The past ten years have seen a disconnect: individually, many Americans (especially digital economy participants) are getting richer, but at the cost that we as a whole are getting poorer. Americans have more income, more flexibility with their time, and more options than ever before. (Yes, even you.) But that’s not translating into broad improvement. It’s centralized among the extraction classes*, or liquefied into platform revenue, or slurped up into corporate profits. The “WE” that is necessary for continued existence, like public infrastructure, public aid, subway cars arriving on time, labor stability, a functioning electrical grid, good governance, these get washed away, hollowed out and sold for parts by a class draining our reservoirs for their own enrichment while we languish in curated sandboxes of niche spending; bespoke tastes, luxury keyboards and burrito taxis, multi-thousand dollar gaming tables and aesthetic rebrands of ancient product categories at three times the price. Enjoy the scraps of our public while you can. When the food’s gone, you won’t have much to steal for yourself. This isn’t a real economy. It’s a market for extracting value without planting the next crop. We are the algorithmic public of the remainder.

If we’re not careful, we’ll die of rot by the hands of the new luxury classes.

*Yes, this also means you.