and can pretty easily be displaced
Except they're all turning into cartels. Classic example: Ma Bell was all busted up, and step by step all the baby Bells got permission to unite with their little neighbors, and now we have a few corporations that have divided the phone service into market segments, all of which have Bell heritage. Some markets, like say grocery stores and many emerging products, definitely still compete, but wherever there's big money, increasingly there is collusion and shell-game competition. Cheers for Elon Musk, though.
that companies, like people, need to take responsibility for their actions
You can trash the US all you want, but there are a limited number of countries in the world that would even allow a conference like Def Con or Black Hat.
Maybe the US allows these kinds of activities because there's so much power here that it's not perceived as much of a threat. I doubt that things will be so free and open here when we use up all of our natural wealth.
It's sensationalism for nerds.
New
The defining characteristic of the serf class was that people born serfs would live their entire lives as serfs and their children would too. There was no pathway to move up classes.
It's all about the rate of change. Upward mobility is falling in the USA like a rock from the sky. Compare the total public debt to the ever-growing income disparity:
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/m...
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/file...
These things do not bode well for those not born into at least the upper middle class, and specific examples to the contrary only speak to the legal and socioeconomic possibility of moving upwards, not the difficulty.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
