In another way Trump is actually rather like Adams himself: his one great talent is as an entertainer and self-publicist, but he feels that he deserves success in business and leadership, so that he can be hailed as a great builder and decision-maker. Trump does have the personal charisma and feel for manipulation which Adams longed for, though. (Though it does help Trump that he started with the charisma boosts of inherited megawealth and the associated upbringing.)
And most of the texts you can access at the local library aren't even at that local library right now. Libraries are part of a humongous network. If you're willing to wait a few days, there's an avalanche of material that you definitely can't instantly find on the internet.
You're wrong. Sharing the fruits of labor and greater social cohesion are what lead to greater quality of life. Greater productivity leads to increased wealth among the owning class, but historically that wealth only reached the masses after hard, usually physically violent, conflict between the haves and havenots.
We are over a decade into Big Tech already making everyone's lives miserable (the malicious wielding of social media is something even the mainstream knows about now). His alternative of not working for big tech is literally the only way out of this.
There is some nuance in what "not working for big tech" means though. The general gist is to not take work making tools that can foreseeably be used to hurt people and the social fabric at large. Reject "disruption." Don't take money to make your life worse. That sort of thing.
> His alternative of not working for big tech is literally the only way out of this.
This won't actually work though. The only reason we even have this discussion is because we're rich enough that pure survival isn't even really in our instinct anymore. Most of us haven't experienced actual hardship for years and we live in luxury.
There are plenty people in the world who are smart and poor and living tough lives, who are ready to replace people who quit because they have te luxury to quit. Just look at the huge amount of Indian people moving across the world to work in tech. These people aren't going to let the opportunity to significantly improve their lives go because they're going to work on software that might negatively impact society at some point. You could see this exact thing happen when Elon took over Twitter. Many people left because they disagreed with Elon, while many H-1B stuck around because they (and their families) actually had something to lose.
I don't think many of us on HN realize how incredibly spoiled we are with the lives we live.
If you're working in big tech and you truly believe you are spoiled, then why not quit that job and let the migrant improve their living situation, while you live in the luxury you already have?
I don’t work in big tech. Wish I was, would be a pretty big improvement in my salary. Still think I’m very spoiled compared to about 90% of the world, probably more than that.
Or the current man in control of Health and Human Services is at best saying nothing of value. (At worst, he's sidelining vaccines for multiple infectious diseases, but that's off topic)
reply