Sadly, in this world you accomplish nothing for being nice and considerate. If you want to leave an impact (anything - a new invention, a new product, a new idea, anything with impact to contemporary culture) you have to bully yourself to the top, including stealing ideas and screwing people over, as well as to exploit people. All “great” people who accomplished something did that: Gates (Microsoft), Jobs (Apple), Musk (Tesla, Twitter), Bezos (Amazon), Thiel (PayPal, Palantir), Zuckerberg (Meta), Huffman (Reddit), as well as many politicans. It’s a personality treat.

Here is a video that explains the issue, albeit it focuses on designers:

In the future there will be only one age-verified person left, who downloads every day and distributes porn on thumbdrives. Then, in order to “protect the children”, some group of concerned Karens will enforce a ban on USB ports.

Jesus only in Bavaria. But otherwise you’re right.

An anecdote: Back when I was studying we had the opportunity to gain a temporary full version of a specialised software. All there was to do was to proof that one is a legit student. We had to submit our proof of enrollment to the software’s manufacturer. The only way to do so was to submit it via fax! It coldn’t be done with email, as they told us on the telephone hotline. The software was a German product. We already have been overtaken by the rest of the world (regarding the IT sector).