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Maybe we should rephrase the slogan to “you’ll appear to own things you don’t actually control and be happy.”

So where does this leave us? We’re on our own.

As a result, a significant percentage of households that are considered middle-class are one misfortune away from insolvency.

The net result is America’s working class is up against the wall, maxed out.

Once we’ve made “digital visibility” the primary source of our identity, status and self-respect, we’ve doomed ourselves to wandering, compass-less, in a vast artificial wasteland.

No wonder so many people devote themselves to curating an artificial digital representation of themselves that they reckon is worthy of recognition and status.

Mere mortals are left in a hopeless situation. In response, they’re withdrawing from the competition en masse.

Sound of coins rattling in a battered bowl.

That this level of incendiary outrage has seeped into the mainstream media tells us that
the bill for America’s gluttony of inequality is long overdue.

Parsing geopolitics is fun but our attention is better directed to the limits and second-order effects of legacy systems in each of the rival states.

Behind the facade of normalization, even high-income lifestyles have been ghetto-ized.

This is why those who understand these dynamics are getting out, even though the city was their home.

Those seeking to buy a house as shelter for their household can’t compete with the wealthy seeking assets to snap up and hoard for appreciation.

It’s nice to anticipate sunny weather, but it’s a good idea to carry an umbrella just in case the forecasts prove overly optimistic.

That real harm will result from the use of AI tools is a given.

Rather than attempt to evade Caesar’s reach, a better strategy might be to ‘go gray’: blend in, appear average.

We need to start thinking outside the current system, which has no solutions.

The expediencies and policy extremes have yet to be explored, much less exploited.

If the leadership chooses happy-story PR and toothless reforms for show in the hopes it will all blow over, these subterfuges have the potential to push dissatisfaction beyond the point of control.