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The Internet Is the Greatest Legal Facilitator of Inequality in Human History

14 pointsby santoshmaharshiover 11 years ago

2 comments

guimarinover 11 years ago
pretty link baity topic. Makes the internet out to be the bad guy... the internet is just a piece of technology. wealth inequality happens as a result of the capitalist process. it's the best thing we've come up with at organizing human work, but it's clear that one way or another, it's going to have to drastically change in the coming decades.
bedheadover 11 years ago
I had had a nagging belief in this for a long time. Then something funny happened that convinced me this is 100% true: Instagram. A couple years and 11 employees and $2 billion in wealth. Incredible.<p>As recently as 20 years ago companies simply couldn&#x27;t do this type of thing. The wealth creation was slower, and spread amount among more people. Things were less efficient. It&#x27;s astonishing how drastically technology and the internet have disrupted the traditional paths to wealth creation, and allowed it to be more concentrated. Capital has slowly displaced labor. This is why the middle class is stuck, while owners of capital (eg private equity fund managers) have gone from obscurity 30 years ago to dominating the Forbes list.<p>For better or worse (probably worse), the die has already been cast. We cant uninvent things. The inequality trend is irreversible.