While I agree with the tenets of this article (global capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced with technological socialism (which, in my view, would ultimate

While I agree with the tenets of this article (global capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced with technological socialism (which, in my view, would ultimately enable the formation of a true Marxist society)), there's some really bad assumptions being made that I have to point out: > Companies like Apple and Google should strive to be technology leaders, not tax avoidance ones... Yeah, they should, but... it's not going to happen. The executives of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. benefit from a system of political and economic highway robbery where their massive influence in their respective markets allows them near monopolies. These institutions have become so powerful that they can flip off the government/"we the people" to their hearts' content (e.g. when the USA wanted an iPhone backdoor, when Verizon decided to just give the government everyone's phone calls without permission, when many of the world's workers have little choice but to work in a so-called sweatshop to make the goods that Amazon sells). These are not the type of people who care about what they "should do" - they're businessmen who are in it to make money, after all. Assuming some degree of morality from the executives of multinational corporations is essentially the height of naivete. > What makes today’s world so different than the 1950s are the means with which ambition and creativity can be realized... This is just blatantly wrong - it might be correct if you're an American white person whose parents can help pay for college and you have the natural aptitude to excel in a technical or business field. But if you're like a lot of people, your opportunity to start the next Facebook is close to zero: you don't have the skills, money, free-time, friends or family support you need to succeed. > It would be against the self-interest of both consumers and politicians to hold tech back... The problem is that "tech" isn't just one thing or one group of companies - pretty much every multinational corporation has a deep interest in technology. It is in these companies self-interest to avoid paying taxes, eliminate labor from the production pipeline, create consumers who depend on their products entirely, and maximize their own outcomes at the expense of anything else they can externalize costs unto. It is then in the both the interest of consumer (whose money will fuel global inequality, destruction of the environment, corruption) and the interest of the government (or society as a whole) to limit the influence of these super-corporations: they care only for themselves, despite their vaguely liberal public appearances. They exist to serve the stock holders, nothing more. To suggest otherwise is, again, the height of naivete.