Technology

We got here through government inaction (or complicit, through lobbyists.)

The wealth class were buying more money from the future. We're now living in that future and all our money is disappearing into the pockets of the wealthy. Somehow this is an essential process in order for people to get anything done.

I first got exposed to the problem from this Adam Conover interview with Dan Olson: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4aU-QkJfgGw

This article is also a nice encapsulation of the problem, even though it focuses on financial technology only, it applies to other tech companies as well:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fintech-faces-reckoning-only-matter-133006783.html

In an attempt to reboot the global economy, central banks slashed interest rates to almost zero, resulting in an era of cheap money.

This resulted in two things. First, it incentivized investors to fund promising (and, in many cases, not so promising) young tech companies. But it also allowed for the emergence of business models that, in any other circumstance, would be completely unviable.