Most of our “brains” are mercenaries, who are actually a net loss to the country if you judge by anything other than the stock market. Look at what happened to SoCal! You are all welcome to our fintech/biotech/adtech/surveillance “geniuses”.
Here's an old, sad, joke:
What's the difference between a physicist and a large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.
Separate these two things out perhaps ?
The stuff that’s happening now with enshittified tech and resources being poured into that.
Everything that happened before that, which set up the infrastructure.