[krageon]

"they" refers to the collective other: Something that is vaguely understood as not being like you, without having a clear definition. It is a linguistic way to alienate something so it becomes okay to treat it poorly without inconvenient feelings of guilt.

[RugnirViking]

people are trying to explain this to themselves because they are imagining the future where some rich guy has a hundred thousand copies of himself working on the same problem because he can afford all of that space and power, compunding ever more the already tricky problem of "you have to have money to make money".

Imagine if you had to singlehandedly compete with the productive output of a small nation to even stand a chance of competing...