[sonofblah]

Do people in general understand how incredibly rotten, rigged, and broken everything is?

Imagine buying your dream house (a figurative one only coincidentally related to the article), turning the doorknob and it comes off in your hand. You flick the light switch but no lights, and it collapses into the panel. Touch the wall, and your finger pokes through. Completely broken, disintegrated, nested with termites and other creepy crawlers. The "inspectors" told you everything was fine.

That is our world, and this life.

[Waterluvian]

Your part of the world, maybe. But there's remedy to everything you described in most of the modern world.

[fatbird]

Exactly. Notice how no one in the story has clean hands, even the reporter who knew that paying below market rent in cash without a lease meant that something funny was going on. It's not that hard to avoid shady business (though in fact, I laud the reporter, and maybe even Eddie and Rosa, for squeezing a bit of blood from a stone).