[smallmancontrov]

Yes, but temporarily embarrassed millionaires abound. They eagerly employ the concept of "free markets" in bad faith, propelled by the hope that the corruption can be made to work for them rather than against them. Some of them are right, most are wrong, but they are propelled to spread the faith just the same.

Beneath them, people tend to get good at programming before they get good at spotting exploitation, so there is always a stratum of True Believers to feed the operation. Individually they wise up and graduate, but the stratum remains as it is fed from the bottom by the proverbial sucker born every minute.

Then we have the top of the pyramid which actually does benefit from it all. They are small in number but they have enough money to fund the whole space (more importantly: enough money to have a reason to fund the whole space) so they have outsize influence. They could decide to ban me for saying this, for example.