Granted that human nature tends to mean these factors don't have a high enough weight, e.g. it's not the safest airplanes that sell the most, it's the cheapest ones that meet the regulations, and the regulations drive safety improvements, for the most part

When the group is "the most successful in the current system", it's not exclusionary / discriminatory or exploitable. Whether their success is due to luck or smarts or inheritance, they succeeded in the current system by definition, because there is only one system. Therefore, they can be asked to pay proportionally more to maintain it. Furthermore, the bargain "to pay less tax, be less successful" is not one that any rational actor would make. It's inherently fair.

The only part you could reasonably quibble with imo is using wealth as a measure of success, but since it is the currency that taxes deal in -- one alternative: government takes some of your children -- it's the one that makes the most ssense. Still, those in society that find some way to life satisfaction without accumulating wealth do have an advantage in the proposed system. Maybe that's something we should encourage?

- Revenue: Total revenue was $150.8 million in the third quarter fiscal 2021, an increase of 38% year-over-year. Subscription revenue was $144.1 million, an increase of 39% year-over-year, and services revenue was $6.7 million, an increase of 19% year-over-year.

- Gross Profit: Gross profit was $104.7 million in the third quarter fiscal 2021, representing a 69% gross margin, compared to 71% in the year-ago period. Non-GAAP gross profit was $108.6 million, representing a 72% non-GAAP gross margin.

- Loss from Operations: Loss from operations was $58.1 million in the third quarter fiscal 2021, compared to $38.7 million in the year-ago period. Non-GAAP loss from operations was $16.0 million, compared to $14.3 million in the year-ago period.

- Net Loss: Net loss was $72.7 million, or $1.22 per share, based on 59.4 million weighted-average shares outstanding in the third quarter fiscal 2021. This compares to $42.4 million, or $0.75 per share, based on 56.4 million weighted-average shares outstanding, in the year-ago period. Non-GAAP net loss was $18.2 million or $0.31 per share. This compares to $14.6 million, or $0.26 per share, in the year-ago period.

- Cash Flow: As of October 31, 2020, MongoDB had $966.8 million in cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments and restricted cash. During the three months ended October 31, 2020, MongoDB used $8.1 million of cash from operations, $5.6 million in capital expenditures and $1.2 million in principal repayments of finance leases, leading to negative free cash flow of $14.9 million, compared to negative free cash flow of $13.1 million in the year-ago period.

Although as a Brit myself it's amusing to consider myself some kind of atavistic archetype of humanity

The rest of the 500+ comments here do a good job arguing both sides of it so I won't rehash that. Just saying that I can see that AWS taking the free thing and using it as a loss-leader (i.e. no possible way Elastic can compete) could be construed as exploitation of the free thing.

PS. In a truly free market, there would be no enforcement of license violations except that which companies could muster themselves, i.e. Elastic would be able to hire mercenaries to loot and pillage AWS' data centres

I wouldn't necessarily say AWS' ability to use ES as a loss-leader for their Data Transfer charges is better for AWS's clients in the long-run. I can certainly see the argument for calling it exploitation.