The River and the Bucket - Part II:
You have nothing to lose (but you're bananas)

Karl Marx, the evil genius who invented Communism, centered most of his work around the idea that the folks who own the ‘means of production’ - the raw materials and the infrastructure around it - tend to do better in life than those who do not. But, isn’t that a somewhat simple observation? An obvious way to say that the most aggressive monkey, and probably the one with the biggest fists, gets the most bananas, tends to be popular with the lady monkeys and has plenty of offspring, many of whom are just like him. But enough of Charles, let's get back to Karl and his buddy Fred.

The obvious difference is that in 2014, the humans in Berlin weren’t beholden to a dominant human trying to amass unimpeachable levels of power (or bananas). They were beholden to a German mobile market famously restrictive in terms of data rationing and allowance. Data caps were simply considered good solid business. 

Even more so (and this really is the jam inside the strudel) when you consider that T-Mobile profited from media partner streaming apps which gained enormous popularity with customers (que drum-roll….) because the streamed data was not considered a ‘download’ and (very charitably) did not deduct from your data account. Boom. A state monopoly run amok.

It’s no coincidence that music streaming is there at the scene of the crime, playing its role as a major motivation for corporate interests trying to resist and confound a major new wave of technology. Apps such as Napster, Kazoo, Limewire and eventually more mature file sharing torrent apps became an increasing threat to traditional (now considered legacy) music retail. Music streaming apps at that time represented a last glimmer of hope for a music industry gasping its panicked, penultimate breath.

Thankfully the first unlimited T-Mobile plans arrived in early 2018 for €79.95 per month when T-Mobile fell foul of net neutrality regulations. Those pesky bureaucrats. But how on God’s green earth were these soulless entities allowed to get away with it all? The deception centers around perception and framing.

The view from above

The perspective: data is stuff to be sold to the customer in portions, doled out in a pre-packaged and commercially quantified manner according largely to individual financial means. It is a great example of a vital capitalist paradigm - the model of extrapolated commercial revenue.

The framing: too much data access can have a negative affect on personal morality. A craving for unlimited data access is a firm indicator of moral corruption, weak character and possible, or even probable criminality.

Interesting counterpoint. The internet can also throw the door open to eventual ethical culpability.

Unternehmensinteressen

Corporate interests (which interestingly is ‘unternehmensinteressen’ in German) can be skillfully packaged and sold as socially beneficial constructs that reflect, maintain and uphold broader, pre-existent social norms. Helping to describe ‘how the world works’ to a congregation of consumers in the Mecca of all retail and commerce - the temple that is the internet. These interests fear a candle in the dark just as religion fears science’s

ability to explain the universe without resorting to an unobservable omnipotent force that simultaneously judges us under duress of eternal pain and damnation, and loves us like a parent loves a child.

T-Mobile in Germany (and many other European countries) considered data capping as a means to stem the flow of music downloads and push consumers towards media streaming platforms with the potential for a) crude ad-based monetization, b) a bulwark against the tide of illegal downloading, c) legitimization of what I refer to as ‘proprietary content’ theory.

But, how were many hundreds of consumers around the world so easily duped? And why? Could today’s consumers again be duped in similar fashion.

To explain theI have a simple analogy that I hope surmises the slight of hand that permeated entire telecommunications industries around the globe at that time, one that we will now again face in a new guise.

Imagine the level of expense it takes to create the internet, or perhaps just one corner of it. The initial investment in Germany alone to move beyond 56K dial-up, involved billions of Euros.

Imagine, instead of a broadband network, the investors built a river. Imagine T-Mobile owned the river and that it was the only place from which you could purchase water. T-Mobile charges $20 a bucket. A fair price we are told, considering the cost of building and maintaining the river.

However, now that we have a river, we decide that instead of purchasing water, we go straight to the source and purchase time accessing the river.

“Why not simply charge me for access to the river? I may not need a whole bucket of water, then again I may need many thousands. The reality is that it doesn’t really matter. The river is wide. The river is deep. The river is fast. It exists and I require access to it”

“But what if too many people access the river and the water starts to dry up?” 

“We’ll build more rivers to ensure everybody has a sufficient and plentiful water supply.”

From the railroads to electricity grids, telecommunications networks to satellite communications, the ever evolving world around us is built by the desire to take a moderate risk by placing a bet so large it cannot possibly fail. Backed by a nation’s tax dollars, government bonds, private equity and, as is the case in our current 2026 phase in human expansion, hedge funds. 

These are private equity firms that many now refer to as super-hedge funds. The great news from an investors perspective is that the development of hyperscale data centers is currently almost entirely risk free as they are largely seen not only as a prerequisite required for the future of humanity, but as an essential utility.