Notes from the edge of civilization: August 17, 2025

Same circus, new clowns; should we really be relying on nonagenarians to support us; dial-up is finally dead; in the end, the cows won. Plus, horsepower behind a paywall.

In case you were wondering what’s been going on in Dr. Evil’s lair the World Economic Forum, a few newsworthy updates hit the headlines late on Friday. You know, the time of the week when you release all the news you don’t want anyone to notice.

First of all, the organization cleared Klaus Schwab and his wife, Hilde, of any wrongdoing, saying he was just so bloody dedicated to his job that it might have just seemed like he misused forum resources and created a hostile work environment.

“Minor irregularities, stemming from blurred lines between personal contributions and forum operations, reflect deep commitment rather than intent of misconduct,” said the WEF.

At the same time, Larry Fink and Andre Hoffmann were named interim co-chairs of WEF. That’s right, the guy who runs BlackRock, which owns an unprecedented slice of global capital, and the guy who runs Roche, which just happens to be one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies on the planet. Score one for all the conspiracy theorists — turns out Wall Street and Big Pharma really are running the show. If Davos was casting for the next Bond villain, they just found their double act.

Think about the optics here. Schwab gets “cleared” with a wink and a shrug, then his replacements are the CEO of the firm that effectively owns your mortgage, pension fund, and grocery store — plus the heir to a drug empire that thrives on keeping you sick. It’s not even subtle. It’s like handing the henhouse keys to the fox and the weasel, then issuing a press release about “global collaboration for a better future.”

The official spin is that this new leadership will “serve as a unique catalyst for cooperation.” What they really mean is they’ll keep tightening the screws while trying to convince us they’re saving us.

Stay tuned: if the next interim chair is a military contractor, we’ll have the holy trinity of collapse — finance, pharma, and war — running the world stage with matching lanyards and smiles on their faces.

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Meanwhile, back in America’s own house of mirrors, Social Security just turned 90 years old. Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano marked the anniversary with an open letter full of ‘greatest hits’: millions lifted out of poverty, checks never missed, American achievement, blah blah blah. What he didn’t play up is the fact that the trust fund is scheduled to run out of money in about a decade. The program will only be able to pay around 77% of promised benefits starting in the mid-2030s.

So here we are, toasting a program that’s older than Monopoly, the Hoover dam, and Alcoholics Anonymous — while pretending it’s still the sturdy pillar holding up retirement. In reality, it’s more like a 90-year-old hip: it creaks, it wobbles, and one bad fall could shatter the whole thing.

Yes, Social Security kept a lot of people afloat. But nine decades in, it’s not exactly aging like fine wine — more like the cottage cheese you forgot in the back of the fridge. If this is your only retirement plan, you might want to add some backup strategies. Because when the music stops, Uncle Sam isn’t going to be the one holding your chair.

Gold and silver: the critical financial insurance policy you need now

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You may not have missed that screeching beep-bop-boooooop that let you know you were connected, but it’s sort of sad to think the archaic squawk is finally getting a curtain call.

While the news that AOL is discontinuing dial-up internet might seem like an end of an era for some of us, for about 163,000 American households it might just mean an end to internet connection all together. The Census Bureau estimates that 1% of the nation’s household internet subscriptions still used dial-up as of 2023.

For a brief moment in the 1990s, AOL was the internet — flooding mailboxes with free CDs, greeting you with a cheerful “You’ve got mail,” and turning that awful screech into the soundtrack of a generation. Now it’s just another relic joining Napster and MySpace in the digital graveyard.

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Much like dialup internet, the pioneer of plant-based meat is going flaccid. Beyond Meat, the company that promised to “revolutionize protein” is choking on its own marketing. Once Wall Street’s darling and Silicon Valley’s ticket to a cruelty-free future, Beyond Meat is staring down Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Sales are tanking, debt is over a billion dollars, and cash on hand wouldn’t cover a binge at Shake Shack. The plant-based pioneer that sold itself as the future of food is, as The Street describes it, now just the frozen yogurt shop of meat substitutes: too many imitators, not enough true believers.

At its peak, Beyond Meat was supposed to wean us off beef, save the planet, and maybe make you feel less guilty about your burger. In reality, it created a category, got commoditized, and is now drowning in a sea of knockoffs while most people still hunger for juicy cheeseburgers.

Turns out “disruption” works both ways. Beyond Meat disrupted meat, then the free hand of the market disrupted Beyond.

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Forget Netflix and chill — now it’s Volkswagen and bill. The automaker is charging electric vehicle owners in the UK a monthly subscription to unlock horsepower their cars already have. Buy the mid-tier ID.3 for nearly £40k (around US $54,000), and you’ll only get 201 horsepower… unless you cough up £16.50 ($22) a month to “upgrade” to the full power the motor is already capable of.

That’s right: you’re not paying for new parts. You’re paying to stop VW from electronically hobbling the machine you supposedly own. Torque is also throttled unless you subscribe. Permanently unlocking the extra power costs £649 (about $880) — basically a ransom payment to liberate your own car.

This isn’t the first time German automakers pulled this stunt. BMW tried charging for heated seats. Porsche put lane-keeping behind a paywall. Audi floated “functions on demand.” But VW is the first to lock away raw horsepower — the very thing that makes a car a car.

The future looks like feudalism on wheels: you don’t own your car, you just subscribe to the features. We covered this future back in 2024 and there’s way more to come.

The endless freedom of the open road

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Last week on Collapse Life:

A letter to Mike Judge

Tomorrow will take care of itself. Or will it?

Mark Jeftovic on the Genius Act, CBDCs, Bitcoin and the tokenized future