“We have a political model that is based on leading in the popular polls–a model where barely differentiated political leaders pretend to be different by steering voters away from important issues and onto subjects that, albeit emotional, are of little consequence to most people–a model where the election is won by the person with the best marketing, and where consistency and integrity are irrelevant.”

所谓的西方选举制度，无非是比谁更会拉资本，做营销。对于“真才实学”完全不关心。

“We have an economic model that is based on pulling resources out of the ground and mostly turning them into unnecessary products, getting people to buy the products by convincing them that they need them, then getting them to throw the products away because they’re obsolete. This makes people buy the next model and bury the other one in the ground. The sole goal of this seemingly pointless exercise is to work faster and grow the gross domestic product, which measures the resource churn.”

所谓的经济，就是不断开采资源，做出大部分人们本身不需要但又被洗脑觉得一定需要的产品，年复一年地淘汰就产品产出新产品，GDP是用来衡量一个国家资源利用(浪费)的效率。这其实也让我反思，我们真的需要那么多产品和服务吗，有什么是可以完全不用的，有什么是需要的但不需要经常更换的。比如手机，我觉得买个性能最好的用个5年时没啥问题的，比如笔记本电脑，13年买的顶配macbook pro，硬件数据放在2021年也还凑活能用。可能有一个问题是，自己接受不了被主动或被动地被身边的人比下去，这是一个思维的问题，外物并不能定义你的人生，自己想通了就好。

“We live in a world where the money necessary for our way of life comes out of a slit in the wall as long as we keep showing up for work, yet only experts understand the fiat-based money/credit system. We live in a world where food can be heated in a microwave oven at the touch of a button, yet only experts understand how this works. This goes for most of the other technology we use. All we know is that if we press this or that button, things magically happen.”

现代人有太多的惯性，太多的抽象以至于我们不屑了解背后的原理和惯性的原因。比如人为什么要每天工作？因为要赚钱。为什么要赚钱？因为可以提高生活质量。为什么要提高生活质量？因为看到别人买了xxx，用着xxx，去了xxx旅行等等，看起来过的很好，很快乐。这儿其实没有说我们不需要工作，不需要赚钱，但深挖下去会发现我们并不明白赚多少钱算够，能够让自己和家庭未来的生活无忧，也不明白工作除了赚钱还有什么特别的意义，是否可以考虑换一份工作、行业。