Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the park

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ It's hard to fix broken societal incentive structures when you're operating from within the society itself. That doesn't mean it's not worth trying though and sometimes you can change the incentive structure and fix the behavior, or you can still have some success within it and then leverage new found power to fix things. I think societal/cultural optimism matters here too - since believing change is possible helps fuel the coordination that can actually make change possible. I think it's an advantage the US has over more culturally pessimistic countries (and that Silicon Valley has over other more culturally pessimistic regions).