It's a bit crazy, yes. And I'm no longer buying the "it's a sign of the times!" platitude. If that's TRUE, then we need to do something to change the times... so the times become more "human friendly."

Whereas I am all about free markets and enterprise and such, I have been reading a lot recently about the "dark side" of the capitalist system... and how much of what we currently look at as "capitalism" is actually an extremely predatory system that's FAR removed from the "mom and pop capitalism" that's the ideal the US was built on. A system that has as primary objective not innovation and excellence, but to extract value from and destroy its competitors is very toxic.

But that's a sidetrack.