The notion that better engineering can solve all our problems is rooted in an ignorance of non-linear systems and selective/wishful thinking.

Once a citizen receives a direct payment from the state, the state has purchased their complicity

The human mind has a superglue-like quality: Once a viewpoint has been plucked from the swirling chaos of beliefs and explanations, then the mind quickly solidifies that view, resisting any future modification.

Humans are wired to feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and contingency, and so we gravitate to a position after a short time even if we have no new information.

Reality, unlike perception, cannot be changed by propaganda.

The problems of the global economy are not based in perception, but in the reality of prices, balance sheets and income statements, vast concentrations of wealth and power, precarious systemic imbalances, ruthless exploitation, and command economies mismanaged by Central State/Bank policy and manipulation.

So now that the illusion of infinite growth is being exposed, the corresponding ballooning entitlements that enticed the larger public to become complicit in the illusion are becoming unglued.