* Yeah, there's a feeling of malaise, but if you look at e.g. surveys of trust in government (Pew, OECD, etc.), it's a fairly slow decline over decades and the end point is that most people are still fairly okay with how government, education, media, the judiciary etc. are run in many democratic countries and if you look at overall happiness (Eurostat etc.) then that seems to be fairly stable or even going up a little bit.
* Most artists do get little reward for all the benefit they provide, but we can't have everyone be artists so there has to be some way to disincentivize people from becoming an artist, no?
* Big banks and big governments suck, fine, but compared to what standard or compared to what point in time?
* The gap between the haves and have-nots keeps widening. OK, that one's probably true.
* Software stacks keep getting more bloated, but in exchange programming has gotten a lot easier, which seems like a wonderful trade-off.
* Governments like the European Union are absurdly complex, but overall it seems to have been a net boon to the countries that have joined it: travel is easier, paying is easier, your rights as a consumer are better protected than ever, etc.
* App Stores are pretty great for most people, even though 30% is a bit absurd.
* The Bay Area is not the world.
There's probably a lot about modern society that needs solving, but the first step has to be to think really long and hard about precisely what does suck, why it sucks, whether it can be better.