In case you missed the good news of our imminent techno-capitalist utopia...

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to opinion essay by Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, “After the pandemic, a revolution in education and work awaits,” October 20, 2020:

There he goes again, Mr. Friedman, the terminal optimist. Who is he kidding? This tune was much sung in the hopeful years just after the events of 1989 and the brave new Internet. But how many of us have enjoyed the benefits of not just more available entertainments but more interesting work and lives?

What stands in the way of more interesting and fulfilling lives for most of us is not the productivity but the ownership structure of today's world. Under billionaire hegemony, we have brutal police states ruling with terror, at war against their own workers and the poor. And life for most of us is harsh, squalid, mean. Produce or perish; shark-filled waters await you. Friedman should step down beneath his glass ceiling room with a view of skyscrapers.

Friedman even thinks that commodifying everything and eliminating universities (or reducing them to tech research and training programs one buys on a mortgage) for social media is great.

Yes, informational commodities and electronically reproduced arts are having prices fall to zero, benefitting us as consumers. But the financial benefits accrue mostly to the top; real wages fall while people work absurdly long hours; most work in bullshit jobs or policing other citizens. Most jobs are dull, and well-educated workers work far below their intelligence.

Sure there is a world to be won in the changes he sings. But faith in business and technology will not bring the democratization we need.