It's becoming more and more obvious how little power is left in "the democratic process". We're slowly moving all actual decision making to authoritarian structures while the responsibility is still supposed to reside with the government, it's not a sustainable situation and the solution is fairly simple imo.

Just declare free software to be infrastructure. It is something everyone needs but no one wants to pay for so we just make everyone pay some amount of their income towards maintaining it (as well as other infrastructure) oh wait I just invented taxes - yes I'm from Europe btw.

When a company owns a platform (like an operating system) it becomes the government of that space, a position that should not be held by a for-profit entity. I know people in the US aren't so fond of taxes and tbh who can blame them when all the money goes to three letter agencies, war mongering and violence. The infrastructure (health care system, electric grid, education...) is in dire need of a reboot meanwhile the mega-corporations just build their own (competitive advantage). The fact is that the classic solution to the tragedy of the commons is to make a "democratic government" (hopefully this class of institution can be redefined in a positive way with computing) which will then regulate exploits and collect taxes for maintenance of infrastructure, all in order to keep society in equilibrium so that we may live.

I don't see how these behemoth creatures we deem too big to fail due to the short term implications of such an event can reasonably justify their existence when they are causing such long term harm to our environment (both metaphorical and physical). They are nothing but fiction and the authors are running out of material, I think it is time to face facts.

Sorry for the rant, it got off topic but I felt a need to put this into writing.