> If there are no barriers to scale, eventually there are a small number of big winners.
There is technically no contradiction between the existence of a middle class and the existence of a small number of big winners.
> Perhaps the middle class was merely an artifact of the period between the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Revolution, and is now gone forever.
are software engineers the upper class then or are they part of the proletariat? What about doctors and lawyers?
Perhaps part of a new breed of middle class. Instead of a distance or management friction, this is a scaling friction. In order to scale, programmers are required. Maybe this correlates with doctors and lawyers, albeit a different friction, one of artificial scarcity (limits to who can attend medical/law school, and whatever certification is required afterwards).
Historically, the upper class was a class of rentiers who didn't have to "work" as such. Programmers would rather be part of the same class as rich merchants in the past.
There is technically no contradiction between the existence of a middle class and the existence of a small number of big winners.
> Perhaps the middle class was merely an artifact of the period between the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Revolution, and is now gone forever.
are software engineers the upper class then or are they part of the proletariat? What about doctors and lawyers?