Quote from: zargon on June 20, 2011, 08:45:44 PM

well, thats merely side of the coin now isn't it. I do beleive it(our beloved internet) has atleast mildly shrunk the gap and allowed many people to elevate themselves, and made it much cheaper for the little guy to try and get ahead, share information, get around the big bad fortune 500'ers and other rich fat cats.

In the US, there's been zero income gap-shrinking, sorry. Certainly not since the 90s - it's been exclusively gap-widening. Actually it's been gap-widening since the 50s, the time when labor was most organized and taxes on the rich at their highest. See: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-charts-about-wealth-and-inequality-in-america-2010-4 (It's also true that that time was when the bulk of the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins due to WWII).

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many of the rich are rich for a reason, they are ruthless and/or smart and of course use new tech to stay richer

Sure, there are different reasons, but the biggest reason is this: at least half of the rich are rich because of inheritance. I'm not sure how ruthless or smart one needs to be to come chargin' outta that privileged uterus. Here's how it was in 1997: not much different today.

http://www.faireconomy.org/press_room/1997/born_on_third_base_sources_of_wealth_of_1997_forbes_400

To be clear, I'm not saying that it's hopeless to use Bitcoin, P2P or the web or anything. I'm saying that overstating the power of these things does us all a disservice and that equal time and attention should be given to the real world we live in as these cool new systems arrive. As a writer, that's kind of what I'm here to do