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Anything sufficiently successful will always be consumed by the powerful and will ultimately become their tool

• benjaminjosephw 6y ago
  Which is why a robust and intentional defense against this behaviour is needed. We can't simply roll over and accept a dystopian fate. History tells us that even the most entrenched powers can be displaced.
• munificent 6y ago
  The yin and yang of human society is: 1. Those with power will use their power to gain more, causing power to concentrate into fewer and fewer people over time. 2. The more concentrated the power is, the more greatly the powerful are outnumbered and the more people there are with aligned interests who want to take away or limit their power. The Industrial Revolution created a ton of power and led to massive power imbalances due to #1. At his peak John D. Rockefeller was worth almost 2% of the entire US economy. Eventually that led to anti-trust cases driven by a democratic government, the labor movement, and other causes. World War II, especially in the US, was a big shake-up that reset many power dynamics. But, since then, #1 has been doing the incremental growth it always done. My hunch is that we're starting to approach an "organized information" movement like we had an "organized labor" movement after the Industrial Revolution. The elites in power will fight it tooth and nail. But they will lose, because they are outnumbered.
  • jonnypotty 6y ago
    People generally revolt when they're hungry, not depressed.
    • antepodius 6y ago
      We haven't had the latter without the former very often in world history. I'd say this is still pretty novel ground.