You have struck upon what 99.9% of the people miss about technology. We hear discussions about inflation and how much it is jumping. Yet then we hear about jobs being lost, which is deflationary.
What is not discussed is the fact that standards of living go up.
This deserves discussion. How we are defining standard of living as a society is where the conflict lies, I think. I see people living on the street with cell phones. Yes, they have access to all the wealth of human knowledge, but when the robots took their jobs making those phones they lost the ability to afford a place to live. I think most people find this trade reasonably unacceptable. How we distribute the wealth generated from automation needs to be addressed, but I don't really know what the solution is. I'd like to see it discussed more, though. It feels like it's getting close to a point where the majority won't be able to keep up, which means crime goes up as people try to survive. That gets more cops and people in prison. I don't want to live the life of a factory farm animal in my final years. I suspect no one else does either.
Web 3.0 is the answer.
The major debate is corporations or government. Most of the discussion falls along these lines. Private ownership of the means of production versus public. It is basically the old capitalism versus communism.
To me, there is a third option, communal ownership that comes from having stake in the network which generates the means of production.
It is why I am always going on about Web 3.0 data, AI, and AI agents tied to blockchain. It is crucial.
Yes, I completely agree, but I'm more concerned with how to get there. Everything is already in private hands. The food we eat, the water we drink, everything we use in daily life, and, likely someday, the air we breath. How do we pry all that away and institute a policy of everyone getting there own piece of it to grow?
History shows that it has to be taken.
People with power tend not to willingly give it up. There are many who benefit from the existing systems and keeping them the way they are. So, unless people grow a backbone, i.e starting to do things differently, we will simply keep empowering those who have the power.
As I said, even something like posting on here as opposed to X or Meta is a big step. It feeds more data to the blockchain, something that is open to everyone. Data is the basic component to the digital world (if we exclude energy). The tentacles of the digital world are only expanding, bridging into the real world.
Who has the control? Unless people decide, Big Tech is only going to gain in strength. They are already in entertainment, news/information, and food.