Those who can count, and those who can't.

There are 10 kinds of people. Those who think in binary and those who don't.

There are two kinds of people, those who classify people into two kinds of people and those who don't.

Adjusted for inflation, or seen as a percentage of GDP, or as a multiple of median income of the country etc, Bill Gates fortune is dwarfed by the rich men of early 1900s. I think Andrew Carnegie, when he sold USSteel for some 450 million dollars in 190X, he got 2% of the GDP of the country or something. John D Rockefeller became richer, but the country also grew faster than his personal fortune and he did not top that percentage, if my memory serves me right.

There is nothing wrong with any one person amassing that level of wealth, and it might even serve as a motivation for lots of people. But the society has to be on guard. But SCOTUS has ruled money is speech and rich people can out shout poor people, that would be damaging to free exchange of ideas. Even if the top rich men did not care, they have many hangers on, suck ups and brown nosers. They might get the confidence of these rich people, do enormous collateral damage to the society in their quest to peel of a measly million or two from these billionaires.

Many of our academic institutions are actually running on very little money comparatively, newspapers and other such institutions are struggling. So some rich dude dropping a million dollars a year could corrupt and poison such foundations of democracy easily, sometimes without even meaning to.

Basically poor people have only one thing to sell, their labor. Well, their honor and kidneys too but that is not the norm. Once labor loses its value, you have 90% of the humanity with nothing to sell. They are not going to simply fold up and die. They are coming at you with pitchforks.

Bushitting about the future sitting as tenured professor is something robots will never be able to do as well as humans. This prof is the grand example.

... King Canute?

I can tell you got your "degree" from an on line diploma mill because you make grand conclusions based on one personal anecdote. The online diploma might get some respect in the first year or two. Once the system gets gamed, and it attracts free loaders looking for easy degree, its value will plummet. You might not be called for an interview if your degree was from an on line diploma mill.

It is not plagiarism. An actual human being did actual work. Except the "enrolled" student at Penn State was partying his way to glory, his paid Jeeves in India who happens to be an underpaid assistant professor in a college does the home work. You can't detect it by any algorithm.

It got redistributed, that is all.

It is all well and good when you want to learn something over the net. But if you start giving degrees over the net, the system will be gamed almost instantly. Already in traditional universities, there is cheating going on. There are people in India with advanced degrees willing to do your homework for you for ridiculously low prices. Now they will do your entire coursework for you on a turn key basis. Send in a cheque, and they do all the work and you get the degree.

Creating a company costs some 150$ or so. Can Tesla Motor Corporation set up a wholly owned subsidiary Tesla Motor Sales and Service Corporation of North Carolina and sell it through them? Corporations are people, but it is lot harder (and more fun) to create real people than corporations.

Napoleon's troops in Egypt were using the Sphinx for target practice. But it is not always racist. Chinese have been quarrying their great wall for bricks for ages. Many Italian homes were built using recycled bricks from the aqueducts. Stone tablets inscribed with royal decrees being used as washing stones...

Most juries take a dim view of porn and porn makers, their eyes glaze over and fall asleep if you try to explain the intricacies of copyright laws, but they do understand slander. They might get sued for slander and get into very hot water.

Tea bagger or someone who invested his life savings in bitcoin?

In this particular case, the net gain to the society is mostly around the hips, upper thighs and lower bellies. USA is one of the few countries in the world where obesity is correlated wit poverty, not wealth. The super cheap corn, and HFCS contribute to that a lot. And corn became super cheap because it was engineered to be roundup ready.

Wait till that gene transfers to the weeds. Then there will be famine and all the gain the society would make it catastrophic.

Whatever said and done in public, these college drop outs, they are a thick bunch. They stand up for one another.