Not all participants are equal.

You are conflating participation from equality, yes everyone participates in the system, it takes a lot of privileged to be able to disassociate ones self from the system itself. The power dynamic within the system favors the wealthy, whom have decided that this is the path we are going down.

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ncruces 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Writing about "the wealthy" on a site like HN is always interesting.

Who do you mean?

The vast majority of HN commenters are 10%ers and very many are 1%ers.

But there's always someone richer to complain about.

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ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

HN loves to nit-pick about what "the wealthy" actually means, but in most contexts, when someone complains "the wealthy" did this or "the wealthy" did that, what they mean are a very, very tiny number of people who are not on HN, not in anyone on HN's family, and not intimately known by anyone on HN.

When someone says "the wealthy" are getting rich to everyone's detriment, they are almost never talking about the doctor who lives three doors down the street from you who drives a nice new 911 or the guy who owns 20 laundromats in your city. I think we all know who we're talking about.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Broadly speaking, when anyone says the rich or the wealthy, they mean people richer than themselves. I’ve seen everyone from line workers to multimillionaires do it.

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littlexsparkee 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are they guiding policy and making decisions at corporations or just living within the existing framework? He's talking about the people shaping the world and future.