I had a thought for the support group the other day after reading about Craigslist in this book called “Internet for the people” – it said, THE INTERNET HAS BEEN GENTRIFIED by a series of big companies with loud opinions on the way that organizations on the web should exist. That is, it’s been taken over by sites run on advertising models because those are the most profitable for shareholders, and those that scrape internet user’s data to make those advertisements as effective as possible. This is the most prominent business model, and it’s taking over every mode of production on the web.
I liked this way of thinking about the internet – as having been gentrified – because market fundamentalists these days like to write the success of digital advertising as a survival of the business model most fit to address the needs of the internet! - when in reality, it’s been good at certain things (creating profits and innovation), while also proving pretty poor at others (facilitating healthy communities and increasing trust). This is certainly also the story of Gentrification – where the economic goals of the city are prioritized, sold as a “tide that lifts all boats,” but are implemented at the expense of communities of support, education, and mutual histories.
It's an extremely tough problem to solve – how do we preserve the community, history and support that’s existed before, while also creating opportunities for the next generation of growth?... degrowth (he said quietly)… But in the short term, where/how do you carve out spaces for the preservation of communities with non-economic goals, and how do you set barriers that can impede the capitalist appropriation of those communities?
Because no matter what kind of community garden or a website you have hosted on your home server, capital will always, eventually offer you whatever $ value you want for that plot of land / platform idea, OR just take it without asking. As things stand, right now, in 2022, this is an iron fact of society. But! I really don’t think that always has to be the case. If we collectively understand and internalize this truth, build robust language to describe it, and clamp down heavily on the most egregious forms of it first, then maybe, MAYBE, we could preserve some spaces outside of capital’s reach.
And those will be important as society begins to understand the types of problems that capitalism is wholly unable to solve – homelessness, crime/rehabilitation, racism, equitable education, ecological restoration. Correct me if I’m wrong, but personally, I’ve seen no convincing signs that for-profit companies can operate in any of these spaces without exacerbating the underlying issues they claim to solve. Not for lack of people trying.
So, I think we should aim not only to have a diversity of players in our marketplaces, but a diversity of modes of production along with our marketplaces. We need non-profits and co-ops, we need state-supported media sources and public spaces. We need to expand the scope of how we define productivity and be extremely vigilant as we fend off capital from usurping those modes of production. This fending off should be an essential role of the state and the people of the state.
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