Comment by CharlieDigital

    > there are ways to contribute morally outside of your 9-5. Volunteer to teach a neighborhood kid to code.

This simplistic view of the world does not scale -- especially so in today's global economy. Imagine we never had public education and instead relied on the good nature of individuals to teach their neighborhood kids. Imagine competing at a global level without a coordinated educational system with baseline standards. Instead, what we need is to teach every kid how to code (many may not end up coding as a profession, but that's fine; every kid that has the affinity and talent and and wants to do it should have the chance).

That's nominally why we have government of the people, by the people, for the people. That's why we have taxes. These scale when the interests are aligned. We've seen them scale.

The problem arises when (as Mitt Romney famously expressed) we think of corporations as people, too, and assign them rights associated with personhood.

They are of "some" people, by "some" people, for "some" people.

This is the crisis I think the US is having now. This is what it think was punctuated with COVID; there is no longer the spirit of "we" and the US is in the era of "me".