My summation of the american economy and workplace in general: The worst elements of centralized communism cross-bred with the worst elements of half-baked capitalism. Both of his stories illustrate this point.<p>Right now we need something akin to the futurist spirit of italy (minus the fascism) to drive us forward and rid ourselves of the past (and probably minus the part where we throw out everything old merely because it is old so really I digress entirely. not really.).<p>On a positive note I find a lot of that spirit in the startup/hacker community which is why I stick around despite working for a corporation in hopes of one day "starting up".