Usually, throughout the history of humankind, there have been different kinds of technological revolutions that completely reshaped the very idea of productivity we knew at the time (e.g., the printing press, the agrarian revolution, the weapons industry, etc.).

Now, while watching All the President’s Men, I realized something I notice often from movies of the ’70s: people were getting shit done, and while they were doing this, the “system” worked. For bad and for good, of course… Inequality wasn’t that bad either way, and it was possible to make your way through life.

Everyone seemed to have “their eyes on the game,” trying to achieve fame, glory, a career, and the trust of public institutions, which was good enough to sustain a life of productivity, prosperity, industrial corridors, and infrastructure—just before it all went to hell with Watergate, MKUltra, Condor, etc.

According to the World Bank, having a high confidence score with an institution not only means that the institution will do its job better, but also more effectively: spending less and doing more, in a sense.

Now, let’s play a game: imagine you are a person in your forties reading the newspaper right now, and you come across with Watergate 2025, you read the scandal and what would you think the government will do?

Maybe, for the simplicity of it, let’s even say this with examples:

When your goverment turn a blind eye on the worst opioid crises of the modern era?

Or when your goverment allow construction of luxury instead of affordable housing?

Or everyone else richer than you are not paying their taxes in Europe?

What should we do when a Facebook leak exposes users’ private data to hackers?

Or when a company we know, such as Ikea, removes thousands of acres of forest in Brazil?

Or what happened with VW and Dieselgate?

Beside these nitpick news, we can of course say governments will do what they can do to prevent this from happening and in the end, most of the people involved won’t get away with it, but hey, probably they will pay a fine and get away with it.

The only thing Purdue Pharma did with the scandals of oxycontin was:

In 2019, Purdue Pharma agreed to settle and pay 270 million dollars to the state of Oklahoma that would go towards addiction research and treatment

Only 270 millon dollars from an estimate of 12 billion dollars.

You get my point.

Remember, this is all the things “we know” about it, many more things will discovered and I can even see a potential Ozempic scandal in the future.

Nepal—which, by the way, has a terrific blog post by a friend about this scandal while he was there. Of course, people took to the streets and claimed power back because of corruption. But now what? Their politicians fled with the money to Dubai, and they’re probably laughing about it with other billionaires.

Serbia’s students were on the streets—clashes, fires, destroyed houses, impossible transportation—while… politicians do what?

France is on the edge of collapse, so what?

The Israel–Palestine conflict is simply hilarious to even think about, and the mental gymnastics some people have to do to justify it are simply out of this world.

You see the pattern here?

Anywhere you go with it: it’s chaos, it’s collapse, and the most important emotions are anger and despair.

It’s what feeds the moguls: war.

But, hey, this is the world we live in right now, right?

There are wars everywhere—proxy wars, real wars, decoy wars, etc…

But hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds.

Don’t criticize.

Everyone else is performing a “dance” while going to work for Monsanto…

But let’s not blame the people as in the quiz show scandals. We just need to obey and satisfy, otherwise we will perish; who will feed us?

You just keep on with your day and try to be as productive as possible while aligning yourself with what you read most often while you’re on the toilet…

The industrial complex is in decay, but now China—who a few years back followed the tracks of human degradation with things like Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun—is taking control of everything.

Meanwhile, politicians in America kill each other, and it seems McCarthyism is back again in the streets.

I can even see Trumbo 2 in cinemas in 2030.

What’s on us now, to build something that has meaning?

What’s on us to understand that we are special?

Maybe a few years back we thought governments would carry us over, but even now the European Union is still fighting 20-year-old problems while politicians decide which kind of plastic we should not use in bottles—because hey! that’s even more important than China bombarding your market with cheaper and more harmful products.

Wellfare is simply not enough nor sustainable.

Reading through Breakneck—which, by the way, is an excellent introduction to why China is beating everyone else in the world (a bit of propaganda since it does not mention slavery as “slavery”)—I realized that what divides us now is simply not having any meaning at all… China has it, despite all the moral issues it could cause in the West.

We are not slaves, it’s not about that—it’s that the institutions that should protect us are protecting them. The game is rigged.

Institutions have failed us, and it’s clear to the world now that this is simply not admissible.

Where I’m from, all institutions are dead anyway. Nobody trusts the public anymore, even if it’s from the government—which is common. But I believe this virus has now spread across the world.

Maybe on purpose.

If institutions won’t be there to save us, corporations will. And don’t let me use an Alien reference here, but boy oh boy, don’t you ever trust a monkey with billions.