As an American who agrees with you that this is a perennial failure mode for our culture and that this is by far the worst I've seen it in decades (I was a kid for "...government
is the problem"), I still always remind everyone that it doesn't have to be this way, it wasn't this way 20 years ago, it was trending bad but not like this ten years ago, and that old proverb (Chinese I think and I'm probably butchering it) is spot on: "every step into a dark forest is a step you'll have to take to see the sun, but you have counted your steps".
Markets are great when they are well administered by competent and uncorrupted authority. And this is not an oxymoron! Brooksley Born should win the Nobel Peace Prize or something, she saw the road ahead and gave everything in a bitter battle against Clinton's goons and if we hadn't kneecapped her we wouldn't be here today.
More recently Lina Khan was a one-woman nightmare calamity for scammers, thieves, and other assorted bottom dwellers, and if Trump's goons hadn't had their way she'be ramming data privacy laws so far up FAANG's ass that Lt Colonel Boz would think he actually had been through legit basic.
The system can work, we get excellent people in charge of the important stuff with some frequency, but we have got to drop this red/blue crap and get behind leaders like the ones I mentioned or this goes one fucking way.
And there's a pretty optimistic message not in what George wrote, but that people like George are starting to ask if they're the baddies. He's always been brilliant but I was starting to wonder if he had gone TESCREAL on us, and I think we can see he (metaphorically) sobered up off the kool aid. If he can, idk, maybe Lex can, maybe pmarca can. If those guys took a cold shower? The world changes that day.