There are a frightening number of people in the world who simply don't care about what happens to people they don't know or they simply think they're going to be at the top of the food chain one day so they think they will benefit from the current system. This is captured in the quote where most Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", attributed (possibly falsely) to Steinbeck.

It's been interesting watching the various approvals for AI data centers and, as far as I know, zero communities have wanted them. I'll be happily proven wrong on this. It is at least the vast majority. Yet their elected representatives simply do not care. Sometimes there are votes in the dark of night, sometimes the police are used violently against any dissent, sometimes anyone protesting these are called violent (even terrorists) and so on.

It goes so beyond unpopularity though. The tax breaks given will be paid by everybody else, as will the extra electrical infrastructure, while the data centers get preferential electricity rates.

What's really depressing is that not only do the representatives not care, there is obviously no fear of repercussions. Will they get voted out of office? Probably not. But even if they do, i guarantee you they'll find themselves in some nameless six-figure job in the industry for their service afterwards. Their children will get these same "jobs". It is so nakedly corrupt and nobody cares.

This simply can't continue while everything becomes increasingly unaffordable, ironically much of that driven by AI (eg RealPage driving up rent prices or the meat-packing collusion driving up beef prices). I firmly believe we're rapidly bouldering towards complete societal breakdown.

All this while we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. And that means a literal billionaire will be closer to being homeless than being the richest person on Earth.

It's particularly funny to me that the US administration has gotten into beef with the Pope for being too "woke". Honestly, I had my doubts when a Chicago man became Pope but he seems to be a rare voice for compassion in this world thus far.

We honestly need to look no further than the Global South to see how this will play out. Many in the West just don't realize how horrific and predatory colonialism is and that's not a historic artifact. It continues to this day.