Free software vs paid software - doesn't even matter right now.
What matters is: billionaires and capital have full control, and increasingly more, of everything in our lifes. Throwing tantrums won't help either. What you need to do as a programmer is to get involved in social movements and politics and fight to change the world and to effectively shape the social adoption of new technologies.
Truth is most programmers were always mediocre. And most acted like they were superior to others - not strange with the high pays and utter success of ideology. Glad that's about to end.
If your imagination was ripped completely already, all I can say is: rip. You have the option to cry for the next years, and complain online, like a child, or you can step up your game - and make it multiplayer instead of this sad sad singleplayer.
Current society is devastating both the planet and crushing our souls. According to the most popular topic on HN of the last few days, most users from this bubble can't even talk to other people (calling them "strangers"). Sorry to say, but fuck your FOSS or your expert software - this is utter failure as humans. If we can't fix that, among other things, we're absolutely doomed.
One question : what would be, solely according to you, the best policies to get "us" out of this mess ? Tax wealth ? Nuke inheritance ? Something else ?
I don't think it's a mess: it's all going according to plan and maybe 100-300 families worldwide are very happy - the capital-holders.
I'm from the Global South, and most people here are from the North, so to answer your question I'll have to be a little bit vague: I'm a communist [0].
In small tribes you don't need as much organization, but the larger the scale the more organization you need. Weak and powerless people are usually that way, because it is natural to them. It is nonsense to say that only a tiny number of people have any influence over the world. Some people have more influence than others, yes, but that exists even in tribes.
Every country that ever aspired to communism had people who were at the top and people who were at the bottom, far more so than free market countries.
How many of the famous names you can think of that changed the modern world started off from old money? A lot of these things come from new money private investors or government incentives and grants, or they just bootstrapped themselves and grew organically.
It might be fair to say that we should do more to preserve inexpensive rural life as a viable alternative to many people, because a lot of people born in cities today may more realistically be better suited to the pace and burden of rural life.
Alternatively, we should renormalize people living together in larger numbers the way they did in the 1800s and early 1900s (though not to the same extreme). Individualism is expensive, but many people preserve a more individualistic lifestyle even if their personal finances don't easily support it and then they blame everything outside of their life rather than their own choices.
What matters is: billionaires and capital have full control, and increasingly more, of everything in our lifes. Throwing tantrums won't help either. What you need to do as a programmer is to get involved in social movements and politics and fight to change the world and to effectively shape the social adoption of new technologies.
Truth is most programmers were always mediocre. And most acted like they were superior to others - not strange with the high pays and utter success of ideology. Glad that's about to end.
If your imagination was ripped completely already, all I can say is: rip. You have the option to cry for the next years, and complain online, like a child, or you can step up your game - and make it multiplayer instead of this sad sad singleplayer.
Current society is devastating both the planet and crushing our souls. According to the most popular topic on HN of the last few days, most users from this bubble can't even talk to other people (calling them "strangers"). Sorry to say, but fuck your FOSS or your expert software - this is utter failure as humans. If we can't fix that, among other things, we're absolutely doomed.