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Chronic disease and general poor-functioning has been skyrocketing and the vast majority of people just ignore it like it's no big deal.
Obviously it's a big deal when the intelligence and competence of a majority of people has been severely diminished. We're now living in Idiocracy. And it's why for two elections in a row we've ended up with the choice of two senile old white men.
Late stage capitalism is your answer, my friend.
People elect Conservatives. Don't elect Conservatives. They want to make the world shit.
I'll do my best to explain what I can. But it's hard, and many PHD dissertations will be written on this. It's not exactly something that can just be explained.
But yes, Covid was probably the most easily identifiable source. In addition, you could make a claim that Putins' moves, the support from Russia to for various "alt-right" groups, and their eventual war in Ukraine (assumedly, aiming for culmination in reuniting the Soviet Union) have an impact. Lastly, we have various AI projects reading "maturity" (or at least public notoriety), and various services realizing they were missing out on a piece of the "AI pie".
Covid was.... bad. It's a new, deadly disease that potentially leaves people with life altering side effecs (long covid). The Vaccines are good, if not great even for having been developed so quickly and drastically change your likely outcomes, but they aren't full immunity (like we have for Polio). This left governments in a dammed now if you don't support people, or damned later if you do. They all chose various levels of later. Some governments supported businesses directly and left people alone to suffer, others supported people and left businesses mostly alone. Either way: Cash injections into an economy produces inflation.
Fighting inflation... the most commonly accepted method in the western world is to raise interest rates* and then let it play out. With the loss of cheap money from low interest rates, many businesses are now being pushed by their owners and shareholders from focusing on growth to make profits (eg: Raise prices, crack downs on password sharing, API use).
There are other claims you could make, and construct narratives with. For a few years now companies have been growing by expanding into growing countries, but now the number of countries left is short, and companies are running out of places to expand into to grow. Once again, as growth becomes impossible or undesirable, the focus shifts to extracting profit from your existing base. We are reaching maximum saturation.
*Alternatives: If you would like to slash government spending... see Argentina's inflation (it's bad), for windfall taxes see Spain (it's good).
Greed won.
My take: the result of decades of incompetent leadership, at all levels from the government to individual households, that ultimately lead to a society that mainly uses dilatory tactics instead of finding solutions to its issues.
What happens when the economy crashes? We push the goalposts back a few yards so that it's actually better now and will become a problem later instead. Notice how the frequency of market crashes is increasing? It was every 50 years or so, then it was every 10, now we've had 3 in 5 years, yes I'm fucking counting COVID you had literally over 60 years to prepare for a worldwide pandemic and you sat on your asses.
What happened with education? Well let's see. Why do we pay for education in the first place? To increase our knowledge and push the boundaries of human civilization, or to put it bluntly: we don't wanna live in a world filled with idiots. But like why do we need education? Cuz like jobs or something...Ever wonder why you MUST have a degree for a job? That's a legal requirement, if something is on the job posting as a requirement then it's a fucking requirement. Suddenly everyone needs a higher education, because the job posting is a legal requirement that must be met, else ye suffer the consequences of immediate disqualification. Fortunately the law miraculously doesn't really care which degree you have, the companies get to choose how narrow the scope is and if they don't do that well that's on them lol xD! So we need a degree, but let's say we don't wanna put in the effort to learn all that hard shit. Besides, we just need survivabile minimum wage, so let's aim for that. It sure is convenient that all these now impacted universities made up all these new bullshit degrees so they could pretend to deal with the influx of morons that are getting intimidated and bribed into their schools via their parents. This sounds like a game to me, and I love games. Wait wait wait wait. We said that we want education because we want people to be smart, but like technically we only need education to get a job. Suddenly education is like this super fun game where you get sorted into a socio economic class in a fun and interesting way. And then people realized they could influence that as early as elementary school, and well gee fuckin golly! They get to vote and control the public education because that's how public school works. And if we loosen up the restrictions on what our kids need to get good grades, their chances of getting into college get better. Guess what? Money also works too, if we have money we can avoid the tiring scramble of public education and just pay to win baybee!!!!
Why does the everything suck? Because it's owned and operated by investment firms and run by people who are the result of decades of systemic degradation. And who's to blame? The worse generation in human history. The only generation in United States history to have a losing record when it comes to war lose, while simultaneously being the single generation to have started and sustain the most wars! The same fucking generation that didn't die off at 55 because their children didn't huff lead gasoline like they did for Christmas and actually got bothered to learn medical science - as much as I shit on the education system as a whole, there are always some tryhards that slip through. The same generation that still controls 60% of the political offices in this country, while at the same time being composed of the top 1% of mentally unstable weak and decrepit elderly part of the population. The same generation that voted to fuck over retirement pensions from the previous generation back in the 70s or whenever it was, and then now in past decades have undone all of that to secure retirement protections for them suddenly now as they reach their sunset years. The same generation that still currently in the current fucking year of two thousand twenty-four are the two frontrunners for Presidential candidacy.
And you know what the funniest thing about it is? It's not just the United States. How's Japan looking over across the Pacific? A problem with a top heavy elderly population? Wow who could've guessed. What about the boys across the pond? What does the British parliament look like? Who are still the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea? What families are still in power in the Middle East?
Our ancestors have failed us. They have failed their brothers and sisters. They have failed our entire goddamned species. I am embarrassed and ashamed for all intelligent beings anywhere and everywhere in any reality where intelligence is possible that we are capable of such idiocy.
I take great solace in the fact that they will not be around long enough to etch their final memory into the stones of history. And we will.
Despite all of that it feels to me less like things are getting worse and more like a loud death rattle from a bloated creature - the final shout before the eternal void. I see the same feelings as mine in both my cohorts and in the future generations. I have hopes for the future and strongly believe that the world is just now entering the upswing. It's painful and awkward right now while the old skin sheds, but I am confident we will emerge from our chrysalis transformed into something greater. Maybe that guy who brought up the 12 year delay on the Mayan calendar shit earlier in this thread was on to something; the timing is just too coincidental.
Because anyone who was old enough to remember how bad the great depression and world wars were are all dead and the people in power fell like they have something to prove.
I mean why should it be just their parents and grandparents that made the history books?
Capitalism
Have you read Cory Doctorow’s book on enshitification? I think he focuses more on the Internet but might help answer your question.
Capitalism, etc.