No, things have gotten much harder for those who are not born to the very rich. I know, I went decades ago to highly-ranked high school, and it is amazing to me, and sad, how much harder students who want to get ahead have to study.
And then there is the other 2/3 of society, who have been going downhill economically for decades.
Lots of specific comments here about Brave, pro and con.
I would like to explain where I think it fits in the larger scheme of things. There is broad agreement that the web is deeply broken, with all sorts of bad consequences, because of how web sites get their money from advertisements and selling data.
Now the only way this is going to get fixed, as far as I can tell, is for someone to come up with an alternative financial model that publishers will actually adopt.
There are many projects working on coming up with this. Brave seems to be a lot further along than anyone else, and so I hope it succeeds. Either that or that someone else does.
I loved his BYTE column. It was usually just a story of dealing with some problem, either something that stopped working right, or trying to install a new machine or software program. He would take you through what happened, step-by-step, including all the confusions and mistakes, and it was fascinating reading. He used to say, if I remember correctly, "I do it the dumb way so you don't have to."
I was really shocked when BYTE stopped publishing. I couldn't believe that such a superb publication that was so valued by its readers could go out of business. From what I recall, what happened is first it was bought up by a publisher who wanted to turn it into a magazine for average computer users, not techies, and then when that failed to get a market, just shut it down. So much for the idea that the free enterprise system always makes things better.
Your claim would be more persuasive if you gave us a few specific examples.