The privileged beneficiaries of capitalism are the people that hire the population of HN to make them money.
As for how to make things more fair, a good start would be to allow bad actors (the well connected good ole boys) in the economy to die off instead of bailing them out. Perhaps a better use of that money would be to invest in community owned assets (like low income housing) and businesses (corporations structured similarly to Mondragon)?
This data that the tech Giants hold close to their chest belongs to the people and should be released for competitors to use in their products.
I envision companies competing on UX/privacy/ect while all using the same data set. People should be able to use Myspace to talk to their grandparents on Facebook.
How it is now is like if Ma Bell was never broken up, and we were only able to use our AT&T phone and data plan to talk to other AT&T customers only. How could any other phone company start with such barriers in place.
It's so sad that undoing horrible laws and ineffective prohibitions must come down to dollars and cents, rather than the innate freedom we all should have.
You can go above and beyond during designated work hours.
To allow work outside of these hours is a race to the bottom in a rat race to see who can no-life it the hardest for the least money.
If you can't make yourself stand out with the same amount of hours as your coworkers, then maybe you should come to terms with the fact that you just aren't exceptional.
"I like to bring up black death in discussions when people complain that our current time is "difficult"."
IMO, we can do so much more with the technological advances we've made. We have used technology to tame nature, but are unable to tame the beast within ourselves.
Having to compare our information age society with feudal societies wracked with the plague to prove how much better things are proves my point. Things should be way better, but they aren't outside of the small bubbles that are slowly popping/deflating in the first world.
Maybe the erosion of the safety net and the great disconnect between productivity increases and increases in wages?
People who were not independently wealthy are not able to afford to do anything with their time that doesn't earn them money. People are less able to take risks, more apt to settle for less so long as less is stable and safer.
There is also a chilling effect on communities as everyone scrambles to "get theirs" when these support systems have their legs kicked out from under them.
How important is this privilege if I can maliciously control how you vote?
Now imagine the good we can do with real electoral reform (Democrats idea of repealing citizens United is a meager start, but weak lip service to real reform)
> > The most jarring incentive reportedly comes out of Chicago, which, under state law, could redirect between 50 and 100 percent of the income taxes incurred by Amazon employees right back to Amazon
Stealing the worker's surplus labor value isn't enough?
Then again I've never strived for comfort, just the rarest thing of all... equality.