>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.

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.