While I am well aware that the news media is filled with "tragic stories" because that's what sells subscriptions or secures page views, it feels like every day we turn around there's another doomsday tale about how life as we know it is falling apart.

It seems like there's always something going wrong.

At the same time, it also seems like there's virtually never anything going right! I'm trying to remember the last time something really good happened... and I draw a blank.

No, I'm not just talking about our little microcosm here that we call the Hive community, and I'm not even talking about the Cryptosphere… Although both of those are not exactly in the best of health.

I'm thinking about life, in general. I'm thinking about the sad reality that there are highly educated people with college degrees — even doctors and accountants — who are actually homeless and living in their cars because the burden of rent, the cost of living combined with their student loans is such that they can't make ends meet.

So much for the whole idea of "get a good education and work hard and you'll be successful!"

I sometimes read our local newspaper, and peruse our community via various online community bulletin boards and the story here is often desperate for many people. Typically, the fundamental storylines are the same: people quite simply can't afford a place to live because the rents being asked are more than people are actually making.

I used to think there were some actual logic behind this kind of situation, but I have been unable to find any. As best I can tell this upside-down situation is the result of private equity investors being more intent on getting their ROI at any cost, rather than having any interest in whether or not the human beings — who are ultimately funding that investment —can actually be participants in the game anymore.

Somehow, when I look at that situation, it just feels like we are circling the drain towards an inevitable collapse of some sort.

I am not by nature a doomsayer, nor some kind of conspiracy theorist, I just look at the reality of life at what you might call street level.

I also look at the fact that every month it seems to be a little bit harder to afford groceries and cat food, and a little bit harder to come up with enough money to pay for the electric bill, the Internet, insurance, and phone bill.

The additional alarming thing is the way the "affordable options" are being made obsolete. The "house brand" at supermarkets getting replaced with "premium" brands; the affordable apartments being "gentrified" into luxury condominiums and so forth.

Recently one of our mobile home parks was sold, and the new owners are shutting it down so they can use the land to build $600,000 houses.

This is all going to end very badly!

What do you think?

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