Elon Musk says the shoplifting epidemic is giving him late-stage Roman Empire vibes: “America is going full Joker”

By Joel Wong

In this opinion piece by CHRISTIAAN HETZNER, published by Fortune on September 27, 2023, Elon Musk described videos and images of people looting stores in Philadelphia as “going full Joker,” referring to Batman’s infamous villain. He made this comment after watching footage of masked individuals ransacking stores, grabbing merchandise, and destroying property.

Musk wasn’t alone in his bleak reaction to Tuesday’s news even if others viewed the income inequality that centi-billionaires such as himself helped create as part of the problem. “Welcome to late-stage capitalism,” hacker group Anonymous posted from its official account on Tuesday. The ugly scenes coming out of Philadelphia are symptomatic of a broader trend. Retail theft is a $112-billion-a-year problem, according to a 2023 retail security survey by the National Retail Federation published earlier on Tuesday. “Retailers are seeing unprecedented levels of theft coupled with rampant crime in their stores, and the situation is only becoming more dire,” warned senior NRF official David Johnston in an accompanying statement.

“Despite a resilient economy and robust job market, more and more Americans fear the country has reached its cultural peak and now faces the same fate as the Roman Empire. There may even be an unhealthy obsession about Rome, with the subject garnering over 1 billion views on TikTok.”

According to an article by Pew Research published on April 2021, the top internal problems facing the US today include the affordability of healthcare, the federal budget deficit, gun violence, illegal immigration, and climate change. We can easily add homelessness, crumbling infrastructure, affordability of gasoline, grocery and rental housing, to the Pew Research’s lengthy list of internal problems facing America.

Just today (September 30, 2023), the House narrowly passes three spending bills with days to go before a government shutdown. Political polarization and a lack of bipartisanship are ongoing challenges. The two dominant political parties often have conflicting beliefs and priorities, making compromise difficult and political gridlock ever present.

I remember when I first arrived in this country some 60 years ago from Hong Kong everything seemed so wonderful, clean and beautiful. I marveled at how efficiently the US government worked and how orderly everyone seemed to behave – many Americans I knew then never even bothered to lock their front door.

America has been good to me and many other immigrants. It pains me to blog how far our country has declined.