[jacquesm]

Then why do you try to shut down the discussion?

As for me being naive: I am pretty realistic in my expectations but I do believe that the achilles heel of these characters is exposed: their wealth stems from a bug in capitalism that allows the unfettered collection of money, power, influence once you achieve a certain base. The fact that we don't have a way to effectively tax transnational entities is something that is absolutely fixable, and we currently do not have rules for that. Changing the game entirely is throwing the baby away with the bathwater, taking care of < 500 individuals in such a way that their tricks are no longer going to cause the upheaval of the lives of 100's of thousands of others is definitely something I would be happy to see implemented.

[auggierose]

I am not trying to shut down the discussion, just what the discussion is about.

The game needs to be changed entirely, and we need to talk about how. Communism didn't work, capitalism does not work anymore, and the topic you'd like to discuss is really just a logical consequence of raw capitalism. I understand that capitalism was probably good to you in particular, so you are not interested in changing the game, just fixing it here and there, but that is pointless, as I already said.

My empathy with overpaid Googlers is also quite limited. Maybe they can now do something useful with their lives. I don't think Google's website works better than 15 years ago, so what are all these people doing?

[jacquesm]

Whether capitalism has been good to me or not is besides the point: you can wish for the moon but you will probably not get it, so it helps to set realistic and achievable goals. 'The revolution' isn't going to happen, as long as people are fed and there are 50 channels of sports, besides that typically they result in new bosses who are the same as the old bosses.

Capitalism, like democracy is broken, but it is the best we've got - so far. Replacing it outright with some new system that somehow magically overcomes all of the shortcomings of the old and does not introduce new ones is a pipe dream, but you can make moves to fix the biggest holes and then keep doing that until you have incrementally arrived at a much better solution.

As for my empathy with overpaid Googlers: given the choice to sympathize with them or with their nil contributing rent seeking shareholder billionaire overlord I will side with them, and given the choice between them and a homeless person, inmate or mentally ill person my sympathy will be with the latter. Dealing in absolutes will get you quite literally nowhere, it's tilting at windmills at best and a distraction at worst. But feel free to pursue your goals in your way and leave me to do the same in mine.

There isn't a hard choice between these and no reason why we can't both pursue our goals in different ways and end up in a better place. It increases the chances of positive change.

[auggierose]

No real disagreement here. Somebody needs to keep the old system running while I am working on the new one.