Some ideas I thought of to resist the current system and create a new information society:
This doesn’t just apply to decentralized platforms and protocols. We need to disperse across the land more, just like we used to. This will also encourage more of us to live off of our own land in whatever form that takes. Working for corporations in metropolitan areas does not help us. Perhaps there was a time where one could contribute to the advancement of humanity at certain corporations, but no longer. They are in a race to the bottom in a race to maximize the bottom line. Decentralizing populations empowers all of us.
The main thing is probably going to be desuburbanization. Having some big cities are not problematic inherently, as long as people actually live IN them and can be a part of their ecosystems, supporting and elevating each other as urban denizens. But suburbanization definitely needs to die. Suburbs are a massive waste of public money and increase everyone’s reliance on corporate employment. If people still want to work in a city, they’d better live in the city. Some of this can be done by the will of those who share in this belief, but there are enough people comfortable with how things are that some government oversight would be indispensable.
The processing overhead for digital payments can be covered with taxes, or in a decentralized manner such as how it works with cryptocurrencies (i.e. verifiers/miners rewarded with some amount of the currency; however, the Bitcoin model where mining takes increasingly more power is also a huge waste). This way, it becomes feasible to have a “pay-as-you-use” system for services, rather than monthly subscriptions that coerce people into consumption to “get their money’s worth”, or just waste their money.
This way, monetization of creative output can be normalized again, and more people will actually be able to buy it. This can also apply to other things that we have gotten used to not paying for, such as search engines (Kagi), video sharing sites, etc.; however, a donation-based model can remain for sites such as Wikipedia.
For video sharing sites, some tier of free access must remain. Those who don’t use such a service to want to justify paying for it should be respected, as well as those who truly are destitute even in this new society. (Perhaps this can be considered inevitable.) Rather than ads and sponsorships, we can have a pay-as-you-use system where uploaders must pay per upload, and viewers can pay for higher speeds and quality (Nicovideo system), at such a price that it covers the cost of the free users (who are putting less of a burden anyway, what with lower video quality).
There is the issue of how to provide sufficient disposable income to a sufficient portion of the population. Government wealth redistribution is undesirable in a society where the wealthy are not siphoning wealth from the bottom 99%, since it rewards people for providing no value while penalizing those who do. Also, that kind of takes away from the whole decentralization thing. However, this problem may resolve itself if the other points can take effect. (Lower rents, more people getting paid well for what they do…)
It may be OK to keep for-profit companies, but there needs to be a central democratic (in the true sense of the word) body which has the power to directly propose, accept, and enforce directives against companies which engage in bullshit. This will naturally reduce enshittification and minimize milking of consumers. (Need to consider the fundamental capitalist system that permits the classic hypergrowth scenario more carefully.)