Our Vaunted Technology Is Rubbish

This is Essay #6 in the series Truth Be Told.

It's extremely difficult to set aside all the preconceptions we've been given about how the world works, and even more difficult to look at the world around us with a gaze untainted by ideas borrowed from others.

It's equally difficult to recognize these borrowed ideas as beliefs rather than facts.

Let's consider the possibility that all the ideas we've inherited about technology are beliefs, not facts, and these beliefs no longer map what we actually experience. Rather than mediate our experiences with a promotional golly-gee-whiz-this-is-wunnerful filter, let's report our direct, unfiltered experiences.

This is my report of recent experiences with everyday technology, which is ceaselessly presented as awe-inspiring Progress. The unfiltered reality is it's rubbish.

Let's start with X.com, home of AI software Grok. Out of the blue, I start getting promotional emails from X.com addressed to an imposter, who seems to have used my email to open an imposter X.com account.

A human could spot this imposter in three seconds, yet the immense "intelligence" of Grok failed to recognize an obvious imposter account. How difficult is it to compare images, likenesses, email addresses, etc. and note that the new account is a copy of an authentic "blue check" account?

I dutifully filled out X.com's form reporting the imposter, URLs of their posts, etc. X.com responded with demands for more data / busy-work / unpaid shadow-work. I wrote back that they already had more than enough information to delete the imposter account, so please stop pestering me and do your job.

Eventually I received an email addressed to the imposter that "your account has been deleted."

This is not intelligence, this is a parody of intelligence. It's rubbish. A truly intelligent system would have flagged the imposter immediately. So sorry if I hurt Grok's feelings.

Next up, Xfinity. My Xfinity email was hijacked. This is not the first time; Xfinity's security is Swiss Cheese. So I dutifully call the "customer service" number which activates an AI Agent. What can I help you with? My Xfinity email account has been hacked. I'm sorry you're having problems. Would you like an email or text link to our upgraded email service?

No matter what voice prompts I gave the AI agent, all I got was this endless loop. This is a parody of customer service and AI. It's rubbish. Eventually I recalled that Xfinity has a security-service-only phone number, and I spoke with a human being who walked me through the recovery process, which was complicated by the extremely poor design of Xfinity's website.

Arriving at twilight in a city unknown to us, we used booking.com to scan motel options. We were prompted to log in, but given the rarity of our using the site, we didn't have the PW. So we clicked the "reset password" link, which promised to send a link via email. No email ever arrived, even when we used a second email address.

So we clicked the "log in using a different method" link, and were presented with the same screen: click here and we'll send you an email--which never arrived, and no, it wasn't in the spam folder.

Next, we tried to open an account with Wyndham, which didn't like our password, triggering another endless loop, with one twist: the small print indicated that the "reset password" email would be sent within 5 days.

Big Tech is cutting down 250,000 trees in Finland to build more data centers, and Corporate America needs days to send an email that is functionally instantaneous? Once again, this is a parody of functional software / "technology." (A reset email did arrive several days later.)

Google Maps (GM) now integrates Google's AI software Gemini. Here's my experience: it's rubbish. Out of the blue, GM's female voice instructed me to leave the highway going east to 505 heading north. No explanation, just a command, which I ignored because it made no sense. This was the first evidence that GM was now rubbish.

As we attempted to locate a motel, GM directed us on convoluted routes down unlit side streets with instructions like "turn right on Monroe Street." Well, that's just fine in daylight, but it's night, and the streets aren't lit, so we can't see any street signs.

If Gemini were even slightly intelligent, wouldn't it "know" that it was night and these streets were dark / unlit? Eventually I figured out that GM's default settings are--cue the laugh track--to "choose routes that save fuel and time," an absurdist parody given that GM's nonsensically convoluted intructions caused us to waste fuel and time.

After this fiasco, Google Search provided convoluted instructions on how to reset the user parameters of GM to limit its convoluted routes that were supposed to "save fuel and time" but accomplished the exact opposite. Wouldn't common sense suggest the default algorithm be one that selects the easiest to follow, most direct route using primary roadways, and let the user navigate endless menus to choose other algorithms prioritizing fuel and time savings?

How hard would it be to program GM's voice to ask, "would you like a convoluted detour that might take four minutes off your six-hour drive?" This isn't intelligence, it's a parody of intelligence.

I've owned Honda vehicles for 45 years. When we needed to rent a car, we chose a 2026 Accord with less than 8,000 miles on the odometer--essentially a brand-new car. The engine and other basics were fine, but the software was rubbish. Anecdotally, this doesn't appear to be unique to Honda--all vehicle software is rubbish, an accretion of legacy software larded up with layers of so-called "smart software."

I know others would just ignore the nag messages on the distractingly large audio screen, but seeing "would you like to activate Apple Car-Play?" for the 127th time made me think, how hard would it be to add a few lines of code:
1. Is this a rental car, yes or no.
2. If yes, what is the duration of the current rental.
3. Once the customer clicks "no," they don't want to activate Apple Car-Play, do not display the message again.

In a sad parody of droid devotion, the software kept scanning for previous rental customer's iPhones. It also informed us every time we started the car that one USB port was for charging only, and the other was a data port that also charged the connected device.

The software hallucinated various conditions. For one stretch, the software notified us that one of the "driver assist" sensors was not working and needed to be cleaned. I did nothing, and the problem disappeared the next time we drove off.

Then it notified us there was a problem with one of the tire's pressure, via the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). I had a digital tire pressure gauge, which revealed the tire pressure hadn't changed at all, much less 25%. But to get rid of the nag message, I had to go through a stupidly complicated set of menus controlled by the 27 buttons and scroll knobs on the steering wheel. (OK, slight exaggeration on the number.)

As usual, the instructions delivered by Search didn't match the reality of the steering wheel, despite searching for this specific year and model.

Then the digital display of speed, fuel, etc. inexplicably went dark. Multiple searches online revealed that covering a sensor in the dash near the windshield results in "permanently setting the display" on dark. Maybe I slid a notebook up on the dash for a moment. Whatever the cause, it was brief, and no beeps, squawks or alarms alerted us to "NEVER PLACE ANYTHING OVER THE HIDDEN SENSOR."

Note the word "permanently." This meant that the usual fixes--restoring defaults, brightness controls, etc.--didn't fix the problem. Fixing this failure required more convoluted navigation through menus controlled by the 27 arrows, buttons and scroll-knobs on the steering wheel.

This is a parody of utility and value. Any attempt to argue that all this software is "creating value" is itself a parody--a rather pathetic one at that.

The driver's digital display features a little representation of the car. When you press the brake pedal, the tail lights on the little digital car flash red. What is the point of showing the driver a digital cartoon of the car they're driving? Are we supposed to drive the car, or look at the little car on the screen? Or is the little car on the screen for a backseat driver?

One wonders what data is being collected by the software. The sensors pick up the speed limit signs, but comically get it wrong when the highway is paralleled by a local lane with a posted speed limit of 15 MPH. So the digital display showed I was driving 65 MPH in a 15 MPH zone. Woah. I'm sure whatever entity gets the vehicle's data will have fun with that bit.

Last but not least, Google Search delivered completely wrong supposedly up-to-date information about national and state parks. All flavors of search are untrustworthy; you have to go to the source sites to confirm what "search" reports as "fact."

All this is fun amd games, but there are serious issues hidden beneath rubbish software's farce and parody of utility, value and "intelligence." If drivers start depending on "driver assist" functions, and the sensor or system fails, it won't announce it has failed; you simply won't hear the "beep" when you pull in front of a semi in the blind spot, and that's how you end up in the morgue.

Our 1998 Civic still works just fine. Sure, it's needed routine maintenance and repairs, but it's still a fully functional vehicle 28 years after it rolled off the assembly line. What are the odds that today's software-dependent vehicles will still be functioning with only routine maintenance in 28 years?

Based on the rubbish quality of software, I would put the odds at zero. The fantasy of True Believers is that AI will correct all the rubbish software, but software engineers are reporting that AI is part of the problem, not the solution. The kludgy mess of legacy and AI-coded script isn't attuned to maintenance, much less self-correcting perfection.

All these technologies are rubbish. They don't work, they hallucinate, they're unreliable and untrustworthy, they are parodies of customer service and value. All the examples above occurred over two weeks. I doubt I'm the only one who's experienced rubbish software / technology being the new default.

As I've noted before, what AI excels at is surveillance and malicious hacking / spoofing / ransomware. What it is not good at is defending against AI malware.

Or we can ask AI to answer the question for us:



This is the question we should ask but don't dare ask:

---

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The Homogenization of Decay

This is Essay #5 in the series Truth Be Told.

Of the many dynamics generating systemic decay, none are more pervasive yet unrecognized than The Homogenization of Decay, which we experience daily but don't notice because The Homogenization of Daily Life is now so ubiquitous that it's the water we swim in.

This homogenization is visible in the physical world, but it happened over enough time we've forgotten a time when life wasn't Homogenized. Every town in America now has a Dollar General store (or duplicate) on the edge of town that looks just like the Dollar General stores on the outskirts of every other town.

Every freeway off-ramp looks the same: gas station, fast food outlets, no sidewalks, no humans on foot except the most marginalized.

Every main street looks the same: the same corporate chains, with the only variation being the order in which they're arranged.

Every Big-Box outlet has the same look, feel and inventory, with the differences so minor they don't count.

Every cold cereal has the same ingredients, with the only differences being the quantity of sugar added: this one has 13 grams, that one has 9 grams, etc.

Every guidebook and tour directs tourists to the same selfie-worthy spots.

Homogenization serves a number of purposes:

1. It enables the profitable optimization of national / international supply chains and centralized corporate controls.

2. It enables easier control of what the populace sees and hears. Once everyone sees and hears the same things, they lose sight of the diversity of perspectives, especially those dissenting from the status quo.

3. It enables the profitable marketing of centrally controllable mass-produced products, services and experiences, the essence of Ultra-Processed Life: we're presented with a limited menu of unhealthy but immensely profitable ultra-processed foods which generate illnesses, which are then treated with costly, immensely profitable pharmaceuticals.

All the services we're offered are equally poor quality, but since there's no option, we resign ourselves to software that doesn't work, products that randomly fail, AI "customer service" that is the opposite of customer service, and so on.

4. This optimization of homogenization maximizes profits by optimizing monopolies that present facsimiles of choice: the same corporation owns all the brands presented as "choices," all the healthcare insurers are functionally similar, all the brands of appliances break down in a few years rather than lasting a few decades, as in the past, and so on.

Unbeknownst to most consumers, the private-public Leadership Class managing all this homogenization are themselves homogenized, as they all attended the same elite universities.



And to make sure they're able to attend these elite universities, the wealthiest few are admitted at much higher rates than the less wealthy:



And what this Leadership Class learns is that all problems are technological or financial, and so all problems can be solved with technology or finance. I call this mental construct The Delusion of Circularity: if we define all problems as technological/financial, then we don't need anything but technology and finance to solve all problems.

And since both finance and technology are incredibly homogenized--take your pick, Apple iOS or Android--solutions are also homogenized, meaning easily controlled to maximize profits for those controlling the "solutions."

This is how we end up with a Leadership Class devoid of any moral foundation, a class of public-private leaders whose moral compasses spin aimlessly while they optimize their personal gains managing global homogenization.



These leaders naturally hire underlings who are equally devoid of any ethics, as who needs ethics when we have the god-like powers of technology and finance at our fingertips? In this mindset, AI offers the power to homogenize everything to the point that no one will ever see anything that hasn't been approved by the leadership.

With AI, we never know what was excluded or edited out of the "answer." This offers homogenized leaders imbued with homogenized, morality-free mental constructs to fine-tune their homogenized Ultra-Processed Life menu of carefully engineered facsimiles of "choices." This system of gearing generates the same Narrative-Control output no matter who is turning the crank.



The machinery of Narrative Control isn't organized into a formal structure, but the structure is well-organized nonetheless, covering the entire spectrum of governance, media, and Privatized Totalitarianism. Informally, we can call it The Ministry of Propaganda, which homogenizes the narratives that offer full-spectrum control.



All this reinforces a focus on the present distractions and pressures to keep our fraying private worlds glued together another day, and this too is purposeful: what was once unacceptable is now so ubiquitous we no longer even notice.



That everything of true value is decaying around us is what we dare not notice. That's the point of optimizing homogenization.

All those engaged in optimizing this Homogenization of Decay will deny it, of course. They will claim they're sincere about finding "real solutions," that they care about the same things we care about, and so on.

Homogenization is decay, on multiple levels. This is inescapable.

So the problem with these claims is if they were true, the individual would be incapable of staying within this system another minute, much less an hour or a day. Sincerity and real solutions only exist outside the system that optimizes homogenization. Everything inside is artifice.

---

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Moral Collapse / Corruption Rewards the Worst and Penalizes the Best

This is Essay #4 in the series Truth Be Told.

Moral Collapse / Corruption are not abstractions. Rewarding the worst (those with zero scruples / moral foundation) and penalizing the best (those with high ethical standards) generates self-reinforcing feedback that dooms the system to disintegration: the worst prosper so mightily that they gain control of the system while the best are exploited / marginalized, reduced to Tax Donkeys or indentured laborers serving the worst.

A society and culture that has lost its moral compass loses more than its principles and soul--it loses everything that underpins a functional society and economy, including social cohesion, shared purpose, civility, trust in leaders, institutions, the judicial system and in the fairness (a.k.a. a level playing field) of the entire system, and critically, the belief that honesty and hard work will be rewarded rather than exploited / looted.

Moral Collapse / Corruption consumes all these foundations as the systemic cost of incentivizing self-enrichment to the exclusion of all else. Every component of society's moral foundation is hollowed out by the artifices of The Big Con, which claims to embody all the revered principles it grinds to dust in its relentless drive to accumulate private wealth and power by any means available.

Every source of authentic value is debased for personal gain as empty cliches--increasing shareholder value--are deployed to mask the monopolizing of power to reward the most corrupt at the expense of those powerless to limit the looting of the worst, who encounter no limits on their corruption in a culture and economy in which everyone has their price.

This Moral Collapse / Corruption is self-reinforcing, as those with any shred of ethics either quit / opt out or are fired / sent to digital Siberia, leaving only those in charge who see everything as an opportunity for self-enrichment, regardless of the consequences to others or the system as a whole.

In their pathological narcissism, they see the system as a bottomless feeding trough for their personal aggrandizement, oblivious to the causal results of everyone with a place at the trough gorging themselves: the system collapses.

This corruptive frenzy for unearned money has infected the entire spectrum of American society, rich and poor and everyone in between. From fake disability claims to fake invoices, every form of fraud flourishes in America. This raises four important points:

1. At the lower levels of the social-economic order, there are still some limits on fraud and corruption. Despite the immense resources devoted to evading oversight and audits, fraudsters and embezzlers are occasionally caught and convicted.

2. There are no limits on the super-wealthy, as they don't need to commit fraud to increase their wealth; they just rewrite the rules to suit themselves with their wealth. $100 million is nothing to billionaires, but it buys the entire political-judicial power of the state.

3. This scale of wealth bypasses the need for the consent of the governed, which is why I call America's current status quo Privatized Totalitarianism: the super-wealthy dictate what's legal to suit their desire for "more"--more wealth, more power.

As correspondent Simons Chase so insightfully put it, "what's moral is what's legal, and what's legal is for sale." These eleven words summarize America's terminal corruption.

4. In this terminal stage of moral collapse and Privatized Totalitarianism, passing more laws will not reverse the unraveling of the moral foundations needed to sustain a functional society and economy. Chapter 57 of the Tao Te Ching describes the core dynamics in play:

The more restrictions and limitations there are,
The more impoverished men will be.
The more arms men possess,
The more disordered the country will be.
The more scheming and deceitful men are,
The more strange things will occur.
The more rules and precepts are enforced,
The more bandits and crooks will be produced.

(Translation by my philosophy professor Chang Chung-yuan)

And Chapter 38: (my free-form version)

When the Tao is lost, we have attainment (optimization).
When attainment is lost, we have benevolence (superficial-phony virtue-signaling).
When benevolence is lost, we have righteousness (political correctness / ideological rigidity).
When righteousness is lost, we have rules (propriety for show).
Rules are the dry husk of loyalty and trust, the beginning of chaos.

In this free-for-all frenzy of fraud and self-enrichment, the best opt out and disappear into the woodwork, stripping the system of any talent other than self-enrichment and Big-Con / Ultra-Processed Life artifice. Self-enrichment and artifice are self-liquidating, for once they consume whatever can be looted, there's no foundation left to support a functional society and economy.

This moral collapse includes an intellectual collapse, as "liberty," "democracy," "innovation," etc., are reduced to parodies of their original substance by the artifices of The Big Con PR. Every statistic is gamed, every market manipulated, every principle debauched, and every bit of adaptative vigor is throttled to maintain a grip on power.

This excerpt from The Fall of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant crystalizes the present moment in American history with remarkable aptness:

"There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.

This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all."

And so as the worst apply Band-Aids to the metastasizing cancers as "solutions" (AI! Stablecoins! Bases on the Moon!), we stand on the beach as the tsunami of consequences of rewarding the worst and punishing the best races toward us.

In this moment, the future no longer seems real, and in the incoherence of the present, the radical action needed to change the outcome seems impossible. If we cannot run, perhaps we can still walk toward higher ground, leaving footprints in the damp sand few will follow.

---

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The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted

This is Essay #3 in the series Truth Be Told.

That The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted is so obvious that it is strictly taboo in the polite circles of those tasked with protecting The Hidden Looting by the Rich behind the cliches of "market forces" and the many carefully obscured mechanisms of state subsidies, tax giveaways, insider trading, market manipulation, and so on.

An astute reader summarized the dynamic succinctly: "Looting by the rich is hidden, silent, not criminalized while the physical looting by the poor is overt, thunderous and criminal."

Note that "the market" doesn't dictate what is legal and what is criminalized; the state dictates what is legal and what is criminal. This establishes the second truth which is taboo in the status quo:

"The Market" and the State are one system. Every claim that these are separate is self-serving misdirection / artifice. Consider the difference between what happens when Average Citizen contacts their state representative or a regulatory agency, and what happens when Tech Bro Billionaire contacts their state representative or a regulatory agency with an offer to fund $10 million of campaign contributions if various regulations and tax codes are amended.

The truth is "the state" is a "market" for corruption and self-service in which the "market" is hidden from view: The auction that dictates what's legal and what's criminal is won by the highest bidders, who are of course the wealthiest and most powerful few, who then dictate state policies that expand and protect their wealth and power by looting the powerless many.

French economist Frederic Bastiat famously described this dynamic of "market" and "state" generating legal plunder, i.e. legal looting. Once the purchase of state power for the purposes of self-enrichment becomes normalized--what I term moral decay leading to moral collapse--it becomes more profitable to pursue legalized looting than actually create authentic value.

This is why we see extreme wealth-power inequality increasing while the quality of goods and services plummets. There are no "rewards" for the richest few to risk capital by increasing the quality of goods and services when political influence is both cheap and risk-free: just "buy" a tax break or subsidy or regulations that protects your lavish state contracts from competition and expands the power of your monopoly / cartel.

The reason why this dynamic of legalized looting by the rich expands until it breaks the status quo is that it is self-reinforcing. Those who aren't delighted to further enrich the moneylenders in the temple with their labor quit in disgust, while those with zero scruples and limitless greed devote every waking hour to enriching the most avaricious few for their share of the loot.

Politicians who don't kiss the ring of Tech Bro Billionaires to raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions lose elections, as once again those with any shred of integrity self-select out of the political / "market" cesspool.

As Bastiat put it, the status quo boils down to "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen". What's seen is an endless spew of paeans to the glories of "the market," scrappy innovators creating new products in garages that generate billions in wealth, blah-blah-blah, or paeans to the glories of the state protecting us from the evils of exploitation, blah-blah-blah, all of which is the necessary cover story to cloak the market-state system of legalized looting by the rich and the criminalization of any blowback by those being looted.

We're being looted in so many ways that are not seen until the scales fall from our eyes. Billionaires manage to exploit tax shelters intended for the middle class to protect millions of dollars in gains from any taxes. Inflation in goods and services that is gutting the bottom 90% doesn't affect the wealthy, as they spend an inconsequential share of their wealth and income on essential goods and services.

As in any conflict staged for show, "the market" is glorified as the saint and "the state" is demonized--or on other stages, the roles are reversed. Neither staging reflects the truth: there is only one system, and the only possible output of this morality-free system of self-enrichment is the terminal expansion of looting until the system breaks down.

This--

leads to this:



Legal looting by the rich--who have eliminated both the moral foundations of society and avenues of Redress as impediments to the ceaseless expansion of their wealth and power--leads to uncontrollable looting by those who have been looted--Retribution. I address all these dynamics in my book Investing In Revolution. If you can find another book that explains everything I explain, by all means buy that book. But there is no other such book to my knowledge.

---

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America Is Already Great; Its Leadership Class Is Not

This is Essay #2 in the series Truth Be Told.

I generally avoid juggling lit sticks of dynamite, i.e. addressing MAGA (Make America Great Again), but this juncture in history obligates me to make a few points now, despite the risks of outrage.

1. America and its hard-working people are already great, and never stopped being great. They don't need to be "made great again."

2. America's self-serving Leadership Class--those in power--has failed the nation and its people. By Leadership Class I mean the class of people who have authority / power in every sector of the economy and society, not just in the political realm but in academia, what passes for America's intelligentsia, technology, corporate America, energy, media, finance, banking, foreign policy, manufacturing, defense--every sector.

This class has mastered the artifice of pantomiming leadership, not real leadership, to cloak their sole real goal, which is self-enrichment and the consolidation of their personal wealth and power. This pantomime of leadership is what I term The Big Con, which boils down to this:

Telling us what we want to hear--the con man's core technique--so they can stripmine us without restraint.

What we want to hear are cliches of restoring greatness lost to the corruption and greed of our Leadership Class and a grab-bag of other sappy, hollow cliches--I feel your pain, Hope and Change, peace with honor, innovation, increasing shareholder value and so on, an endless spew of phony PR slogans designed to con us into thinking their self-serving actions are actual leadership rather than artifices of self-enrichment cloaked in PR finery.

These hokey cliches are hyped by $100 million campaigns funded by the rich and powerful cronies of the self-serving Leadership Class to make sure they stay in power so they can make the rich and powerful even richer and more powerful, all at the expense of hard-working Americans who are losing ground every day.

Consider one example among many: how many leaders in academia devoted their prodigious intelligence and energy to slashing their institution's bloated bureaucracies that contribute nothing to actual learning to reduce the cost of attending their university by 50%?

The answer: none. Higher Education leaders feasted on the hundreds of billions of dollars of "free money" funded by student loans, a modern-day version of indentured servitude, funding lavish buildings and other fripperies, padding their own already-stupendous paychecks and pensions, "investing" in PR about the value of their education rather than actually making sure their students learned anything of actual value.

This pantomime of leadership--The Big Con--masking the zealous pursuit of self-enrichment is visible in every nook and cranny of America. The pantomime--self-glorifying theatrics, overblown visions of techno-paradise, threadbare cliches reworked in a hundred ways to distract and lull the populace--is now so pathetically obvious and absurdly excessive that it's a self-parody, a comic book version of leadership.

Real leaders demand sacrifices of the rich and powerful to serve the national interest and the shared interests of the citizenry. Real leaders don't stage an elaborate pantomime of leadership to cloak their self-enrichment and their ceaseless efforts to further enrich their campaign contributors / cronies.

The moral rot of America's Leadership Class has now reached a self-reinforcing terminal spiral. The rot started two generations ago, and has now reached the point where the corruption, avarice and the stripmining of the populace are not even recognized for what they really are, they're now just BAU--business as usual.

Foreign policy is now guided not by national interest but by what I call The Imperial Project, which boils down to expanding the power and profits of America's monopolies and cartels.

The leadership of Corporate America gutted the nation's manufacturing sector over the past 30 years to boost their own private wealth and the private wealth of their biggest shareholders. Corporate America is run by greedy lemmings--with apologies to real lemmings--who slavishly jump on every trend no matter how destructive and nonsensical.

Way back in 2000, on my first flight to China, I sat next to a senior employee of a top-tier semiconductor equipment company, who recounted his CEO's lemming-like insistence on shipping production to Asia, resulting in a flood of defects that cost far more to fix than the supposed gains. The corporate lemmings all jumped on the offshoring bandwagon regardless of its impracticality and many obvious downsides.

And now all the corporate lemmings have jumped on the equally flawed AI bandwagon, guaranteeing a horrific host of dire consequences await all of us chained to the idiocracy of our Leadership Class.

As noted previously, it's painful to admit we've been conned. The con man knows this, and is a master of misdirection and phony excuses. But unlike these forked-tongue artifices, the consequences are real: beneath the gamed statistics and parody-level theatrics--AI!--we're going to Mars!--our economy and society are in shambles.

So what can we do? For a start, stop voting for people who collect $100 million from the wealthiest and most powerful stripminers and spend it on the The Big Con. Start voting for the handful of real leaders who refuse to accept more than $100 from any person or entity, who refuse to sell their souls to the highest bidder.

I just completed a 5,200 mile camping trip through much of America, and it's worth repeating what I observed everywhere: Truth be Told, America and its hard-working people are already great, and never stopped being great. They don't need to be "made great again." It's America's hopelessly corrupt leadership class that needs to be cashiered en masse and replaced by real leaders who aren't vying to sell their souls to the highest bidder.

Yeah, I know--this will never happen. Don't be too sure that moral decay and corruption have no consequences, and that The Revolution No One Sees Coming isn't just off-stage.

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