It's very sad to me that the American Dream (tm) has gone from "work hard and you will succeed" to "find another sucker to scam and you'll get rich." Particularly since most of the folks who think they're scamming are actually the suckers.
In the 80s and 90s the country went through a mindset shift, where actual work wasn't "cool" anymore - Mike Rowe talks about this a lot. And as a result it's impossible to find good tradespeople and instead there's glut of pipe-dream-wannabe-millionaires selling garbage.
We vote for our culture with our money. You want powerful local news? Give money to local news, don't rely on billionaires and ad-support.
"the American dream" as a cultural artifact is like, maybe 70 years old. Before that, the scam hustle was certainly still alive and well, it just took the form of land speculation and railroads or literal snake oil, etc. Or, you know, abject worker exploitation or literal slavery or genocide and ecocide and land theft.
As it stands, that American Dream nonsense was basically a bargain for the white middle class families. The rich played their own game per usual.
Blaming consumers for this phenomenon is missing literally half the picture. The other half is the OUTRAGEOUS amount of money poured into these enshittification engines by venture capital and institutional investors. So if you want to blame someone for mass-produced garbage and casino equity markets, maybe blame financiers, the rich, and the easy money policy of the past 30 years?
Beyond that, I agree with your main call to action. We should put our money towards local news and local shops and local services. I raise these points because I don't think it's useful to blame the boats for the storm.
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