• PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    Another factor in the rise of cyberlibertarianism is that it explicitly presented itself as a solution to the anti-competitive oligarchy of the big chain brick and mortar stores and multinational corporations of the time. That the decentralization of the web plus it lacking the restrictions that caused the market capture of the big chains meant the end of the entrenched big box stores. A digital distributism if you will; I remember people pushing buying books from Amazon (back when they were just a book store) as a way to defeat the hegemony of Borders, and Clinton talking about people becoming “eBay entrepreneurs” as a solution to poverty.

    Of course this all turned out to be horribly, ironically wrong, but it does explain why we still have this tech bro mentality of being outside disrupters of the hegemony while firmly being at the heart of the new hegemony.