What's are some widely believed to be sound but hanging by a thread things around us that are not sustainable? Usually something a minority knows and talks about but most people aren't aware of.
The fact that security by user/group ID with a default of accessing almost everything still is the norm baffles me.<p>The US dollar backed by nothing still keeps going, thanks to Petrodollar Recycling. On top of this is the 0% effective interest rate for the Banking class, with no effective reserve requirements, and socialized risk.<p>The Bitcoin boom fascinates me.<p>The Stock Market, that most famous graph of rich people's feelings, has been overrun with front-running profiteers, yet pretends to be trustworthy.<p>How the working class haven't strung up the rich yet escapes me.<p>Civilization takes a huge amount of labor to keep going, yet we have yahoos cheering on the end of it all because G*d will sort it all out, and they'll be in Heaven... yeah, right.
This morning on the newspaper there was the story of a local artist who has auctioned his latest artwork for the equivalent of $30K. The great work of art is a magnificent invisible statue. Not a word in the article about how strange a transaction where a signed piece of paper representing nothing tangible is sold for a relevant amount of money. Perfectly normal.<p>Invisible artwork, I don't get it. As I can't understand NFTs in general. Scam? I don't know. Money laundering? Yes.
Large institutional asset managers like Invesco. All they do is sell underperforming investments on nearly every metric and charge a pretty penny for the “privilege”.
I would say Tesla's "FSD". For years they have promised it and cashed in the money, making it even non-transferable. FSD is still years away from working.
In the 1600s there was the Dutch Tulip bubble. At its height, tulips sold for the equivalent of a mansion.<p>Take that in for a moment and think about the prices of things like NFTs today.
I'll get downvoted for this: Religion and Capitalism.<p>Religion is the ultimate vaporware. Nothing there but air and community.<p>Capitalism is 100% dependent upon an unfair exchange: unless there is an unfair exchange generating profit, no capitalist will accept such a deal. Capitalism relies 100% on individuals in no position to refuse the offer, because Capitalism creates and relies on a population of people unable to refuse such offers.