Victims of disruption

Technology disruption is practically a cult in Silicon Valley. Here’s one definition:

Technology disruption occurs when a new approach changes the basis of competition in an industry. It triggers a discontinuity: established architectures, competencies, and business models become misaligned with what customers now value. Incumbents struggle to adapt, and the upstart ultimately reshapes or replaces the existing market.

Disruption is good for consumers, so we’re told. Now we can rent an Airbnb and have access to a whole house or a room wherever you travel. We can buy things cheaply from the universal marketplace represented by Amazon. We can converse with ChatGPT and get answers, rather than a challenging set of web sites to navigate.

Disruption always has victims

Here’s an alternate definition of disruption with a focus on the disrupted:

Disruption occurs when a new market entrant decides to ignore, subvert, or violate the regulations and norms in a stable, orderly market for its own profit. Incumbents that continue to embrace the existing norms can’t compete. When the new market entrant reshapes the market, those comfortable with the existing norms are shoved out.

Airbnb disrupted hotels. It also disrupted rental markets, driving up rental costs because apartment shared out for short-time rentals are no longer available for people to live in.

Amazon disrupted retail relationships. Now every store and product manufacturer has to compete with cheap crap. Placement in listings is for sale. Quality products and reputable retailers go out of business or lose profits because of the need to operate in the same marketplace as crap sellers.

AI is disrupting established web content. That makes it hard to attract traffic, whether you’re generating independently reported local news or quality how-to content. A lot of those sources will potentially disappear, and then the AI-generated answers, with less quality content to draw on, will also become crappier.

Every disruption has victims: anybody who tries to follow the rules and norms. It’s better for consumers and disruptors, and harder for everyone else.

Political disruption

One set of norms we’ve lived by for more than a century has to do with politics. Those norms include ideas like “Congress allocates funds, the executive branch executes what’s been appropriated,” “Immigrants who contribute to society, even if they’re undocumented, fill an important role in the economy”, and “Tariffs should be stable and changed only when there’s a direct connection to an imbalance that needs correcting.”

You might not care about those issues of policy. But there are other norms we’ve come to depend, like “Presidents shouldn’t make decisions that benefit their personal finances,” “Presidents shouldn’t make up facts and statistics,” and “Presidents should treat members of the press with respect, even when they make statements those presidents disagree with.”

Donald Trump has completely disrupted politics by sweeping aside rules and norms like these.

Politics was overdue for a change. Politicians had become unresponsive and parties had ceased to productively negotiate. Corporations had outsized influence. Disruption was almost inevitable.

But as with other forms of disruption, the disruptors are always in it for themselves. By reaching out in ways that seem more popular and better, they trash existing systems. Those systems had some benefits that have now been washed away.

What now?

We’ve gotten addicted to disruption. It seems like there’s always a better way to get what we want based on disruptive innovators using technology to their advantage.

Have we gone too far?

What do you think?