This is tech. This is how it has always been. From Archemedes to DaVinci to Edison to Ford, technologists are always captured to serve the interests of those in power. Most modern technologists don't want to believe this. They grew up building an Internet that had a bit of countercultural flair to it and undermined a few subsets of entrenched elites (mass media, taxi cartels, etc.), so they convinced themselves that they could control society under their wise hands. Except the same thing that always happened happened: the powers that be are now treating tech the way tech treats everyone else.
Das kapital, as a critique to Smith's writing.
Communist manifesto, to understand the point of the laborer, and not capital.
Read about worker cooperatives and democracy in the workplace, including Mondragon corp in Spain.
(One of the largest problems we have with any economic system is that none can properly model infinites. The cost of creating new is expensive be it art or science. But cost of copying is effectively 0. I can highlight the problem, but I have no good solution. But OpenAI's response is 'let us ignore copyright law' which wrongs creators.)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-investors-reject-pr...
https://news.sky.com/story/apple-removes-end-to-end-security...
Forget what they called it, united something or other.
Maybe our AI overlords will do a better job this time if they are unconstrained from any lawful oversight. I mean, one can hope...
Centralizing production goals, decision making, and expenditure at the Federal government is what made the industrial response to WW2 successful. Centralizing tax revenue to fund retirements for the elderly (Social Security) resulted in the poverty rate of seniors being brought far lower. Centralizing zoning control at the state of California is _finally_ starting to make localities take responsibility for building more housing. These were/are centralizing efforts with the intent of helping the masses over the wealthy few.
What doesn't work is centralizing power with the intent of concentrating wealth and security by taking wealth, labor, and security from working people, AKA extractive institutions.
That's true whether it's the donor-class funded political establishment or regimes like the current US kleptocracy doing it.
Generally speaking, every point of centralization is also a point where a lot of power can be acquired with relatively little resources. So regardless of intent, it attracts people who are into power, and over time, they take over. The original intent often remains symbolically and in the rhetoric used, but when you look beyond that into the actual policies, they are increasingly divorced from what is actually claimed.
This is why (1) shared principles and (2) credible democracy is important, to allow evolution of the centralized power (i.e. government) towards the shared principles, and why its corporate-bribed facsimile or oligarchic authoritarianism don't work.
Or you can have a bunch of smaller assemblies that actually are representative, and then a larger one to which assemblies delegate their own to cooperate. But that's exactly political decentralization - a multi-level federation.
Over a long period of time the interest of the powerful will always win. There is a reason if no government (whether left or right) can fix the situation and inequality between the top 0.01% and the rest keeps increasing.
The only solution to maximise wellbeing for individuals is to reduce the amount of control the powerful can exert on the rest of society.
Why would centralizing power in a different way(e.x. democratically) not lead to a different outcome than centralizing power in the way we do now?
That's what we're getting with "democracy" because ultimately swaying the opinion of a lot of people (in this technological time) requires money. No wonder the powerful elite or their puppets end up making decision for the majority.
No, what I advocate for is for decentralisation of power, I don't want any central entity making choices for me.
Someone with capital should be able to offer to buy me out but they shouldn't be able to tax me or decide what happens to me or my property.