Firstly, examples of governments that have any people voted in at all are cherry-picked. Around the world, there are governments that are not voted in, or are "voted" in by a sham process which only has the external appearances of democracy.
Secondly, in democracies, a fairly common pattern is that the government consists of some seats that are voted in (parliament) plus some that are appointed (senate). The power is divided accordingly. (A minor point is that it is not uncommon for the leader of the elected party to appoint people for the uppermost staff positions: a so-called "cabinet" or whatever.)
Thirdly, government in the broad sense includes not only the parliament and senate political structure but all of the institutions of the government that actually get various things done throughout the governed region, and all the levels of bureaucracy employing large numbers of people. All of that staff is not elected; they are just people hired into positions and they generally keep those positions across government changes. That bureaucracy has considerable power of its own; not every single decision they make which affects you goes through a parliamentarian that you elected!
For one, as kazinator said in the sibling comment, even in the best democracies this is only true of a small percentage of government jobs - there are many powerful agencies and influential staff positions that are not elected and therefore not subject to the oversight of the people over whom that power is exercised.
Two, yes, many of the highest profile, and most powerful, positions are elected. And in practice, over time, this means that these positions have selected for people who are 'electable' - which has itself over time come to mean people who can raise huge amounts of campaign money. This is a deeply corruptible situation, if indeed it is not already deeply corrupted.
I agree with the idea that open public oversight is a powerful corrective, and is a major difference between private organizations and public ones with effective means for perceiving and removing corrupt officials. I think it is highly questionable to what degree the latter describes our current situation in much even of the democratized West.
If you set up a server to respond to only people you choose, it's on you to make sure it's only people you choose that use it. Then you can make any restrictions you want and invalidate access for anyone who goes against your rules
If you believe accessing a URL manually, incrementing a number in a URL, or using wget is a hack, yes. At least you'd be in agreement with the US Dept. of Justice in that.
The web is open. If you put your a chair out in a public square with a sign on that back that says, "Only paying members can sit." don't be surprised when someone random sits in it.
This puts words in the mouth of the poster that the poster didn't say. The Lyft API is authenticated so it's definitely not like accessing a URL manually, using wget, or or incrementing a number. You have to sign up, get an account and then you can use it.
A better analogy would putting your chair in a private room with a locked door and sign on the door that says ask management for access to the chair. Anyone who breaks in to use that chair definitely knows they aren't supposed to be there.
In other words, the door was locked and you gave the key to a guy, who then peed on the carpet. While that was impolite, he was definitely not guilty of breaking and entering.
If you gave the key to a guy so they could watch your dog, they're still guilty of theft if they steal your stuff.
Also did Lyft know they were giving the key to Uber? If someone impersonates your dog sitter to get the key to your house, they still did not have permission to enter your house so it's still breaking and entering.
I don't know that it would ever be stated so explicitly, but at the end of the day there's absolutely nothing anybody can do about the EDTX courts without major legislation, so there's no news there.
Bezos is effective because his company engages in illegal anti-competitive practices. Amazon either breaks even or loses money, and the reason is because they have incredibly low prices. Why do they have incredibly low prices? Because they can, because they have the venture capital, and because others can't compete with those prices without that venture capital.
We're quickly reaching the point where without venture capital, there's no way to enter any market anymore. You can't start a company and just produce good products worth paying for. You have to have enough VC to be able to withstand sustained market pressure from those who do have it and can spend you out of the market by lowering their prices.
There's a reason that these practices are illegal.
>Oh, you mean that you can't build a multi-billion dollar company overnight without venture capital?
No, you can't build a large company ever without venture capital. Money begets money. The only way that any company will ever be large in the future is if some other existing billionaire decides they think they deserve funding.
Technology is a lever that can hugely amplify differences in capability.
A 10% skill difference between two people with shovels will result in a much smaller output difference than a 10% skill difference between two operators of heavy duty earth moving equipment.
With software, this dynamic occurs in the extreme, as the cost to run a software program is so low. A hour of unskilled human labor cost hundreds or thousands of times more than an hour of computation. And the quantity and complexity of output from a single hour of computation is rapidly increasing.
Edit: reworked the comment to make my point much more clearly
Part of being effective is leveraging your abilities via managing other people. An effective manager can make 10 people each perform 10x more effectively when working towards a goal. You could argue then that one person's effectiveness increases the whole organisation's effectiveness 100x
Of course with bad managers it can easily go the same amount in the other direction, but it seems that Bezos has extremely effectively leveraged his abilities in management and built a very successful company because of that.
But the second person isn't being productive. The lathe is being productive. In Amazon's case, the person actually pushing the button on the lathe can barely make rent.
