We Are Approaching The Second Great Depression

Live a meaningful life despite the world's chaos and dysfunction: https://rgessays.com/list-of-healthy-worthwhile-habits

This post was last updated November 10th, 2025.

The transition, relatively speaking, from covert dysfunction/denial to official, obvious, overt collapse is accelerating.

We are no longer in a phase of early warnings. Mass sentiment is gradually shifting from denial to bitter awareness. It's far too late to "undo" the damage.

Large language model disillusionment/frustration is accelerating. Millions of people now acknowledge that LLM monopolies (aka big tech) are financially unsustainable. The myth/marketing of endless "growth" is eroding.

Macroeconomic signals are deteriorating fast. Real unemployment is substantially worse than officially reported (due to a variety of rather obvious reasons). Underemployment is rampant. The job market is essentially dead. Consumer debt is at a historic high. The Fed is politicized. Data collection is absurdly biased, broken, and inefficient.

Read this for full context: The "United" States of America

Political instability is deepening. The president's approval ratings are very low, and in freefall (especially among independents on the key topic of economy). Polarization/distraction is peaking (regarding left vs right, republican vs democrat, emotional, irrelevant culture wars). Institutional trust is at record lows. This is a circus.

Narrative control is breaking. Even the mainstream and upper middle class professionals are starting to take my thesis much more seriously. That the system is rigged/broken, the elite are protected, and the working class is being sacrificed. This perspective is gradually entering mainstream discourse, albeit still distorted, softened, confused, and sanitized for public digestion. That's typical human nature for ya.

The tech bubble is approaching an inevitable implosion (timing depends on a variety of complex, uncertain factors). LLMs are not even close to profitable. They burn billions in cash. This is unsustainable.

When the AI bubble bursts, the top 10% of American households (by net worth) are going to suffer major nominal losses (those who are overly invested in the bubble at the time of implosion), but the ruling class (top 0.1% or less) will be insulated (protected, and will benefit in consolidating power further). This group is disproportionately invested in tech adjacent equities. NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Palantir, Oracle, AMD, Broadcom, Salesforce, Tesla, Snowflake, Adobe, Super Micro Computer (SMCI), and so on. When the bubble pops, these stocks will correct hard, wiping out TRILLIONS in paper gains. This will be a major turning point. A collapse on top of an already existing collapse.

AI/LLM research in the tech industry has plateaued. Model improvements are badly marginal. "Algorithmic gains," more cash in the billions, more compute, and more data does not equate to substantially better models. This is like a ponzi scheme reliant on a false narrative. It reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Or Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. Or Bernie Madoff. Or Enron...

Costs are skyrocketing. AGI (no human supervision, self improving, super capable, aware, no hallucination, intelligent, efficient artificial intelligence) is an emotional fantasy and delusion. It's not going to happen. The USA vs China arms race has produced extreme debt and redundancy. Not enduring value. In other words, LLMs are extremely overrated.

Corrupted monopolies are bankrolling the fantasy. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, and NVIDIA are inflating their paper valuations.

Just as in 2000 (dot com burst) and 2008 (the global financial crisis), many are still in denial, but the market's internals (sentiment vs fundamentals) tell the real story.

The Second Great Depression is no longer hypothetical. Key signals are aligning. Asset bubbles across tech, housing, and consumer credit. Geopolitical disorder (Middle East, Ukraine, China). Deep institutional distrust (gov, public health, elections, media, tech). And a collapse of productive dynamism.

Productive dynamism refers to a society’s capacity to create real value through building, innovating, and producing goods or services that actually improve people’s lives in tangible ways. It includes industries like manufacturing, energy, logistics, construction, agriculture, and core infrastructure. The foundational activities that materially advance civilization.

A collapse of productive dynamism means a society increasingly abandons real production and instead shifts its energy, talent, and capital toward symbolic manipulation, financialization, and perception management. In other words, more marketing, branding, hype cycles, financial engineering, lobbying, and media distortion, with less actual building.

Here we are with an actually very weak economy temporarily sustained (k-shaped) by debt, mania in the stock market, speculation, illusion, the top 10% (by net worth), and the elite/ruling class. As I mentioned in August, the ruling class will profit and consolidate power through this restructuring of the world order. The modern ruling class wants a "technocracy" instead of democracy.

Technocracy: "The government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts."

Technocracy may seem like a good thing to some. But it's obviously not going to play out well if you honestly observe the trajectory that civilization is on, and if you study human nature's patterns, history, etc.

Read: Ultimately Nothing Lasts

The boom bust cycles of empire, financial speculation, inequality, propaganda, mass disillusionment, and centralized power structures tend to resurface, adapted to an era's technologies and narratives, but deeply familiar in structure. The world may change, but human nature doesn’t.

"History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes."

Most think corruption is just about sadistic evil, select groups of crazy people, money, or power. But the reality is, generally, humans have always been shallow, ignorant, and corrupted. It’s been this way throughout all of human history. Tribalism, selfishness, short term thinking, blind obedience. It’s not new. It’s the default.

The average person doesn’t think deeply. They react impulsively, follow, and "pick a side." The ruling class, governments, monopolies, media, false leaders... they know this. They exploit the mindlessness of the herd. Divide and conquer works because most people fall for the trap every time. Fear, toxic blame shifting, and distraction are enough to keep the herd busy with nonsense and overwhelming confusion.

When lies and deception are so constant and nonstop, the goal isn’t to make people believe a specific lie. People become so confused, so overwhelmed, so overloaded with misinformation, that they subconsciously/unconsciously disconnect from reality. They quit thinking for themselves. They don’t know who to trust, so they follow whatever feels easiest or safest. False comfort. Misery loves company. At that point, you don’t need to control them directly. They’ve already surrendered. Sick, confused, struggling, suffering, mindless people are easy to extract from, exploit, and control.

I’ve spent years learning to see fundamental patterns clearly. I started seriously participating in my own rescue around 17. I’m 26 now. It of course wasn’t a straight line. I experienced serious struggle, but I kept observing. I kept evolving. Over time, I broke free from the madness. The automatic disastrous patterns that trap most. I learned to pause, to think long term, to live deliberately.

Struggle is inevitable in this life. Might as well choose to struggle on the right things.

That’s what I mean when I say I’ve fortunately "transcended" human nature. Not that I’m perfect. But I’m not lost in the mindless herd. I rose above the nature of humanity. I see what’s happening. And I’ve chosen to evolve. Slowly, intentionally, through awareness of reality.


Important to read: Tension & Release, The Chimp Paradox, Cognitive Biases

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