[mseebach]

I don't agree that the situation is all that different. Early grocery stores represented a significant loss of control from growing your own. Early supermarkets represented a significant loss of control from the personal, local service of the grocery store. Early automobiles represented a loss of control from having horses in your own stable. And yes, all of those losses were to ever more distant and powerful commercial entities.

But they also brought significant benefits (things got a lot cheaper, especially in terms of time and effort), and it took a while for the loss-of-control/benefit balance to get worked out, but today nobody is seriously arguing that we're serfs because we write software for cash and then spend some of that on food and cars and gas (and a myriad of other things that we probably don't 'control' as such) instead of working the land.