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That's always going to exist. Unless you make people themselves absolutely uniform you're always going to have individuals with unusual amounts of influence. In

That's always going to exist. Unless you make people themselves absolutely uniform you're always going to have individuals with unusual amounts of influence. Instead of freaking out over this you should try to ensure their interests are aligned as closely as possible and that they're not abusing each other.

user____name 1y ago
Political influence is not a step function.
TFYS 1y ago
With the technologies we have today, I'm pretty sure it would be possible to create a system that doesn't have to give anyone so much influence that it becomes a problem. If you allow a system to have such concentrations of power, it's only a matter of time until someone incompetent or otherwise faulty person takes control and a lot of lives are ruined.
surgical_fire 1y ago
Maybe if we bow enough to our billionaire overlords they will spare us is your rationale? This is bullshit. You can have lower income inequality without necessarily having an elite with destructive amounts of money with proper regulations and taxation against the most wealthy. It's alright for a rich guy to live in a nice house ans drive around in a luxury car. It's not right when they have enough money to just buy access to the highest levels of everything to their benefit (and the rest of society prejudice).
const_cast 1y ago
As with everything in life, it's a matter of scale. It's truly not a problem if some people have maybe 10x more influence than others. It becomes a problem when some people have so much influence that they, alone, can change the trajectory of their country and even sidestep democratic processes. Which is what we're seeing in countries like the US.
- nh23423fefe 1y ago
  citation needed. "so much" is meaningless. power exists to be wielded. the majority of people are ignorant and uncaring so of course a small minority of highly affected and powerful individuals will exercise power. this common sense is somehow anti-democratic.
  - scienceman 1y ago
    "power exists to be wielded" citation needed
    - nh23423fefe 1y ago
      humans compete against other humans to change the world. power is winning. complaining about the valence of the change is just what losing looks like. the weak spam rhetoric because they lack power to actually enact the change they claim to want. the losing response to this is to whine about systemic blah blah blah, enjoy your subservience.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Some very powerful people are ignorant and uncaring too, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People and in the case of Meta it is not just "morals" or "ethics" but very basic attributes of quality and UX. Instagram fails to load the first time I try to load it on my computer, but it usually comes up after a reload. Uploading photos on Instagram is much more of a hassle (takes much longer) than it is on the unfunded web Mastodon client which is developed by open source fanatics who'd I'd expect to have zero empathy for ordinary users. I like the idea of the Meta Quest 3 but so many things, particularly the social features, are terribly thought out and if you're delighted that something works now there's a good chance it will regress next week. If Zuck fired his whole front end team in Silicon Valley and hired some good FE people in Minnesota, retired and put a rando in charge I bet he'd be worth 5x as much overnight.

user____name 1y ago

Political influence is not a step function.

TFYS 1y ago

With the technologies we have today, I'm pretty sure it would be possible to create a system that doesn't have to give anyone so much influence that it becomes a problem. If you allow a system to have such concentrations of power, it's only a matter of time until someone incompetent or otherwise faulty person takes control and a lot of lives are ruined.

surgical_fire 1y ago

Maybe if we bow enough to our billionaire overlords they will spare us is your rationale? This is bullshit. You can have lower income inequality without necessarily having an elite with destructive amounts of money with proper regulations and taxation against the most wealthy. It's alright for a rich guy to live in a nice house ans drive around in a luxury car. It's not right when they have enough money to just buy access to the highest levels of everything to their benefit (and the rest of society prejudice).

const_cast 1y ago

As with everything in life, it's a matter of scale. It's truly not a problem if some people have maybe 10x more influence than others. It becomes a problem when some people have so much influence that they, alone, can change the trajectory of their country and even sidestep democratic processes. Which is what we're seeing in countries like the US.

nh23423fefe 1y ago
citation needed. "so much" is meaningless. power exists to be wielded. the majority of people are ignorant and uncaring so of course a small minority of highly affected and powerful individuals will exercise power. this common sense is somehow anti-democratic.
- scienceman 1y ago
  "power exists to be wielded" citation needed
  - nh23423fefe 1y ago
    humans compete against other humans to change the world. power is winning. complaining about the valence of the change is just what losing looks like. the weak spam rhetoric because they lack power to actually enact the change they claim to want. the losing response to this is to whine about systemic blah blah blah, enjoy your subservience.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Some very powerful people are ignorant and uncaring too, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People and in the case of Meta it is not just "morals" or "ethics" but very basic attributes of quality and UX. Instagram fails to load the first time I try to load it on my computer, but it usually comes up after a reload. Uploading photos on Instagram is much more of a hassle (takes much longer) than it is on the unfunded web Mastodon client which is developed by open source fanatics who'd I'd expect to have zero empathy for ordinary users. I like the idea of the Meta Quest 3 but so many things, particularly the social features, are terribly thought out and if you're delighted that something works now there's a good chance it will regress next week. If Zuck fired his whole front end team in Silicon Valley and hired some good FE people in Minnesota, retired and put a rando in charge I bet he'd be worth 5x as much overnight.