You are correct that I place a substantial amount of faith in technological growth and deemphasize the role of politics. I was raised by engineers, so perhaps I approach social policy as essentially an engineering problem - one that can be solved simply by redirecting resources to their optimal use, and revising long-standing policies through a systemic framework. The truth is that I do not think coming up with the policy solutions is all that hard. When you live in a world where a total of 85 people control as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of humanity, and when the predominant source of that wealth is investment in economic waste, it does not exactly take a fucking astrophysicist to figure out what must be done.

The problem with the world is that people are doing too much thinking and too little doing. The pieces are there and the policy solutions have been plastered across every journal from here to Moscow. Yes, politics is slow and controlled by vested interests. But if the People connect with one other and demand what is rightfully ours, we will get it. Where free software fits into that picture is what I find confusing, since I do not see how the tools we already use are inadequate for reaching people and sparking dissent. See Egyptian Revolution of 2011.