Hubris

The tech world has been roiling. Crypto continues to be a scam rife with all sorts of shady exploitation. Between Meta’s stock collapse and Twitter’s egomaniacal gutting, it feels like chaos has enveloped Big Tech. A cynic would see this as chickens coming home to roost — mere comeuppance for years of arrogantly flaunting their largess as if their money exempted them from natural law.

Some would argue they will continue to evade all responsibility and, in cases, liability. Perhaps they are right.

Perhaps, however, this is an inflection point. Rarely do three large platforms go through such outrageous negative cycles and make full recoveries. A working assumption amongst many is that they will overcome these setbacks, but that isn’t based on economic theory but on an unwillingness to write off giants that routinely beat common sense — in the past. This time the fundamentals are different.

This may be the beginning of the “techlash.” The general public is increasingly less enthralled by the eccentric personalities of tech billionaires when they are attached to negative societal consequences and felt economic shocks at home. Is this bad for the world economy? Perhaps.

But, a silver lining exists: self-owned governance. The negative real-world impacts of these behemoths have proven too difficult for government to regulate effectively, but perhaps their own sisyphean death spiral will ameliorate these externalities. Weaker platforms with dying user bases don’t wield as much influence in society by default.

It may be difficult, but perhaps the fatal flaws of these self-aggrandizing overlords, wrought from the American system as near-Plutonic characatures of capitalistic success, will be their own undoing.

Perhaps the hubris that brought us to this breaking point is the same that ultimately saves us from itself.