Not really. It's just that the point you have to push people to get them to start pushing back on something tends to be quite high. And it's very different for different people on different topics.

In the past this wasn't such a big deal because businesses weren't so large or so frequently run by myopic sociopaths. Ebenezer Scrooge was running some small local business, not a globe spanning empire entangling itself with government and then imposing itself on everybody and everything.

Scrooge is a fictional person and Microsoft have been getting away with it since I’m alive with people hating it probably just as long. So I think GP definitely has a point.

Are you a fan of reading? Good character fiction is based on reality as understood at a time and a great way to get insights into how and what people think, particularly as it's precisely those believable portrayals that tend to 'stick' with society. For example even most of George R. R. Martin's tales are directly inspired by real things, very much living up to the notion that reality is much stranger than fiction! Or similarly, read something like Dune and the 60s leaks into it hard.

In modern times the tale of Scrooge probably wouldn't really resonate, nor 'stick', because we transitioned to a culture of worshiping wealth, consumerism, and materialism. See (relevant to this topic) how many people defend unethical actions by claiming that fiduciary duty precludes any value beyond greed. In the time of Scrooge this was not the case, and so it was a more viable cautionary tale that strongly resonated.

I think we would agree on a lot of things over a beer or beverage of your choice.

I also think that we as a (globalised?) culture have decided that money trumps everything.

But I don’t think that it’s the “fault” of single sociopaths or big companies; it’s some inherent flaw in human intelligence - we’re just not equipped to make smart long-term decisions or deal with a vast alien intelligence such as “the market”.

Scrooges tale just resonates strongly - why else would it be still so popular that basically everyone know it - we just aren’t able to stop this machine and it will grind on until our species is wiped from the planet.

Not that it matters too much for you and me - but a thousand years more of this? I can’t imagine what that would look like.

Edit: you ever read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair? I don’t think being greedy above all morals is a new thing, it’s always been there. We just “scaled up”