The digital economy benefits the 1%. Here’s how to change that. | Ramesh Srinivasan | Big Think

A digital economy and world that work for the 99% are one where technologies don't support the interests of some at the cost of others. There's sort of a zero-sum mentality that can end up costing all of us. Actually, at the end of the day, a digital economy produces prosperity and value for all. It does support business interests; it does support, you know, the great developments for consumers that a lot of digital platforms have provided. But that doesn't come at the cost of the economic security of worker security, diverse opinions of racial minorities, of indigenous peoples, of women.

The issue is that right now, our digital world, through the technologies that have globalized the world, are more or less structured, influenced, and dominated by a few technology companies that are located in a small sliver of the world in Silicon Valley, in Seattle, and also, actually, in China. Right? And they all have different outcomes. But the people who are leading these companies, not only are they supposed to develop technologies for their private interest, never mind the effects on the rest of us, but they tend to be, in terms of demographics, not representative of the vast majority of their users.

We don't see many women. We don't see many racial minorities. We do see some Asian and white males. And so, as a result, intentionally or not, they are coding into the digital world outcomes that are generative of greater inequality. It's really important to just situate this on top of what our world looks like right now and even what our country looks like. Three people or so with equivalent wealth to 195 million in this country—who ever would have imagined that? That all has happened in the past few decades globally. Seven or eight people, depending on what estimates you look at, with equivalent wealth to 3.9 to 4 billion people approximately. These are different estimates on this.

That wasn't even created by the internet and digital technology. But the Internet and digital technology are amplifying these problems. So what can we do about these inequalities that we face right now? On the one hand, we can see these inequalities as reasons to be upset, concerned, anxious, nervous, and critical, and that's fine. I understand where that comes from. But, to me, they represent alternatives and opportunities for us to actually engage in productive, progressive, pragmatic action.

So, first of all, every single person who is in danger of losing their job, losing their economic security—which is already happening—needs to be acknowledged, addressed, and humanized. Not just through lip service, but by actually presenting economic opportunities for those people. So, in other words, what I'm getting at on the economic level is that our jobs that are shifting to the gig economy, right? Like Uber drivers and so on, that many studies are showing are likely the gateway to an automated world, those people need to be protected.

They either need to be presented with new types of jobs that are dignified, they're economically secure, or we need to figure out other outcomes. Like, imagine if Uber was at least partially, if not completely owned, or an Uber-type model by its drivers, by its laborers. The entire model of technology corporations right now is to make labor and costs of all forms an afterthought; to basically disregard those sorts of costs to maximize profit and valuation. And that's a very toxic model on a social level.

So, that's one—that's on the economic level. Politically, there's no question in my mind that what we need are not just independent auditors. We have to not just say independent; we have to actually make transparent who these journalists are that are actually in charge of these algorithmic systems that people basically use to access news, for example, on Facebook. Right? So we should actually bring reputable journalists across the political spectrum to actually design these algorithms and audit these algorithms with engineers.

So there has to be public-private partnerships. That's the only way it's not going to turn into a complete implosion for Facebook, for example, which is getting so much criticism right now. But this is symptomatic of a larger problem and an opportunity for us to actually develop real solutions to these issues. So that's the second issue.

On the political and democratic level, I think a third element, which is both economic and political, is the question of making sure that we support small businesses in the digital economy and even alternative technology platforms to create a more competitive environment that's going to allow what we see now—which is horizontal integration across the board, monopolistic tech behavior by Facebook, but also Google, Amazon, and so on—to actually be stemmed a little bit.

You know, don't claim the language of a marketplace without actually supporting an open marketplace. But an open marketplace, just like free speech, doesn't mean that it's just presumed everybody has to have an equal opportunity to participate in these shifts. And then, the last point I want to make, which I think is very important, is that vulnerable people and vulnerable communities in our world who have been historically discriminated against need to be, first and foremost, part of these solutions. Part of where we go and what we consider, moving forward.

Workers should have power over designing platforms that define the future of work. Black and brown communities, including like Black Lives Matter-type communities that are victims of ICE algorithmic systems that are turning out to be racist across the board—whether it's predictive policing or courtroom algorithmic systems—they should be designing those systems or even making decisions on whether those systems should exist.

So what I'm getting at is we have to completely open up the palette, socially, politically, and culturally, over who has power and governance over technologies that can coexist with Silicon Valley, that can coexist with Amazon. But it's not this blindness. What has basically happened is we've all become more or less blind lemmings in the socially engineered game that is now disrupting in a very negative way all of our lives. And that's why we have to do something about it right now.