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Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
scubacuda writes "Clay Shirky has written an excellent article entitled "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality." Simply put, diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality: "A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on." A must read for anyone interested in the statistics, fairness, and power relations of blogging."
this subject is covered in the book Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who focuses on the prevalence of power laws in web traffic and Internet router connectivity. There are also some pretty good explanations on why this makes the Internet more resilient than a randomly linked network but also more vulnerable to malicious acts. This book was covered on slashdot previously. I found it to be a good read.
A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.
Slashdot.
Slashdot's created an underclass of poster's whose views (rightly or wrongly in your opinion) are supressed by the will of the majority. Over time, they grow disatisfied with the system, and revolt in the only way available to them... flooding the conversation with repetition. I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair moderation (I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
Hey give me a break, this is expected and unless you want to read, listen and weblog 24 hours a day, you will find a way to consume what you can. Thanks for analyzing another "phenomenon" that is pretty much expected.
I can't see how that could ever happen here.
<Simpson's Comic Store Guy Voice>
I trump you with my mighty karma, "Worst post, ever!"
</Simpson's Comic Store Guy Voice>
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is also one reason why The Sims Online is completely flopping. Sure, you might be able to get the in-game money to build a great house with lots of accessories, but not everyone can have 15 guests at all times. So, all power is concentrated in certain places, driven by reputation which is picked up early in the process.
Latecomers and people who don't play much end up screwed if they had their hearts set on being the social spot of the game.
...not a troll, think about it: Read the article, substitute the word 'blog' with 'goods and services'... this article is a great argument why capitalism works and communism/socalism doesn't.
Capitalism allows for many freedoms of choice in selecting goods and services, while communism/socialism does not as you must get all your goods and services from only 1 source. (the government). No choice.
Anyways, I like the math and the graphs and such....
Blogging has become the defacto new media for the Net. Many bloggers themselves are becoming more engrossed into news and media than anything else.
BUT, I have seen a trend lately that I would seriously like to discuss. Some very popular blogs (You know who you are), are blogged so much in a given day that it begs to question exactly what the author does during the rest of his work day, the blogs do claim that the author is living a rather eventful life, but my question is... how does the author have time to blog when he's having this super life?
The concern I have here is the max-headroom syndrom. 90% of the popular blogs out there are run by some syndicated company (such as news corps and so on). They may say that it's run by some individual, but that's not simply possible. The writing is done by teams and they try to influence people on the net using their propagenda.
I'm simply sick of this type of blogging. I have been a techinical blogger since the early 90's and I find that blogs are simply becoming the next domain for media ppl, they are just taking over us.
What do we need? I think it's time for a Union of bloggers, so we can keep track of what blogs are authentic and what is not, I think we need to have some sort of confederation that real bloggers could subscribe to.
Thanks.
James E. Diot
(sorry forgot password -- so anonymous)
I think this boils down to this: do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond? It use to be that the the size of a potential audience (the pond) is restricted to the natural growth rate (eg TV), but with the internet still on growing exponentially in some areas, it'll take a while yet before this happens. So some bloggers get more attention; that doesn't necessarily mean they'll continue to grow - bandwidth costs money, and you've got to find it somewhere. There will be an equilibrium reached eventually, but unless there's some sort of consolidation happening, this will strictly be a grassroot issue. I good example, not necessarily blogging, would be Matt Drudge.
The world created an underclass of police and law makers whose views (rightly or wrongly in your opinion) are suppressed by the will of the majority. Over time, they grow disatisfied with the system, and revolt the only way available to them... hazerdous driving habits. I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair police treatment(I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
Jason Kottke has posted a similar article about Weblogs and power laws. He points to this thread for getting him thinking--and guesses Shirky was inspired there as well.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
The popular people remain popular (if they keep doing what makes them popular) and the unpopular people remain unpopular (unless they stop doing what makes them unpopular).
Yay!
Regardless of how much a particular group of people might prefer anarchy to a societal group the chances that such a form of society maintaining that freedom approach 0 quickly. It is inevitable that someone will be called on to make a decision that will effect the rest of the group at some time. That was the fundamental flaw of Marx's theory. Most humans, by nature, need someone to guide and direct their lives. As a society grows, the need for leaders, or elites, grows as well since it would be all-consuming for each person to know each aspect of what was going on in society. Can you image having to understand all the aspects of society and power structure, even in an area as small as a town? While science has developed a chaos theory, social science seems to follow the reverse. It seems that no matter which society you choose to follow it is eventually going to begin to show power difference, class seperation, and disassociated social networks. All in all I found it very intersting how the bell curve was worked into the discussion. Coming from a math/comp sci background and moving to communications I am always looking for a bridge between the two.
And of course, troll.
The people you want to hear will be heard.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
And I'll say it again...
"Equality of Opportunity does not Equal Equality of Results".
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Free speech is a right. Being heard is a privilege.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
That's what you get when you try to mix communism with democracy... (see sig)....
A benine dictatorship is the best form of government...
Just checkout the house of Lords.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
A must read for anyone interested in the statistics, fairness, and power relations of blogging.
What the hell does fairness have to do with someone putting up a log? If he doesn't get hits, then it sucks to be him, and he should start putting up interesting information. ANYONE can put up a log. There are numerous companies that provide free webspace. And as for power relations.. If you create something interesting and people like it, you will get more readers. The more readers you have, the more power. Wow, funny how that works.
If this pattern is truly global, then it probably means that a few years the Music world will be pretty much the same as it is now, except without the Recording Industry. People who are predicting the demise of record companies say there will be no more Michael Jacksons, just an amorphous mass of musicians offering their music free on the web and making a living off concert dates. But according to the Power Law, there will be superstars even when the star-making machinery is gone.
...he's described any social system with a large number of participants. At first glance one would think that the World Wide Web and the grand vision of "anyone can be a publisher" would move us away from cliques and one or two very popular entities but the reverse has been true.
For instance, despite how easy it is for anyone to start a Slashdot or Fark ripoff site no one commands as much traffic in their genre as either site. In fact as more people get online, the proportion of those that end up of being Slashbots or Farkheads versus migrating to their "competition" is quite disproportional.
One could also say why despite the fact that the music sharing networks allow anyone to get their music heard by the masses they end up being clogged with the same top 40 shit from the radio from boy bands, Britney Spears and wannabe hip hop thugs.
I just guess that this might be just a by product of human gatherings, even if not in physical terms.
Paraphrasing Lewis: you can't explain, but it is there. You cannot really tell whether you're in or out, but once you're in (or out, for that matter) you can surely affirm it. Once you get there, you realize that there are more people who is more in than you. If your really in, you wish you were out, because being really in usually is not exciting as you once thought when you were out. You cant draw boundaries, but you know who else is in or out. You can push someone out, but it is really hard to get in. It doesnt matter where you are, but you know, and cant explain
That's a genius!
For something with a real distribution (either bell curve, or in this case power), a REALLY small number of datapoints shows you the pattern, if the datapoints were drawn randomly.
I would guess if you picked just a few 100, the graph would look the same.
In this case, what is more suspect is that we have inclusion of the biggest, most popular weblogs, which implies they were included by hand. Therefore the sample is probably not random.
In addition, there is no definitive list or way to calculate all blogs, so by defenition his sample comes from a subset of all blogs that were in some way listed or linked to. There are probably a whole strata of blogs that were guaranteed not to be in the analysis, because they werent included in whatever source material he drew his sample from.
Which brings up an interesting question. Do you think that a certain amount of disobedience and rebelliousness by the "betas" against the will of the "alphas" is built into our social structures as human animals? Furthermore, is a certain amount of these things crucial to the functioning of our society? Even more, if the government can some day monitor EVERY one of our activities, sucht that we can't get away with anything...will that take a toll on the mass psychology of our society? Will anxiety, depression, and erratic behavior become even more common place?
This is way human behavior manifests itself, like it or not. We see it everywhere, not just the net.
I had a friend ask me if I had set up a blog yet, and I told him, "well, I've considered it, but it just seems too much like the 'trend-du-jour'." He jokingly scoffed at me, drawing a comparison between my comment and someone who may have thought that the internet was nothing more than a temporary distraction.
Well, what happens when the economies of scale start to set in, as the article points out? I'd argue that the more prevalent this becomes, the less value it has. One is less likely to encounter 'differently-thinking' participants, or to be confronted with legitimate ideas that challenge the status quo. We can see these dynamics at work in one aspect of our culture that gets discussed regularly here on Slashdot: the music industry: a small number of artists produce a relatively small amount of music that is making a very small number of people very rich. And of course, when I see this happening, I have to start wondering about both motives and the integrity of the artist...popularity has a certain allure to many people, but how willing is an artist (or blogger) willing to sell their soul/integrity in order to reach that objective?
"Stars" aka "lowest common denominator".
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
You are entirely incorrect. The validity of a random statistical sampling is not related to the size of the entire group that is being sampled, only the size of the small sample that is used. In other words, a poll of X people out of any number total population will always have some Z percent sampling error that is directly related to X. Political polls, neilson ratings, and every other such figure you see reported is based on this statistical fact.
;)
As for the actual math involved, I dont remember exactly.
Guess Im going to have to shoot for interesting instead of informative
Power law distributions can be seen with very small sample sizes. Sounds like you need to learn some statistics. Note: most college courses do not cover this subject well. Mathamaticians are only in the last 50 years developing the tools needed to model the positive feedback systems that often yeild power distributions.
Sorry, but the trolls created their own mess. People get modded down for a reason. Sure, sometimes elitists will mod down a post they don't agree with (asy, almost anything pro-Microsoft) but for the most part the things that get modded down are either stupid, inflamitory, insulting, off-topic etc...
If these people didn't want their posts to get modded down they'd find a contructive soultion to their problems. Say, staying on topic, or abiding by basic rules of etiquette (by saying "I don't agree with your position" rather than "U R a dumass!").
This is not like life where one can born be into poverty. The problems anyone has here are of their own creation.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I don't care WHO reads my journal. My journal is basically for an audience of one...ME. As journals should be. If you like what you read, fine, enjoy. If you don't, you don't.
As far as the "zoo" system...the proof in the pudding is in who has befriended me and who is a "freak" of mine. I basically have a handful of crapflooders as freaks. Whoopee-doo. The folks who have befriended me are with few exceptions people who contribute positively to Slashdot on an ongoing basis.
Sure, I'm not a "superstar" here. Frankly, if nominated for Slashdot superstardom I would not run, and if elected I would not serve. But I try my best to be a good contributor and actually add something to discussions.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Sing along, kids: direct, participatory democracy does not scale.
I've been saying this for years; Clay provides some excellent scientific evidence showing it, and writes about it a whole lot better than I can. Must be why he's further up the curve than I am.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair moderation (I know I have)
:>
Take the good with the bad. I mean, as "Anonymous Coward" you've been modded up quite a bit so far in this thread.
This is not my sig.
From, "Tyranny of the Moment" Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Is any of this a suprise to anyone? Haven't we witnessed the same thing with the economic anarchy that we call capitalism? In the free market you have the same thing, with certain people in charge and others clamoring for a few crumbs. The internet and any system that promotes this kind of anarchy will be the same way. That is why we need some kind of democratic structure to be applied, so that the needs of everyone don't get trampled by those of the first few whose only accomplishment was getting there first. The sooner people realize this, the sooner we will have implemented a just society.
Wow. There's a shocker.
--- Ban humanity.
The study talks directly to this "natural" phenomenon you're talking about being a little more systematic than just vanilly free will. In rating type systems like k5, slashdot, advogato, etc. "Superstars" come out of the rating system. It shows how the rating gap wouldn't just be dependent on the quality of the person being rated. Those with high ratings would likely acquire more rating and those with neutral or low ratings would continue to below average into the "power curve." The study hardly talks at all about if this is "fair" or not, but it talks extensively about the momentum of popularity, groupthink, stuff like that. I think it's even more interesting in the momentum-like barriers to entry faced by new entries into the system.
This study is showing that the popular opinion that since everyone can post anything on any system at any time gives them an equal liklihood of being heard is erroneous. Any small imbalance in probability of tending to one site or the other will likely result in the "power curve." People who feel "left out on the Web" don't need to see a psychologist, they are feeling appropriately because the rift between the heards and heard-nots is big. It's not that it's not fair, it's that our misguided notion of if everyone can speak everyone will be heard by someone is misguided in a free system with many choices.
Sorry, but I call BS. If you were only writing a journal for you and you alone, you would not have it on the internet. You want positive responses to your thoughts, otherwise you would keep them private. Which is fine, I don't care, you can do what you want. But don't pretend that you are only writing for yourself when you publish it to the world.
That is my opinion in a general sense. I think people should be able to keep online journals, I wouldn't take that away from them. But on a more personal note, I think publishing journals is kind of dumb, because for the most part the average person has nothing interesting to say. And yes, you probably fall in that category, although most bloggers wouldn't think I am referring to them. I have known people (actual people, not virtual) who do the journal thing online, and they are the kind of people who generally like to talk a lot about nothing interesting. They throw around ideas without thought, pretend to have some kind of interesting writing style, and are pretty annoying. They talk simply for the sake of talking, be it online or in person. The online journal just gives them a worldwide audience to annoy. I know this will offend all you "bloggers" out there, and I do realize that I am posting comments on Slashdot. But this is in relation to a topic, not just me rambling about what I had for breakfast or what I think a really cool invention would be.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
But I submit this, there are always selection rules in effect, both internal and external, conscious and subconscious. People found their way to a particular region. and a particular college. and a particular living space. and so on. Likewise, a sequence of events lead people to a particular online community; whether it be newsgroup, bulletin board or blog.
And the key word here is community. And as such we bring with it all the rules, semi-rules and baggage from our own personal social models. Effective communication and means to reach consensus become increasingly difficult as you add more members. Quickly, you reach a point where it is impossible for everyone to 'assemble' to air their own viewpoints and any meaningful discussion becomes impossible. The signal-to-noise ratio rapidly increases and the only apparently viable method of being heard above the din is to enhance the 'strength' of your output, ie shout. Direct representative political systems work best on a small, local level. As you increase the membership of the system, particular over a geographically-diverse area, the system alligns itself into a hierarchical system (eg, mayors, governors, Representatives, President). Deference in the matter of representation, at least in the US, was to be assigned to one's peers. In theory then, the collective voice of the 'people' would be coalesced into a single voice in Government. Now, whether or not this happens in practice, however, is another matter for discussion.
In the matters of discourse, it is only natural that there emerges a system of trusted 'authorities.' Gurus, teachers, whathaveyou, that again represent the consolidation in a particular area. These are people (or resources) that must be appealed to in order to bring order and structure to discussion. These acquire their credentials through structures created and recognized by the various communities. These 'super nodes' are looked to from many eyes and their voices reach many people simultaneously.
Now, the balkinization of communities is again only natural. A community in general, but an online on in particular, tends to abide by the same effects that others have observed about the internet (web pages, p2p nodes,etc). 'Neighborhoods' asemble around common perceptions, ideas and the overal cohesiveness of the structure. Friendship groups, for instance, ebb and flow in size, generate and dissolve over time. Naturally, if people can't get something from a particular group, they will move elsewhere. And again, as size grows, systems tend to self-organize, collecting around authority figures (in the sense described before) and around certain core beliefs.
In the end though, one shouldn't be surprised at this turn. However, blog-ing communities and the Internet overall do offer a unique advantage: you can always go buffet style, sampling all that various groups have to offer.
I agree. This whole thing strikes me as rather idiotic. Why does anyone so badly want everyone in the world to know every little thing they did every day?
I have a sort of blog-like website. It's very simple, hand written HTML. I write in it anything I want to remember, usually dream fragments, bits of short stories, that sort of thing. I think maybe 6 people in the whole world know it's URL, all of them people I knew would be interested in the contents, due to knowing them before suggesting they look.
And guess what? I like it that way. It's okay not to be the center of attention of the entire world, really, and it's okay to be obscure. In my obscurity, I know I have two things:
That is much more descriptive of socialism (which is extremely heirarchical and stratified; as seen in North Korea).
In capitalism, everyone is in charge of their own economic lives. Economic autonomy; people make their own economic decision and determine what is a fair trade with others.
The internet and any system that promotes this kind of anarchy will be the same way. That is why we need some kind of democratic structure to be applied
Democracy is a great way to control government, but should not be used to control personal decisions (including economic ones). Those should be left to individuals, not outside coercive forces.
"so that the needs of everyone don't get trampled by those of the first few whose only accomplishment was getting there first" How many of those who "got here first" are still big and powerful? Yahoo comes to mind, but most of the others that started out back then are long gone and forgotten. Anyone still have a home page on Xoom? Anyone use Pathfinder as a portal?
Guess this says something about the long-term value of "first mover advantage;" Even though you're first into a market, it doesn't guarantee that you'll stay there.
The data source was NZ Bear's blogosphere analyses from a year or so ago. There is lots of good info collected by a few bloggers about such things as the average age of bloggers (34 and a couple of months) and how various blogs rank in google searches on certain terms.
:-)
I've been trying to come up with a definition for "weblog" which is mechanical enough to be understood by a web crawler and which doesn't fall victim to the power law itself. (Which means that "linked from Instapundit" can't be used, obviously.) In essence, I'd like to set up a webcrawler to identify blogs and sources, and determine how "influential" or at least "used" are various blogs and sources. If I can get a good mechanical definition going, I'll get right on that.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
If you were only writing a journal for you and you alone, you would not have it on the internet. You want positive responses to your thoughts, otherwise you would keep them private.
Not true. I blog, because I like being able to open up and clarify my thoughts. I have comments disabled - frankly, I don't give a large rat's patootie who reads my blog, if anybody at all besides me does. It's a journal, fer cryin' out loud. You don't write in a journal with the expectation that millions of people are going to read it and suddenly like you. You write in a journal to clarify what's going on in your life, to help you see where you've been, where you're headed, and maybe even spot trends that you may have missed, ways of doing things that always produce bad results. With that knowledge, you might even be able to change.
Sure, you needn't treat blogs the same way I do. You can do with them as *you* see fit - but I, though I be in a very small minority, do not fit your ideas as to why people blog.
Lemon curry?
I find it surprising that you dismiss all possible alternative explanations as simply being hidden glory-seeking.
For a counter-example to your argument, I write publicly rather than privarely so that if a friend wants to understand me better but is too shy to ask or doesn't know to ask, they can go browse. It seems like a valid enough reason to me, and wholly distinct from the general glory-seeking you claim is universal.
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
The most interesting question here I think is the extent to which any individual choice can be called "free" when it is so extremely contingent on the choices other people make.
When you "freely" make a choice because 80% of the people also makes that choice, then how free is that?
See title;
.com blogs too; how many do I read? 1. Slashdot and K5 have journals too, but I only read 1 of those,too.
Too many people now-a-days will start a blog/journal/diary/whatever and expect it to instantly become popular. They may write about everything and nothing, about politics and sex and drugs, but they never get really well-read.
Why? Because unless people know who you are, they generally don't care.
Let's pick on Livejournal for a second. It is flirting with 1 million user accounts right now (inluding mine), but how many do I read? Maybe I read about 4; There are thousands of
It should be no suprise that the journals/blogs/etc I read are those of people I feel I have an aquaiantance with, albeit at a distance. I read 'Taco's journal because I know what he did. I read Brad's livejournal because I know what he did; Same with Rusty, jwz and a few others.
But anyone else I don't care about. Why? Because they haven't *done* anything I care about. You may like to write, but don't expect people to read just because you do it. See title.
And I'm not alone; I started a popular internet thing that people use a lot. Suddenly I find names I don't know commenting in my LJ and showing up in my "friends" list, even on my Zoo page here. It's not because they like what I write just for the sake of it, but because they have a point of reference to relate to me on.
That's what it comes down too -- if we can't relate to you, we don't care.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
I'd like to see Shirky address the cost of information and its effect upon "star" power. People can only invest so much time in determining what's important, relevant or interesting. A shortcut to determining what's important, relevant or interesting is to follow the crowd. This is true even though it frequently yields imperfect results. Suppose you wanted to choose 10 interesting weblogs to read each day out of a total of 10,000. One way of choosing those 10 would be to randomly select a weblog, read it, and then judge for yourself if it's worthy. But a better way to find 10 interesting blogs is to start with the most trafficked blog and work your way down... Popularity may not be conclusive, but it does convey information.
You don't need a tethered PC to Blog. All one need is a PDA. There is a LiveJournal client for both the PalmOS and PocketPC OS for example, and probably for the Zaraus as well. And since many of these PDA's have wireless capabilities you can literally blog from anywhere in the world you can get a cell phone signal.
Now I agree that you would have to be an ultimate loser to want to blog right after getting laid, or out in public after some mundane activity but hey, to each his own.
Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to Blog and die.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
True.
However, the reason I blog (and I am sure I am not the only one) is mainly to keep distant friends updated with my life, and the happenings in my city. I don't want millions of people viewing my site because none of my ramblings would mean anything to them. However, it would mean something to those who know me personally. For example if I were to say friend X got married to friend Y, that would mean something to a friend of friend Y, who happens to be in our circle of friends. Think about the close knit of friends you may have had during your college years, but after moving out of college, you lost touch. This is a way for people to still keep track of what friends are up to without mass emailing everyone what is happening all the time. My life generally consists of useless stuff that most people couldn't care less about, but means a lot to those in my close knit of friends.
Wouldn't it simply stand to reason, when all restrictions were removed, that the more capable people would rise to the top? Respectfully, I don't need charts to tell me this. IMHO, using a barometer of "equality" with regards to freedom and diversity is a political interpretation, not a scientific one. On the right wing, you have the "survival of the fittest," and on the left wing you have the "level playing field for everyone."
To say diversity and choice lead to inequality implies that someone's inalienable rights are being violated. Others might rejoice that the proof is in the pudding: when the barriers are removed, the most capable people can rise to the top. To say people are experiencing inequality ignores their potential mediocrity, IMO.
I agree, to a certain extent. However, don't you think that you're going about it the wrong way? I mean, basicly what you are saying is let the government stay corrupt and create another means of distribution. Wouldn't it be easier to clean up the corruption that is causing the hidden redistribution of wealth back to the rich?
It may be true that direct, participatory democracy does not scale, but that observation alone doesn't tell us what system is better.
:-)
Direct democracy doesn't work because people don't have the time or desire to decide everything. For the unimportant matters, we would like to delegate our decision to someone else who thinks like us.
The problem with most current systems of government is that we end up delegating too many of our choices. Our current system was designed when voting was expensive, so a few important plebiscites and an election every few years was all the participation that was practical.
I think we can do better now and let every citizen decide what level of participation they want, on each issue. Instead of votes, we should have proxies. We could delegate that proxy to a worthy politician for most routine matters. However, when an important issue comes up, we could either vote ourselves, or delegate the proxy for that issue to someone else. With a bit of work, we could even categorize decisions and delegate social decisions to one politician and economic decisions to another, for example. We may not be individually heard, but if we pick our proxies well, they can express our opinion for us, kind of like Clay could for you
We could certainly do better than our current system, even if pure direct participation is not possible.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
However! When you are trying to make inferences about the population like this, you must have a frame.
What does this mean? The question is: how can you produce a random representative sample when you cannot identify the population from which to take the sample? To obtain a sample you have to first produce a list of entities from which you must choose
Recently I was contemplating conducting a demographic study of such a hidden popluation, in that case enlgish language instructors in Warsaw, Poland. How was I to find the instructors? There was no listing, and even if there were some kind of directory, there is little reason to think that it would be representative.
so in the case of the blogs, if you can't locate certain blogs to include in your frame, then you can't include them in your sample, and so your sample is going to be skewed.
however, in any case, the skewing would just chop off those lesser known blog on the tail end anyway, reducing the extremity of the distribution.
one way of identifying such hidden populations is through the technique of snowballing, which basically is to take advantage of the connectivity of a network. you ask a blogger to name other bloggers, and you keep a list of those you identify. the problem is that a snowball sample is not random and thus not good for inferential stats.
Logic, macros, and more
Slashdot is a pretty good example of this curve. This newslink gets posted. Fifty people reply to it. Ten of those replies get positive feedback. Anyone else who reads the topic later in the day will now read only the positive feedback replies, and anyone else who had anything to say, even if it was good and no one was interested in giving it karma, will now go unheard. Of course, as late as I am in typing this reply, it's pretty unlikely that anyone will read it...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
...but desirable.
/. reader could post front-page stories? And everyone could edit them? What if everyone had editorial mod powers?
Imagine and world where all are equal, in the same way that A = A. I don't want to live there, not even in cyberspace, do you?
But you don't even have to take equality to an absolute to see what a terrible idea it is. What if every
The argument for inequality need not be made from the traditional elitist/aristocratic/etc position. Inequality is simply part of human nature, and one should endeavor to understand it before decrying it as "unfair".
I understand that you *claim* to be interested in the truth but in actuality you are not. My experience with those who spout the garbage you spout is that they are interested solely in propagandizing but when pressed will claim to be interested in facts and truth.
Point by Point:
How about giving Democracy a try? It has a severe dampening effect on concentration of power.
Prove this
Why do you guys always bring up socialism any time someone criticizes capitalism? Is your thinking that narrow-minded?
Ad Hominem
Has your world been reduced to only those two options? Are you trying to live up to the reputation that Americans have for being uneducated and ill-informed?
More Ad Hominem. I'll start responding when you stop with the personal attacks.
A good question to ask yourself is why the people in control of our society have reduced the choice between economic systems down to two,
Just who are these 'People In Control of our Society'? The fact of the matter is that in free socities such as ours, the market determines the choices. Those who claim to fight for the little guy are the only ones claiming unfair amount of choices
and now that socialism has self-destructed, cheered about the fact that there is supposedly only one? Are you dumb enough to believe that people in big business push the present form of capitalism because it is good for you?
More Ad Hominem
Do you really think they are looking out for your interests?
I am looking out for my interests. I am not hung up on some supposedly all-powerful Corporation. I do not blame others either my failures or my successes. I do not need anyone to 'protect' me from the big, bad meanies. In other words, I take responsibility for my actions and the results. Blaming others for your (or those 'unfortunates' that you 'represent' 'cause they 'have no voice') problems will get you nowhere.
What you misunderstand about power laws is that they only describe systems of pure anarchy.
Really? Please substantiate this statement
The problem with systems that have no regulation is that eventually people start getting extremely pissed off as a disproportionate amount of power leaves their hands.
What you are failing to understand is that they *are* regulated. Just not in the manner you wish- some authority overseeing the system based on 'scientific methods'. Power shifts and a self-regulating system changes.
Since you are referring to history, you will understand that if power becomes statified enough, eventually a revolution will occur and leave people hanging from lamp posts.
I do understand this. However, revolution is not the inevtiable result. Self-regulating systems generally revert back to a stasis if left unmolested by individuals who are interested in using the temporary disequillibrium to their advantage. Remove the idealouges such as Kerensky and even Russian survives.
And, since you are such a student of economics, you probably already know that wealth concentration is occuring in the US at an alarming rate. The top 1% of the US population owned 33% of the total wealth of the nation in the 1980s, and that has shot up to over 40% by the late 90s, and it's still rising.
These numbers are thrown around like the truth. I think that the numbers even get worse with every successive manipulation. Before you know it, someone will claim with absolute certainty that "1% of the population has 100% of the wealth..." I challenge you here and now to either substantiate them are accept the fact that they are lies. Do it or your credibility goes to zero pal. Just 'cause Chomsky says it don't make it true. I can provide proof that Capitalism is working better than any other economic system ever invented. Can you prove otherwise?
By contrast, the bottom 40% only own 1% of the wealth. This is where many revolutions start.
Revolutions start? Then how come it ain't happening? No matter how much you feel it should be occurring it isn't....not even close. Just goes to show that no matter how much you seek to destroy the system with your false propaganda, people are generally pretty damn satisfied.
The function of Democracy is to prevent this from happening.
The function of Democracy is self-government. The function of a Democracy is not to ensure that nobody gets their feelings (or wallet) hurt. Imbedded in the Democratic Ideal is self-reliance.
Unforutnately, we have a very limited form of Democracy that is being drowned out by our economic system.
Can you substantiate this claim? Or is it just another unthinking "Big Business runs everything" line
There...happy? I can't believe that I just wasted ten minutes of my valuable time with you.