> I'm much more convinced Microsoft wants to do stuff like sell cloud subscriptions at the click of a button in the desktop than Microsoft gives a crap about those subscriptions being tied to a consistent account ID. The latter certainly sounds evil, but not in a way that particularly helps Microsoft over their competitors.

Bless your cotton socks, you had it in the first part MS wants to sell stuff, but then you failed to realise that by tying people to a consistent account ID builds a profiling on them that lets MS serve targeted advertisements, through Edge.

> Being betrayed gives you every right to be angry, but it is what you do with that anger that matters.

I am not angry. What I was ultimately describing was referred to as a 'social contract'. Like a regular contract, once it is not fulfilled, you cannot rely upon it ever again.

To illustrate this concept better I will explain it by example:

If you hire someone to fix your roof, you pay them, and they don't fix it; then a few months later you re-hired them again to fix your roof, and again they take your money and refuse to fix it.

Who is ultimately responsible for you losing money the second time around?

I would argue, (and so would their lawyers if you sued them), that you had a legal duty to "mitigate losses", and as you didn't learn the first time, you are responsible for throwing good money over bad, not them. You knew they didn't honour their contracts, so it was on you that you re-engaged with them.

That is not anger, that is common sense, and a basic common law legal concept.

I can only speak for the society I live in, Australia. I'm glad you perceive yours (wherever that is) to be doing much better. I hope you use that privilege to enrich your fellow man instead of just bragging online.

Of course, anyone always has the option to volunteer to make the world a better place; but the idea that anyone has a responsibility, or moral obligation to help a society that is actively hostile towards them is insanity.

I would say that one has as much responsibility to society, as that society accepts for the individual.

As a previously homeless veteran, I'd say that is zero. Why should intellectuals, or in fact anyone have any duty to help a system that doesn't help them?

Now I know a lot of people will grandstand and say that if people just started taking on responsibility, then that would improve the system so that it would help more, but again, I did my part and was promised to be taken care of by society with its fingers crossed behind its back.