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Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?
I can't see their original comment anymore though, so, who knows.
Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example.
Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on.
It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them.
But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is.
If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.
The upper middle/professional class is the problem (this is a theme, there's a reason that every time there a real good bloody revolution in history they do poorly). They have pushed ideas that are grounded in sound principles (diversity and inclusivity are good, the proliferation of high tech communication is good, sustainable environmental practice are good) to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public. They take these causes of the moment and run with them to absurd levels because that is a reliable way to make a quick buck with the way we've structured our society.
It's like telling a rookie engineer the priority to lighten the part and he shaves so much mass that it will obviously, even to him too readily in real world conditions despite passing in the simulation. He justifies it in his own mind in various ways but at the end of the day the reality is he DGAF. He got his bonus for hitting the metric and moved on. The upper middle class is that rookie engineer. The upper middle class decision makers got that bonus for increasing DEI (in a bad way that makes people hate it), making the production greener (if you don't measure what's offshored) and so on and so on. And of course such behavior comes around to cast shade upon those goals even if the goals are noble. Eventually management says "stop lightening things" in the same way that the populist leaders say things like "no more DEI crap". Such moves aren't the right answer per-say, and even they know it. But they do stop the bleeding enough to not be a serious existential problem for a little while until a new fad comes around.
I don't know how you get a whole society of people to give a crap generally and give a crap about the big picture impact of what they're doing. If I did then surely enough other people would and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
This is incorrect. The actions of wealthy people speak for themselves; they don't need to be demonized, they are plainly wrong on their face. That said, we're in agreement that these people don't have power without the less-wealthy people who enable them.
That is what I asked for, yes.
Be clear about what you're saying. If you hesitate to to just say what you believe, that's probably a good indication that some introspection would be worthwhile.
FWIW, I think I agree with you and I think it is possibly the biggest weakness of our system that it is vulnerable to these types of manipulations from various angles: campaign finance, regulatory capture, disproportionate power given to unelected members of the executive, etc. That being said, those same weaknesses really open the door for the power-tripping Musks and Bezoses to get in and do a lot of damage, which is what I believe we are witnessing in real time.
This is why they tend to move toward other things, like ... dismantling the US government.