I think some of that is just Larry Ellison
One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison?
Because the fundamental building block of society (which we are losing rapidly) is some amount of care for your fellow person.
Your comment is a great example of how we Prisoner's Dilemma'ed ourselves into a world of isolation and decaying institutions.
Them not having your best interests at heart does not make them an adversary. Just like you not having the best interests of your grocer or work place or most other humans on the planet at heart does not make you an adversary.
Even if you think of them as the most selfish people possible, billionaires ought to have the average person's interest at heart. Because once the country is full of average people who are unhappy with their lives it typically doesn't work out well for those with power.
It can be. For example, see "enlightened self interest" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest), a concept that the companies in question seem to discard in favor of short-term profits.
The Golden Rule "do unto others" is an example of this concept, and it answers your question "why would you?"
> And that is roughly fine (albeit a kinder universe would be nice).
You're confusing the status quo with what must be. It's possible for people to have a sane interpretation of self-interest. We should do a better job of reeducating and/or removing from society the people who don't seem capable of that.
Bezos' recent CNBC interview was enough of a kick in the nuts to finally get me to migrate off of AWS last weekend.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...
China’s food policy is also well documented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_policy_in_China
This comes up every. single. time. It's so undifferentiated to be basically misinformation. Huji, household registration has existed in China for centuries. The modern form, hukou was designed to control mass migration and rapid urbanisation which is, with a population of 1B, understandable if you want to avoid clusters of slums with populations in the millions. Besides, they are lessing this more and more since 2012.
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202312/05/WS656e7f76a3109...
with their new leader
New? Xi Jinping has been leading China since 2012, that's almost 15 years.
The surveillance tech that is much more likely to be deployed in the US and that few are talking about is Israeli tech used to spy on and suppress the self determination of Palestinians. Especially given the recently proposed fusing of US/Israeli military tech.
This has been a thing for a while to be fair. Not sure if you're just mentioning of some new project instead? We've given and gotten back tech to and from Israel.