Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward.

It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement.

People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop.

I mean if I were a multi-billionaire, I'm not sure I could do anything. I could piss into the wind with a somewhat larger amount of piss.

I've come to believe that our lack of agency over emergent behaviors in our own societies and economies is a central problem of the human condition.

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hkpack an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Well said, I have exactly the same thoughts.

However, overcoming these forces is something people did successfully in the past. I think right now we are just in a cycle of mass confusion caused by the technological revolutions, which prevents us to see clearly (as it happened in the past as well).

Without alignment we just drift by natural forces of a system in place in whatever direction. When we adapt and if the world survives, this should not be an issue.

The problem of billionaires is that they are one level below from the top in abstraction of a society. They are required to play by the rules of the state designed by someone else, and they lack the knowledge and experience to go one level higher and think about the policies and rules for society itself - and this is much harder than doing business, and requires completely different skills.

Because of these factors, we see them being able to hoard wealth but unable to influence the system in any positive way, except for the ones which the system was already designed for (create jobs, innovate, etc.)

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N_Lens an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

	▲	datsci_est_2015 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And yet they still hold immense power to make our lives shittier. It is far easier to destroy a functioning system than it is to build one from the ground up

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Varelion 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Hold on. Panama papers. Epstein files. CointelPro -> NSPM-7.

There absolutely, without a reasonable doubt, is a conspiracy of the elite -- the billionaire class.