We have an unhelpful cognitive dissonance when it comes to bringing big companies and powerful peopl

We have an unhelpful cognitive dissonance when it comes to bringing big companies and powerful people to justice: We mistakenly think it matters when the big guns get busted. I don't think it does.

I was confronted with this discomfiting truth again reading something a reporter I'm friends with, Timothy Lee, wrote this week — an epic rundown of the legal decision against a tech company that you probably have heard of but barely think about: Qualcomm.

It left me wondering how much Qualcomm profited in the end. Sure we got a destructive business practice stamped out, but odds are whatever costs they face to their bottom line now is dwarfed by the money they've made by establishing a privileged position for themselves in the mobile industry and strangling competitors.

See also: the originators that set up all those poor people with mortgages that yielded the financial crisis. They sold those loans on and moved into mansions. They've been sitting pretty ever since.

On a related noted, tonight I was hanging out with my coworkers and talking about how unlikely that most blockchains will ever be able to sustain their decentralized security models on fees alone down the road. But of course that isn't really the goal. Whether a lot of these creators admit it to themselves or not, the real goal is to get the initial instigators and their cronies very rich — come what may.

If subsequent innovation proves their vision right in the long term, great! That's good for the ego.

But if it doesn't? They'll still be rich.