Loved this take. The lesson we should learn is that even great, wealthy societies can crumble relatively quickly if they embrace bad ideas. I can’t imagine seriously asking the political class and their cronies to do anything effectively for anyone but themselves, but it seems like many people think the same people who who destroyed Syria, Iraq and Libya, who run Amtrak and the USPS, who constructed the largest prison system in world history, etc.— are the folks they want to rely on for food, shelter, and healthcare. Might as well build a scaffold, put your head in noose and hope for the best.