Web Users - Customers and Owners

Today I was reminded again of that quote from last week’s economist: “Citizens are not only the state’s customers; they are also its owners.” In a way, it seems to me that the government and many web services share this dichotomy in parallel. The value of many web services is generated, in one way or another, by the users themselves. As such, like the citizens and their government, web users are both customers and owners.

Yesterday I wrote about how, in the case of governments, taxation is circular as money is technically taken and given to and from the same group. Furthermore, I suggested that value is only generated by reducing expenses – by improving efficiencies. I think we can see the very same tendencies in web services; they manifest themselves in downward cost pressures. Many arguments can be made for why internet services are often free. A compelling one, I think, is that it is simply because it is users themselves that generate the value of these services; they are the owners; and it makes no sense to charge the owners.

I’m sure this is not a new idea. What I began wondering though, was whether the cost pressures that manifest themselves in online services would manifest themselves in the government. In other words, is the eventual inclination towards zero taxation? After all, the public sector generally lags behind the private one.

I can actually almost see this theoretical limit as a realistic possibility. The web is, after all, a tool to facilitate communication. Take the web’s capacity closer to its potential and it should have the ability to communicate and mobilize a collective for itself and by itself – a real democracy, no?