> I think that's nostalgia glasses. The level of corruption in SV seems no different to me to Wall Street in the 90s. People in power grasping community resources as their own is nothing new to humankind.

The 90s might be the wrong point to measure from. Isn't it pretty well documented that CEOs are getting paid greater "multiples" of average pay than they had in the past (e.g. they used to be paid 100x, now they're paid 1000x)?

Many of the things used to balance the scales in the past are no longer possible, historically if you owned a business, the workers (who lived in the same area, spoke the same language, and drank at the same pub) could unionize, or decide that they were going to compete with the original business. Now you have a generic international labor force, who dont trust each other, and have large legal infrastructures preventing them from directly forming competing businesses.

Admittedly, the "used to" is rather longer ago than the 90s :-) More like through the 70s.