This message is part of a series of contributing perspectives and analyzes called “the upcoming age of technological billionaires and the challenge to democracy”. Find out more about the call for contributions hereand read other pieces of the series as they are published here.
The ascent of technological billionaires – and, according to the market, soon trillionaires – signals more than a change in global economic structures; It marks a transformation in the moral and cultural conditions in which democratic life is maintained. This contribution offers a community criticism of the influence of Big Tech, anchored in the philosophical frameworks of Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and the ethicist of virtue Shannon Vallor, and supported by the theory of public goods and the economic ideas of Paul Samuelson and Joseph Stiglitz, with the work of Elinor Ostrom emphasizing the civic importance of collective collective collective collective. He argues that the challenge to democracy posed by concentrated digital power is not simply institutional, economic or ethical, but a disturbance of the very conditions for democratic citizenship.
Indeed, critical frameworks of several disciplines are useful for understanding the current moment. For example, Charles Taylor self -conception as dialogic and morally located Exposes the fragility of democratic cultures when the background frameworks are replaced by atomized logic and maximizing digital capitalism. Michael Sandel’s criticism on market reasoning Underlines how Big Tech Marchandes not only the goods but the goods in the common: attention, solidarity and public discourse. Yet it is The joint of Shannon Vallor of Technomoral virtues This most clearly illuminates a path.
Vallor, a philosopher, questions the adequacy of moral vocabularies inherited in a world shaped by artificial intelligence, algorithmic governance and dependence on the platform. It offers culture of virtues – such as honesty, humility, empathy and courage – adapted to our technologically mediated condition. These virtues are not habits of individualistic character, but relational capacities formed and supported by shared practices. Against hyper-personalization and moral outsourcing encouraged by Big Tech, Vallor’s vision insists on reconstructing the Moral municipalities: Spaces and capacities for collective reflection, responsibility and ethical growth.
By extending this line of reasoning, we plead for a community reorientation of technological ethics – regulation and proceduralism in a lower – to rekindle the democratic life of shared meaning, moral culture and the civic agency. Democracy does not only require rules and representation; We need citizens capable of virtue. The recovery of this capacity is the most urgent countermeasure to the growing Empire of the technological elite.
Although our argument is located in a moral and anthropological criticism, it gains a transdisciplinary force of political economy, in particular through the well -established concept of public property. Introduced for the first time by the Nobel winner economist Paul Samuelson in the context of collective consumer productsPublic goods are defined by their non-exclusivity and non-rival nature. Classic examples include infrastructure, pure air and public security. Public goods are then contrasted with private goods – the good ones who do not have such properties, are excluded and rival.
In the digital age, a new class of Digital public joods emerged: search engines, platforms and basic AI models. Winner of the Contemporary Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences Joseph Stiglitzwith Bruce Greenwaldunderlined How asymmetrical and externality information distorts the marketsBut in the case of digital infrastructure, this distortion is amplified by the concentration of power among a handful of actors.
Technological trillionaries actually privatized these digital public goods. Platforms such as Facebook, Google’s search engine and OpenAi chatpt now operate on scales and with degrees of societal dependence that make infrastructure effectively in many countries. And yet, their governance structures remain private, inexplicable for wider citizens who depend on it daily. The moral significance of this change is not simply a question of responsibility or regulation: it represents a form of pregnant, where what, because of its civic meaning, could have been a common for democratic discourse and ethical development becomes an active owner governed by the interests of businesses.
This monopolization leads to two interconnected degradations. First, the degradation of Digital public joods themselves, and secondly, the moral corrosion which accompanies the process. While platforms become more extractive and less worthy of confidence, they erode the very capacities on which democratic life depends: confidence, dialogue and mutual recognition. In this day, the accent put by Vallo on techno -virtues becomes not simply ambitious but necessary. Without shared spaces governed by ethical standards – spaces where veracity, empathy and responsibility are cultivated – we are entering a post -civic condition: a society where digital subjects are manipulated, rather than empowered, and where citizenship itself is degraded.
Legal developments reflect the recognition of this problem: for example, the EUs Digital Services Act (DSA) And Digital market law (DMA) are essentially efforts to reaffirm public surveillance on platforms. However, these executives remain largely procedural and technocratic. What is missing is a normative framework for reflection that recovers not only What is regulated, but Why– Not just to reduce damage, but to restore the moral architecture of a democratic digital public sphere.
To crop the digital sphere as a Moral municipalities must therefore go beyond conventional regulatory language. This requires a reimagination of property, participation and responsibility in the digital age. Who should have the means of communication in a democracy? Who should decide on the standards that govern our common epistemic environment? And how do we cultivate citizens – not just users – capable of navigating these areas with virtue?
These questions echo the work of Elinor OstromThe first woman economist to receive the Nobel Prize, which has challenged the hypothesis that the municipalities inevitably deteriorate without privatization or centralized control. His response was rooted in civic action and participatory governance – depending on the common goods, common goods can be supported by collective responsibility and ethical management. In the context of today, where public goods and civic life are in danger, Ostrom’s ideas remain not only relevant but necessary.