The primary driver behind my decision to walk away from a lucrative Wall Street career was my coming to terms with the fact that our financial system is largely a rent-seeking scheme designed to enrich parasitical, unethical behavior at the expense of the nation as a whole. As soon as I recognized this, I could no longer feel proud of my work and certainly couldn’t justify my large paycheck for being a compliant, highly productive cog in this machine.
In the nearly decade since, I’ve come to understand that the financial system, while absolutely core to the propagation of the declining U.S. empire, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our problems. Not only is the financial system broken; the American political system is broken, healthcare is broken, policing is broken, intelligence agencies are broken, rules for engagement in warfare are broken. Pretty much everything is captured and broken, systematically designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
In contrast, one of the few things that seemed to be working, at least relatively well, was the technology sector. Silicon Valley is the poster child for this industry, and while the “innovative” nature of products coming out that celebrated tech hub have been declining for years, it still seemed vibrant and dynamic compared to the rest of the U.S. economy. I’m increasingly starting to wonder whether much of that was just an elaborate illusion.
Most of you probably haven’t heard of the company Juicero, but you should be paying attention to it.
What follows are choice excerpts from a recent Bloomberg article, Silicon Valley’s $400 Juicer May Be Feeling the Squeeze:
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