, you can ensure that Google2 will only have 10,000 crypto-shares, and will never issue any more. Regular Google can issue new stock and there's not much that can be done.
But the volume at which public companies or even private companies trade stock is so huge that there's no use case you can imagine that would tank the stock. You're talking about micro-payments -- Google2 is not going to pay people $30 an hour (crypto or USD) to upvote comments or submit useful content. I know this because Google1 barely pays YouTubers (outside of the top x% who make real money, and even they have ad dollars siphoned off by Google). Google1 could issue a million new shares of the stock to pay its moderators, and all they'd do is tank the stock price. But all their most valuable employees are paid heavily in stock. They wouldn't be happy and would quit or riot. It's a soft-regulation on that kind of silly behavior.
Despite 20+ years of "pay users to use the site" being an obvious conclusion, almost no site has done this in a meaningful way. There are hardly any even paying people in funny money / company scrip. All I can think of are Eve Online and Steam. You can't convert money OUT (regulations) but you can use their chuck-e-cheese tokens to buy stuff within their business. On Steam, the money you get per value the user puts in is a pittance. Valve takes a 30ish % cut on almost everything you do, even "secondhand" trading card transactions.
You can speculate that financial regulations are preventing it, but I think it's more likely that the owners of Google2 would much prefer to keep as much capital for themselves and not let its users/"staffers" get a slice. Similarly, Google1 pays its low-level moderator staff very little (compared to an engineer or upper level manager). Most corporations turn a profit. That's a very clear indicator of 'money on the table' - money that the owners chose not to return to the people performing labor for the company, whether volunteer or employee.
You imply a kind of 51% governance of an open source or community driven project. History shows that community projects fork all the time over personal differences, and majority does not always rule. Google2 coin won't matter if people get mad at Google2's governance and fork it for Google2.5 coin. If you can't fork the coin, then it sounds like regular stock or company scrip.
The argument of traditional stock being worthless isn’t just that they could dilute, which they could in any number of ways, but they could end sharing anytime, change the % share, or do any number of the squeezes for-profit VC companies end up doing like ”introducing” prioritized white-labeled content. Again, the trust is what matters.
> Google2 is not going to pay people $30 an hour (crypto or USD) to upvote comments or submit useful content. I know this because Google1 barely pays YouTubers (outside of the top x% who make real money, and even they have ad dollars siphoned off by Google)
Google pays tons of content people, they also have 130 billion in cash.
Google2 may make the mistake of being greedy, but GoogleN may not because they have a team that realizes less greed = users paid more = more incentive. Forking is a feature not a bug.
Success being correlated with fairness in equity distribution, users having stake and say in the platforms they use, creators having contracts with how they earn their living that can’t be changed on a whim, and if they ever do change, it’s by a democratic process, and creators then being able to vote with their feet to fork.
Seems like a good thing.
> even they have ad dollars siphoned off by Google
> That's a very clear indicator of 'money on the table' - money that the owners chose not to return to the people performing labor for the company, whether volunteer or employee.
To be clear, I think these companies need to be non-profit but still pay their team well (a fixed rate to some sort of inflation basket that tracks competitive engineer salaries, for example).
This is nonsense. Sure, on a technical level, you can ensure that Google2 will only have 10,000 crypto-shares, and will never issue any more. Regular Google can issue new stock and there's not much that can be done.
But the volume at which public companies or even private companies trade stock is so huge that there's no use case you can imagine that would tank the stock. You're talking about micro-payments -- Google2 is not going to pay people $30 an hour (crypto or USD) to upvote comments or submit useful content. I know this because Google1 barely pays YouTubers (outside of the top x% who make real money, and even they have ad dollars siphoned off by Google). Google1 could issue a million new shares of the stock to pay its moderators, and all they'd do is tank the stock price. But all their most valuable employees are paid heavily in stock. They wouldn't be happy and would quit or riot. It's a soft-regulation on that kind of silly behavior.
Despite 20+ years of "pay users to use the site" being an obvious conclusion, almost no site has done this in a meaningful way. There are hardly any even paying people in funny money / company scrip. All I can think of are Eve Online and Steam. You can't convert money OUT (regulations) but you can use their chuck-e-cheese tokens to buy stuff within their business. On Steam, the money you get per value the user puts in is a pittance. Valve takes a 30ish % cut on almost everything you do, even "secondhand" trading card transactions.
You can speculate that financial regulations are preventing it, but I think it's more likely that the owners of Google2 would much prefer to keep as much capital for themselves and not let its users/"staffers" get a slice. Similarly, Google1 pays its low-level moderator staff very little (compared to an engineer or upper level manager). Most corporations turn a profit. That's a very clear indicator of 'money on the table' - money that the owners chose not to return to the people performing labor for the company, whether volunteer or employee.
You imply a kind of 51% governance of an open source or community driven project. History shows that community projects fork all the time over personal differences, and majority does not always rule. Google2 coin won't matter if people get mad at Google2's governance and fork it for Google2.5 coin. If you can't fork the coin, then it sounds like regular stock or company scrip.
https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/18843/how-does-a-p...