🏛️ When Democratised Production Meets Corporate Bloat: Who Pays the Price?
In recent decades, technology has radically lowered barriers to creation. Platforms like YouTube have enabled anyone to become a broadcaster, blogs have empowered citizen journalists to challenge newspapers, and Wikipedia has disrupted traditional encyclopedias.
Similarly, Valve’s Steam platform has become a launching pad for indie game developers worldwide — democratising game development and distribution like never before.
The Rise of the Commons — and the Fall of Meta-Roles?
While these platforms open the gates for creators, large corporations remain burdened with layers of meta-roles — lawyers, marketers, HR, compliance, and other gatekeepers who manage the system rather than directly contribute to creation.
Capital frequently decries this as “deprofessionalization,” warning that without these intermediaries, quality and reliability will suffer.
But do these layers really serve the creators and users? Or do they mostly protect corporate interests and preserve existing power dynamics?
Reimagining the Role of Corporate Overhead
As production becomes more democratized, we have a unique chance to rethink the necessity and scope of these overhead roles.
What if we could streamline, automate, or redistribute them? What if the social and economic structures around production evolved to be leaner, more ethical, and more supportive of creators?
The Commons Are Already Here — Just Not Everywhere
For every bloated org with a floor of compliance officers and brand managers, there's a self-organized collective releasing open hardware specs, or a one-person studio making a GOTY contender.
The shift is not hypothetical — it's visible. And yet the old world clings on, not because it's better, but because it owns the narrative, the infrastructure, and the capital.
But even that is changing. People trust creators, not brands. They want authenticity, not abstraction.
A Call to Unbloat
This isn't a war on professionalism. It’s an invitation to reclaim purpose.
Let roles evolve. Let support functions support — not gatekeep.
Let us ask of every layer:
Does this exist to help creators thrive — or to justify its own existence?
The more we democratize production, the more we need leaner, more principled, more commons-aligned scaffolding around it.
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