I’ve spent much of my time over the past several years focused on trying to understand the world around me. The most consequential thing I’ve discovered over that time is that an enormous portion of the U.S. economy is little more than a rent-seeking racket. It’s everywhere you look. Throughout every industry, at “think tanks,” and within government, there’s some elaborate scam happening that hurts the many while a handful of parasites win. This is destroying the social and economic fabric of our civilization. It’s basically become a rampant disease, and the recent release of court documents related to Monsanto further highlights the point.
This is precisely why nobody trusts institutions or “experts” any more. People aren’t being anti-science so much as they rationally no longer trust fraudsters acting like they’re doing work to inform the public. It’s not my fault for not trusting them, it’s their fault for being shady.