Right, this is not a new phenomenon. Whether it's meaningful to pin it on human nature, I'm not sure; we consider ourselves unique as a species largely for our

Right, this is not a new phenomenon. Whether it's meaningful to pin it on human nature, I'm not sure; we consider ourselves unique as a species largely for our ability to recursively adapt the environment to ourselves, and then ourselves to the new state of affairs, and so on. We do generally prefer to think we're smart and good and well-informed and justified in our decisions, no doubt. We also usually prefer to keep what we have, which could be taken to support the traditional Marxist line. All I'm saying is in an attention economy, one does well to reflect and ask who benefits from one's beliefs and their mode of expression. Substitute money for power, reputation, or any scarce social resource, and I think the analysis still tends to work, whether or not it echoes Marx.