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Remember when Google's search engine used to be vastly more powerful, precise, efficient and helpful than any other, their corporate code of conduct laid down by the founders literally contained the phrase "don't be evil" and that was the unofficial company motto, but then one day the new executive chairman declared that ever since he joined the company he had considered the phrase to be "the stupidest rule ever" because "there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something" and then it was quietly changed to "do the right thing" and then later just dropped entirely?

Maybe laissez-faire capitalism is indeed the best system at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurialism (I've yet to see conclusive logical proof of this, however), but the sad truth seems to be that it's a perverse, desperate death-race to create new, good companies in order to wrest a little power back from the previous, mature and now-terrifyingly-powerful crop of companies faster than they can be corrupted into entrenched malignity by that exact same system.  There's no way to fight them directly once they've grown so vast; the only way to beat them is to invent something that makes their product obsolete, and corner the market faster than they can copy it; if their product cannot be surpassed before they reach maturity and the sociopaths take over and consolidate their position, the old company retains its power and become an unstoppable monster.

Remember when Google's search engine used to be vastly more powerful, precise, efficient and helpful than any other, their corporate code of conduct laid down by the founders literally contained the phrase "don't be evil" and that was the unofficial company motto, but then one day the new executive chairman declared that ever since he joined the company he had considered the phrase to be "the stupidest rule ever" because "there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something" and then it was quietly changed to "do the right thing" and then later just dropped entirely?

Maybe laissez-faire capitalism is indeed the best system at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurialism (I've yet to see conclusive logical proof of this, however), but the sad truth seems to be that it's a perverse, desperate death-race to create new, good companies faster than the previous, mature and now-terrifyingly-powerful crop of them can be corrupted into entrenched malignity by that exact same system.

Remember when Google's search engine used to be vastly more powerful, precise and helpful than any other, their corporate code of conduct laid down by the founders literally contained the phrase "don't be evil" and that was the unofficial company motto, but then one day the new executive chairman declared that ever since he joined the company he had considered the phrase to be "the stupidest rule ever" because "there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something" and then it was quietly changed to "do the right thing" and then later just dropped entirely?

Maybe laissez-faire capitalism is indeed the best system at encouraging innovation and entrepreneurialism (I've yet to see conclusive logical proof of this, however), but the sad truth seems to be that it's a perverse, desperate death-race to create new, good companies faster than the previous, mature and now-terrifyingly-powerful crop of them can be corrupted into entrenched malignity by that exact same system.

Remember when Google's search engine used to be vastly more powerful, precise and helpful than any other, their corporate code of conduct laid down by the founders literally contained the phrase "don't be evil" and that was the unofficial company motto, but then one day the new executive chairman declared that ever since he joined the company he had considered the phrase to be "the stupidest rule ever" because "there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something" and then it was quietly changed to "do the right thing" and then later just dropped entirely?