Starting to wonder whether every business is fake. Like the only reason restaurants are full is that DC and Wall Street types are using printed money to prop them up. Like 90 percent of them couldn’t survive in a real economy. And if they didn’t survive, all the money that flows through them into other areas of the economy would dry up too.

Same with fashion. I remember walking up Madison Avenue one night from like 30th street to 90th where I was staying, seeing all the brightly lit shops, closed for the night, selling insanely expensive things.

It was surreal, like who is buying all that stuff, buying enough of it all the time to keep these myriad places in business?

What would exist in a real economy where everyone had to offer value in exchange for hard money? How much would disappear almost overnight, and what would take its place?