We have very different views of progress I guess. When I think of people who changed the world, my mind doesn't automatically jump to Elon Musk or Andrew Carnegie.

I think of hard-won victories like Canada instituting Universal Health Care (starting in the less-known province of Saskatchewan), or people marching for Civil Rights and Labor Rights, all the while experts told them those things were unattainable and unrealistic. I think many people in those movements understood the system, just not in the way that the system approved of being understood.

Martin Luther King Jr. has a great line about this:

> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I think the equivalent to that "white moderate" today is the person who thinks that anyone rocking the boat and making demands today, like Swartz, is "naive". They wisely and patiently wait for a benevolent billionaire to save the day instead. The fact that they, too, benefit from the status quo and find the current situation very tolerable is a mere coincidence.

I hope, since you freely imply that the absent Swartz was naive, that you have no problem with me calling you naive as well.

--

edit: I too enjoy discussing things, but as soon as the conversation branches out it gets a bit messy.

I just want to say that it's a deliberate mistake to judge past movements from their white-washed idealized educational versions. It disconnects them from the messy reality of activism, and from their current-day representatives.

Replies below are saying basically "The Civil Rights leaders acted decisively and with wisdom, compared with this haphazard unorganized random act today". At the time, this is how this was portrayed by detractors:

https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e...

You are welcome to look through MLK Jr.'s correspondence too:

http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence

People calling his movement all over the place, erratic, etc. It's fascinating. Many, many people telling him and his ilk they were unrealistic and jumping the gun with ineffective direct action. A complete erasure of the dynamics MLK had with Malcolm X (good cop, bad cop). The FBI also conspired to try to get him to commit suicide, by blackmailing him (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...).

If the future Swartz was aiming for ever becomes reality, he will be remembered as a pioneer.