What Does FUTO Believe?
This is our code of conduct and how we arrived at it.
Failure of the Free Market
FUTO is all about individual freedom. Yet we have to concede that the free market is currently failing as it applies to problems caused by the Tech Oligopoly. It’s failing for the same reasons free markets always have failed: Monopolies naturally form as power consolidates. Technology has exacerbated both of these problems.
- Computing technology can create incredibly powerful economies of scale which favor bigger organizations.
- Computing technology can be employed to manipulate human behavior in a way that is most profitable for the oligopoly.
On Ethical Capitalism
FUTO will embrace the free market but will also employ interventions to prevent the harmful behavior we see from typical tech entrepreneurs.
Don’t Be a Sellout
We expect FUTO companies to be fiercely independent. They should never exacerbate the monopoly problem by selling out to a monopolist. Capitalism only works when the winners compete with one another.
Don’t Abuse the People
We expect FUTO companies to have an honest relationship with their customers. Ideally revenue comes from customers paying directly for the services provided by the company. “The users are our product” revenue models such as those employed by Facebook and Google are prohibited.
Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets
The core tenet of FUTO is that the people need to reassert control over their computers. This makes closed source software and other trade secrets problematic. We want FUTO companies to encourage their customers to elevate their understanding of the computing technology they use even if that might diminish a knowledge-based competitive advantage for the company. Small companies should be afforded greater intellectual property protections than larger ones.
On Social Media
We want to take social media back to the beginning of the internet, where creators would publish their work to the entire world. To bring this back, we want to develop tools and protocols for creators to publish directly to their audience without companies getting in the way. FUTO endeavors to invest in social media systems with no political censorship. To the extent that content moderation is necessary, consumers and parents should be in control of whatever moderation system is employed.
On Cryptocurrency
While the vast majority of elite coders have been neutralized by the Oligopoly, the vast majority of those remaining have become preoccupied with cryptocurrency money-making schemes. This distraction has resulted in a plethora of mediocre alternative software platforms. We want elite coders to make replacing shitty abusive computing systems their highest priority. Marrying a software system to a cryptocurrency money-making scheme should be a secondary concern and be abandoned if untenable. Furthermore, we do not want elite coders using cryptocurrency to swindle less sophisticated people. To the extent this is a problem, FUTO must be extra conscientious about avoiding any cryptocurrency system which abuses people, or even has the appearance of doing so.