Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Heaton.

And here is the story in a nutshell.

For upteen thousands of years, subsistence and starvation were the default state.

Virtually everybody was one drought away from famine.

Then capitalism.

And it worked really well.

Over the next two centuries, we not only eradicated starvation, we became so good

at making surplus food that something totally new happened. People got fat. Now, for the first

time in history, instead of dealing with malnutrition and starvation, the masses suffered from obesity and diabetes.

About a quarter of the population, the elite, had the money and time to get memberships in gyms and personal trainers,

and they were not worried about calories and remained fit, slim, and hot.

For them, this system worked incredibly well.

It provided the abundance for calories and the money for personal trainers.

Meanwhile, people in the bottom 75% were getting fatter and angrier. They felt the shame of Hollywood and fashion industries.

They felt elite skinny people looking down on them, assuming that the obesity was sloth and

gluttony, some kind of character flaw. Obese people had a harder time dating. They also felt more inclined to

stay inside and watch television than to play sports, so they sat at home by themselves and became

lonelier and disrespected, far lonelier than their starving peasant ancestors used to be. With myriad health complications, a loneliness epidemic, and a sense of palpable condescension

from the skinny elite, they became increasingly angry and despondent and said in a loud voice,

this system does not work.

The system is broken.

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