Comment by hnthrow289570

Doesn't shock me considering the hard work -> nice life pipeline is in shambles in the US and it wouldn't surprise me if that's true for other countries too

And we also chose to extend the presence of gambling in society - quite literally with sports gambling - but also adjacently with crypto markets and stock market apps

Tech has always had advantages around being able to slack off if you were good since it was a white collar desk job, but you could justify that to yourself as a sort of implied retainer arrangement. So it wasn't directly grifting or stealing.

Some people get a taste of real money relatively easily (like a $200k+ salary for slacking off) and want more though, maybe because they're afraid that good situation can't last and they need maximum value extracted before they're "found out".

And we are just not seeing major downsides to grifting unless you run afoul of the law, which can be slow to prosecute if you are on a bleeding edge like AI (like it was for crypto).