Pandora papers: biggest leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich
I&#x27;ve wondered a lot about this with the Snowden and Wikileaks stuff, and I wonder about it with this topic too: the most salient part of this story, and about Panama Papers etc. before it, is how small a dent it seems to make in the discourse, and in the world as a result. At best, these stories get a good chunk of the airwaves for a couple of weeks, and then it&#x27;s on to the next thing.<p>In history books, you get a sense sometimes that there were eras in which stuff like this sent people into the streets in rages. In which governments were voted out or overthrown, in which meaningful legislative responses were made. Or, you know, riots.<p>But I look around after reading those books and wonder what makes us so different. It&#x27;s weird to live in this era. I read a Guardian article like this and look at the staggering sums, this entire &quot;shadow financial system&quot; devoted solely to one notion: <i>I&#x27;m going to take as much as I can, in whatever way that I can, regardless of legality, and I&#x27;m going to give nothing back because I sincerely don&#x27;t believe I owe anything back -- oh, and I&#x27;m going to keep it all a secret.</i><p>And I look around and not only don&#x27;t see any riots; I sometimes get the feeling that people are actually envious, sometimes even respectful of the ingenuity it takes to manufacture these schemes. It&#x27;s tough.<p>The only silver lining I can think of is what all the secrecy says: <i>we&#x27;re not just doing this in the open because we&#x27;re still afraid we&#x27;ll end up like the Romanovs if too many of you get angry</i>. I think that while they&#x27;re still afraid, there&#x27;s still some hope.<p>EDIT: Reading some replies. It&#x27;s weird to have to say this to such a smart crowd, but I&#x27;m not advocating riots as such; I&#x27;m advocating a substantive response. Of course riots are &quot;bad&quot; in some sense, but my observation is really about the odd contrast between the huge size of the &quot;stimulus&quot; (theft of wealth, much of it <i>yours</i>, on a staggering scale) and the tiny size of the &quot;response&quot; (newspaper articles and web forum discussions), especially when contrasted with other historical periods. So while I wouldn&#x27;t &quot;want a riot&quot;, seeing one would make me go &quot;well, that makes sense&quot;.