My apologies for straying near politics but i think Yegge's just defined the best characterization of the 1% :P
> In some sense you wouldn’t even be human anymore. People like Jeff are better regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.
The difference between this description and Yegge's later description of Bezos as being like the Dread Pirate Roberts of Princess Bride fame, is that Roberts is a clever human putting on a very clever show to develop a reputation which does work for Roberts.
Bezos on the other hand, by all accounts, actually does make people walk the plank. Whether he does it because he's a super-human alien intellect, or some other reason, doesn't change the fact that he's built up a climate of fear around him. If anything, describing him as a super-human alien disturbs me more than if he were acting out of the same motivation as the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Sorry, but you're way over-optimistic if you think the 1% has the kind of intelligence (and I'm not talking pure IQ) and focus Bezos has. Bezos is more like 0.01%.
And I'd venture to say that the OWS movement wouldn't have much against Bezos. They're more against fratboys that rose to prominence and wealth through connections. And finance. Yeah, definitely finance. It's there that they sense some kind of unwarranted self-worth and wealth.
I dunno. The whole one-click patent thing. Abuse of government privilege to derive a monopoly.
Sure, he/they are just one of many, but if you don't hate the players the game continues.
There are many people in many positions who have a free ride because they got some doddering politician to introduce their legislation without thinking past the immediate benefits. This isn't how good laws are made and any business, lobbyist, or lawmaker even tangentially related to this stuff is a valid target.
> > In some sense you wouldn’t even be human anymore. People like Jeff are better regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.
> I think Yegge's just defined the best characterization of the 1%
"she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human" - William Gibson, "Count Zero", 1986
What is with this class war against the "1%"? The wealthiest 1% of the population are just human beings. Some of them are smart, some of them are hard working, some of them are lucky, some of them are all three. Some of them abuse the system for their advantage, some of them don't. Does it make any sense to lump all of them into a single group based on an economic percentile? That seems hugely prejudicial to me.
It's the media-comprehensible proxy that people have come up with for the way the very rich and powerful have seemingly been able to skew the system so that their power and wealth are self-perpetuating, while the population at large gets poorer and gets worse benefits every year.
Is it that simple? Of course not. But simple and resonant ideas are mediagenic, while complicated and more accurate ones are mediapathic.
(For anyone preparing an angry reply, please note the use of the word seemingly in the first paragraph. It's not there by accident.)
> In some sense you wouldn’t even be human anymore. People like Jeff are better regarded as hyper-intelligent aliens with a tangential interest in human affairs.
The difference between this description and Yegge's later description of Bezos as being like the Dread Pirate Roberts of Princess Bride fame, is that Roberts is a clever human putting on a very clever show to develop a reputation which does work for Roberts.
Bezos on the other hand, by all accounts, actually does make people walk the plank. Whether he does it because he's a super-human alien intellect, or some other reason, doesn't change the fact that he's built up a climate of fear around him. If anything, describing him as a super-human alien disturbs me more than if he were acting out of the same motivation as the Dread Pirate Roberts.