Property tax is the big thing that forces people to engage with capitalism against their will.

Without property tax, you could live off-grid for eternity. But with property tax, you always have to earn money, and the people that control that money therefore control you.

I feel enlightened now that you called out the self-reinforcing nature of the algorithms. It makes sense that an RL agent solving the bandits problem would create its own bubbles out of laziness.

Maybe we can take advantage of that laziness to incept critical thinking back into social media, or at least have it eat itself.