I still think that the greatest tragedy that happened after 2008 wasn't the obscene amounts of corruption and the mismanagement of assets and misallocation of resources, they were extremely bad, but it wasn't the worst thing. What i think was the worst thing to occur was the massive displacement of qualified STEM degreed workers who ended 'falling thrugh the cracks' over the yaers because the positions that were marketed them as 'waiting for you when you're done' vanished overnight. I have met so many aspiring biologists, chemists, and physicists/mathematicians who ended up in finance or some other aimless thing because debt and bills needed to paid who had pursued their degrees to try and take on climate change, mass hunger, food security etc... many of thier collective idealism turned to angst then morose and even bleak inevitable outcomes for the near future in such a short time. Many never really recovering from the depression, and feeling as how Society failed them despite 'doing the right thing.' I know I felt that way, but I was determined to not let it occur and I used it as fuel to push through it, but I have serious survivor bias and I still deal with PTSD from it all--it's a work in progress, but I think it was a phyrric victory most times.
The real tragedy of the last decade will be one of the loss in Human Capital to the aforementioned issues, and this almost inescapable political climate in which we cannot distinguish real threats from trivial ones because we're so distracted by the vapid divisiveness that keeps people at each others throats wit perpetual tribalism.
I still think that the greatest tragedy that happened after 2008 wasn't the obscene amounts of corruption and the mismanagement of assets and misallocation of resources, they were extremely bad, but it wasn't the worst thing. What i think was the worst thing to occur was the massive displacement of qualified STEM degreed workers who ended 'falling thrugh the cracks' over the yaers because the positions that were marketed them as 'waiting for you when you're done' vanished overnight. I have met so many aspiring biologists, chemists, and physicists/mathematicians who ended up in finance or some other aimless thing because debt and bills needed to paid who had pursued their degrees to try and take on climate change, mass hunger, food security etc... many of thier collective idealism turned to angst then morose and even bleak inevitable outcomes for the near future in such a short time. Many never really recovering from the depression, and feeling as how Society failed them despite 'doing the right thing.' I know I felt that way, but I was determined to not let it occur and I used it as fuel to push through it, but I have serious survivor bias and I still deal with PTSD from it all--it's a work in progress, but I think it was a phyrric victory most times.
The real tragedy of the last decade will be one of the loss in Human Capital to the aforementioned issues, and this almost inescapable political climate in which we cannot distinguish real threats from trivial ones because we're so distracted by the vapid divisiveness that keeps people at each others throats wit perpetual tribalism.