Clay Shirkey on how complex business models emerge, ossify and finally collapse:
In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. ”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”
In regards to large media companies being upset by the internet:
“If you want something to be 10 times cheaper, take out 90% of the materials.” Making media is like that now except, for “materials”, substitute “labor.”
Superb.