John Quiggen has an interesting post up on network effects, the new economy, and social equality.
My gut tells me that he's wrong, but I can't immediately construct an argument to convince even myself of that. I am quite convinced that it's an interesting topic - meaning that the arguments pro and con will be enlightening and possibly important. Take a look and let me know what you see.
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I went, I read, but I learned more about Mr. Quiggen than about networked economies. It's hardly any mystery that the 'value chain/web' is still in flux, that we haven't figured out what relationships are or will be monetized, and we have no categorization of what type of ventures and actors will be stable in the long run. This big experiment has been running for 12 years or so, and even at Internet speeds, there's no reason to think that we'd yet be up to even (let's call it) the Adam Smith level of understanding. I didn't find anything novel and insightful at CT, except perchance the following telling passages:
...and....
What is clear is that Mr. Quiggen, like the 'industrial leftists' before him, is quite ready to use some poorly constructed and unproven theory of value to 'optimize' gains from the networked economy out of the hands of those who took the risks to build it. The economy changes, the dead hand of the fascist left remains the same.