Except cottage content and product industries can now sell to virtually the entire planet. That simply wasn't available before.
>as (mostly) low-status low-value workers
Here you're projecting your own bias against them. I'm not suggesting "the system" is without flaws, but the average joe seems to be doing alright in general, especially if you consider average joe historically and globally.
>The reality is that wealth concentration among the hyper-rich is accelerating as they capture an ever-increasing share of global productivity.
Wealth concentration among the hyper-rich doesn't concern me in the least. Generally speaking wealth is created by providing value, not taking it.
>If the Internet were likely to fix this, we’d have seen some evidence of this happening by now.
The internet is in the process of unseating media monopolies and democratizing information. The poorest of the poor across the world have access to information that was previously only available to the wealthiest who could attend universities in rich countries. The internet has allowed small businesses with basically no infrastructure to reach the entire global market. It's allowed families to keep in touch instantaneously across oceans.
>You only have to think about that for a few moments to see how far we are from that kind of Internet, and just how locked down, siloed, chokepointed, gated, and obsessively monetised the Internet we have today is.
You're comparing the internet to some fantasy you have. I'm comparing the internet to the world before the internet.
The fact that the technological requirements for small new businesses and cottage content industries have changed shouldn’t be confused with an improvement in the opportunity landscape as a whole.
If anything, these “businesses” - especially the content creators - are more like digital feudalisms, as (mostly) low-status low-value workers try to scratch out an existence on territory owned by a single entity they have no democratic influence on.
The reality is that wealth concentration among the hyper-rich is accelerating as they capture an ever-increasing share of global productivity.
If the Internet were likely to fix this, we’d have seen some evidence of this happening by now.
But there is exactly zero evidence for this, and even less reason to believe that it can happen, given where we are today.
The only thing that might change this is total disintermediation - open, distributed, publicly owned, non-corporate hardware and software infrastructure, including search, security, content distribution, storage, and applications.
You only have to think about that for a few moments to see how far we are from that kind of Internet, and just how locked down, siloed, chokepointed, gated, and obsessively monetised the Internet we have today is.