[ergot_vacation]

I wouldn't say "capitalism" so much as "run-away capitalism", and the marxist stuff was probably where your downvotes came from. But that aside I agree, and this was more or less what I was going to post. Perhaps unlike you, I do generally like "progress" and believe that it "lifts all ships." But in the past several decades, this has become less and less true, for a variety of reasons. And fundamentally, you have to be sure most of your society has the basics before getting wrapped up in ever-increasing wild dreams of the future. For a little bit, those who were getting left behind didn't feel their disenfranchisement quite so painfully. I wonder if we'll have a nasty surprise when things crank back to full power again.