This is the same argument Facebook made for giving free internet to facebook.com but charging for every other website
There are hidden costs to economically disrupting developing economies even if it's "for the poor people". For facebook, it was decimating any local ISP growth by snatching their market. For this, there could be any other number of normal payment systems that are squashed even as this BTC patron moves on to pumping bitcoin elsewhere.
> For facebook, it was decimating any local ISP growth by snatching their market
When the hated big guys move, there is always the suspect that somehow, somewhere, somebody else could have done it better, or with less externalities or with less publicity or with less branding or in a way that it's local.
It's not the act itself which troubles people. People will always find a way to hate on Zuckerberg, Bezos, Brin or Gates.
Now that Netscape went belly up everybody suddenly imagines a world where if only Microsoft was broken up then we'd all live in a Jetsons type future with flying cars and tubes carrying us around, all thanks to Netscape
If we dismiss all corporate criticism as just another inevitability, then corporations will run unchecked without any criticism. I'm also not sure what Netscape has to do with decimating a developing country's economic infrastructure either.
It's well known that free models, like those of Tom's Shoes, hurt developing economies more than they aid them, so much that even Tom's eventually switched their model.
> If we dismiss all corporate criticism as just another inevitability, then corporations will run unchecked without any criticism
Who needs criticism when you are in control of B2 bombers? Let corporations play, let them compete and give them free reign, while remaining chill knowing that you always have the last resort option to tame them: violence in the form of B2 bombers
I'd be worried much more about the public officials who are in control of the aforementioned B2 bombers and should use them for the benefit of Americans.
There are hidden costs to economically disrupting developing economies even if it's "for the poor people". For facebook, it was decimating any local ISP growth by snatching their market. For this, there could be any other number of normal payment systems that are squashed even as this BTC patron moves on to pumping bitcoin elsewhere.