Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I say you're underselling my position entirely with that last sentence, in a way that borders on uncharitable. Boiling down today's extreme escalation in corruption (by my measure) into just garden-variety "corruption" is dishonest (by my measure). And I never claimed to refuse to invest in markets, nor recommended such for others, in fact I make it pretty damn clear how I think most folks are best served BY specific investment choices. But nonetheless your phrasing is at least broadly in line with the spirit of my points, yes.

I'm claiming there are at least 2 classes of entity in the market, you and I are in the "get fucked every which way" class. Doesn't mean there isn't money to be made in a broad sense, even for that class, and it seems like we agree on that pretty solidly. We disagree from there, kind of increasingly so, the further we go from those broad points, and it doesn't sound like we are going to get any closer to one another's POV by further discussion.