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Comment by pdeuchler | Hacker News Reader

Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. This is just the basics of capital in a capitalistic society.

The internet has already redistributed earth shattering quantities of wealth in record time. Besides, to actually solve the "real problems" (no true scotsman, but we won't go down that path) you still need massive amounts of capital. Where else are you going to get that capital except for individuals who have gained their wealth through industry?

Can't help but feel that there's a serious holier-than-thou tone throughout the article just because the author spent 6 months in DC. Thought experiment: who is helping the 1% more, people who generate products for a public company or people who work on pet political projects for the DC elite? (Not implying there's a right answer to that question, and not implying that's all the OP did with their time in DC)

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I disagree with your first paragraph, but plenty of others here are already responding to that 'trickle-down' sentiment.

I also didn't read the article as being 'holier-than-thou' (in fact, entirely secular, but hey). It sounded to me more like someone narrating their own, personal, feelings on a topic and giving some context to why he might not give an unequivocal affirmative response to coworkers' queries about staying at one or the other job. Because life is complicated and there often aren't binaries. It's not a sentiment that gets a lot of traction on HN, but it's also not proselytizing.

I never implied, nor do I endorse the fact, that this results in a trickle down effect. If you would like to dispute the actual economics of my first sentence I have roughly 700 years of history and research to back my claim.

However your quibble with my phrasing of "holier" and the fact that you needed to point out that there aren't binaries in life kind of shows your true intentions in disagreeing, don't you? Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when you start moralizing and implying that your opinion is preferable on moral grounds, well... I'm gonna call you out.

>>> "Working for the U.S. Digital Service showed me that, indeed, there were far better ways for me to spend my time if I really wanted to make a difference in people’s lives."

> Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning. This is just the basics of capital in a capitalistic society.

What about the Green Revolution?

Honest question, do you mean to imply the Green Revolution did not follow this pattern?

From my understanding it followed the pattern exactly by spawning the creation of the huge food production conglomerates we have today while also greatly enriching vestiges of colonial powers as the movement grew to feed the "global hungry".

The last three paragraphs of this section of the wikipedia page more or less confirm it fit the pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution#Criticism

> > Large leaps in technology have always, and will always, benefit the wealthiest 1% at the beginning.

> What about the Green Revolution?

The "Green Revolution" is a term applied largely to the wealthiest 1% deciding to fairly directly forgo some part of the short-term returns from certain technical developments to purchase longer-term sociopolitical security and greater long term profits, specifically, to forgo some of the short-term profits of new agricultural technology to head-off dissatisfaction that might lead to Communist revolutions and instead get large parts of the world positively engaged with both specific product lines and the more general neoliberal economic model.

It certainly is not a counterexample to the technological changes benefitting the wealthiest in the short term.

> The Internet has already redistributed earth shattering quantities of wealth in record time.

Given that inequality has been steeply rising, you must mean that it has redistributed wealth further from the poor to the rich.

Or one might mean that it has redistributed the other way, while other factors in society were redistributing from the poor to the rich, and that the net imbalance would be far worse without the mitigating effect of the internet.

Your presentation presumes that the internet is the only redistributive factor that existed in the time under consideration.

True, but pointing out multiple interpretations adds nothing unless you can tell us about the other factors. What are they?

The most obvious one is tax policy changes that shifted the relative burden off the rich, which is a pretty direct upward transfer.

Global inequality has been sharply dropping over the past few decades as hundreds of millions of people in India and China have been lifted out of poverty. Amusing that you think inequality has been rising.

It has been rising in the U.S. and Europe. I imagine you're pretending you didn't know that, but it's not clear why.

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