Comment by motohagiography
5 years ago
If the Varian Rule is true, that what the rich have today, the middle classes will have in 5-10 years and the poor in 10-15, it's worth noting that what the rich have today is private security.
The real risk is that the ultimate popular reaction to these systems will not be civil.
The Secret Service has been protecting US Presidents for 100+ years. And bodyguards go back way further. Varian (via McAfee) was talking about technology. Let me propose a clarifying addendum:
"A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today [but didn't have 10 years ago]; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade."
I'd say that american software developers affording private security as a result of a company they founded is a pretty recent phenomenon. I'm sure there is an n<10 of early precedents, but the underlying point is that the response to these oppressive systems is likely to be uncivil.
Indeed the Varian rule was coined by the FT journalist McAfee as you mentioned (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varian_Rule), though as a counter example, presidents don't really count. Politicians can be wealthy but, like criminals, they're never rich.
> Politicians can be wealthy but, like criminals, they're never rich.
[citation needed]
1 reply →
Probably also worth noting how the rich today do not use social media the way the middle classes use it.