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diff --git a/article/hardware-oligopoly.html b/article/hardware-oligopoly.html deleted file mode 100644 index cb9724d..0000000 --- a/article/hardware-oligopoly.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,85 +0,0 @@ - -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <title>Hardware Oligopolies and the Decentralization of Hardware Production</title> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" /> - <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> - <meta charset="utf-8" /> - </head> - <body> - <h1>Hardware Oligopolies and the Decentralization of Hardware Production</h1> - <p>Article ID: 20</p> - - <p>While I was looking through some of my email archives, I found that <a href="https://mail.andrewyu.org/pipermail/evosaur-general/2022-October/000001.html">I sent the following to the Evosaur project's mailing list</a>. It might be an interesting read, so here's a copy.</p> - -<pre> -Here are my thoughts on the current situation on the oligopoly of the -CPU and general technology market. - -Many markets, especially the computer hardware market down to the basics -such as the architecture/chipset-like level, are Economics of Scale, -meaning that the cost of production per unit decreases as the total -number of production for one entity. This naturally gives rise to -oligopolies, also known in the technology industry as companies like -Intel and Microsoft. - -An oligopoly is a market structure in which a market or industry is -dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. People often -confuse this with monopolies, for which the latter Francis Wayland -defines as ``an exclusive right granted to a [hu]man or a monopoly of -[hu]man, to empoly their labor or capital in some particular manner'', -which cannot exist in a free market (i.e. free of government -regulations). The technology industry in most countries is an -oligopoly, not a monopoly. - -The harm of oligopolys (and monopolies, which are similar in this -context) are commonly discussed in Economics, such as the lack of -competition causing prices to be solely in control of one economic -entity, who may set insane prices in seek of profits, which is -especially harmful for products that serve basic human needs, such as -food and water. And in modern times, technology is often a necessity -for daily life, exacebating the harms of a relevant oligopoly market. - -There is yet another practical harm of a oligopoly technology market: -about the rights of users. When CPUs are produced by almost solely -Intel, AMD, and a few others, they are now free to add their backdoors -and ``management engines'' into the CPUs that we users use daily, and -their seek for profit pushes them to do so. We now have to work with -spyware in our computer hardware, and we can't do anything about it, -because the oligopoly nature of the market doesn't allow us common -people to monitor, produce, develop, or otherwise deal with our own -technology except for the ``expected usages'' that the oligopoly -superimposes on us. - -One way out is to decentralize the development and production of CPUs -and related goods. Individual cities and towns should be able to -produce computers, from the very basics, for their own people. -And I know this sounds like an anti-internationalisation self-sustaining -propaganda chiche economic outcome, but if you think about it, such an -essential part of life (like technology) would be better served by -people who'd be less likely to massively implement spyware that would be -of any use to them. - -Initiatives to decentralize development of CPUs and other computer -components, such as LibreSilicon, have existed for a short time (in -comparison to the time that Intel and AT&T have existed). We're nowhere -near what Intel could make, however, partly due to the insane patents -around their technology. Patent trolls exist and often target free -software and free hardware projects, and thus applying the idea of -copyleft as it works for copyright, to patents, may aid practical -development. And at this point, we can't really develop upon existing -foundations, so we have to ignore pre-existing knowledge and develop our -own architecture and CPU from the start, paying attention to copyleft -licenses and copyleft-in-patents to hopefully prevent patent trolls from -taking over the world again. (This is also what the <a href="https://evosaur.andrewyu.org/">Evosaur</a> project is -attempting to do.) - -Please tell me your thoughts on this. -</pre> - <div id="footer"> - <hr /> - <p><a href="/">Andrew Yu's Website</a></p> - </div> - </body> -</html> |