Against Monoculture
A forest consisting of only one species of tree is vulnerable to disease. An internet consisting only of corporate platforms (AWS + Facebook + Google) is vulnerable to authoritarian capture and profit-seeking enshittification. A state-run internet (China) crushes dissent. A purely commons-based internet (Mastodon only) struggles with funding and usability.
Pluralism demands we build all three:
- State: Public utilities, municipal broadband (The "Public Library" model).
- Market: Efficient, user-friendly corporate services (The "Bookstore" model).
- Commons: Peer-to-peer, cooperative networks (The "Community Garden" model).
The Resilience of Hybrid Stacks
A sovereign individual uses a pluralistic stack: they might use a corporate ISP (Layer 1), an open protocol like ActivityPub (Layer 2), a self-hosted identity (Layer 3), and a mix of cloud and local storage.
Field Notes
The Hedging Strategy: We do not preach the destruction of corporations. We preach the destruction of dependency on them. Use Google if it serves you, but have a "go-bag" (export of your data) ready for the day it turns against you.