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We need a new definition of Progress, and a reset of the mythology guiding our descent into “Anti-Progress”.

Or we can let the bubble implode under its own weight and have a plan ready to clean house when the dust settles.

The core skill going forward–frugality–is largely a forgotten skillset. Time to get busy while we still have time.

This has now reached the point that corporations and institutions are in effect “mining what remains of our trust” to boost profits / private gains.

That most of us live in a low-value, low-trust economy of shoddy goods and services hidden beneath high-tech frictionless, faceless transactions is not recognized.

Those few who grasp the crisis in its entirety have been marginalized, and those who are left are drifting downstream, unable to move the mass of self-interested inertia even if they wanted to.

The system has reached the limits of its adaptability. Everything else is entertainment.

Loss of social trust has consequences.

If we want social / economic renewal, we have to make it straightforward for anyone willing to adopt the values and habits of “thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work” to climb the ladder to middle class security.

This raises another question: how will the deflation of the Everything Bubble play out?

Is an economy based on the wealth effect generated by front-running the front-runners really that stable?

Here’s a quick outline of a “rich guys Internet”, one where it costs money to participate but the payoff is a 10-fold improvement in the user experience.

Looking back, 2024 may well be viewed as insignificant compared to what lies ahead.

The younger generations expecting to inherit the immense wealth piled up by Boomers in home equity and stocks may be in for a shock.

Without being aware of it, we’ve privatized “free” speech in the form of digital monopolies.

Self-serving special interests are delighted to fill the void when local journalism disappears.

Markets are manipulated, yes, but they’re still structures of tightly bound, self-organizing complexity which lend themselves to sudden non-linear collapses.