Billionaires on Mars, kids in dust by Thanos Kalamidas

While your shopping basket shrinks like your hope at the end of the month, while a simple cold brings dread because a visit to the hospital is a luxury you can’t afford, and while children die of hunger and thirst in parts of the world we conveniently scroll past; Elon Musk is tweeting about Dogecoin from a private jet, and Jeff Bezos is perfecting his tan on the edge of space. And the worst part? They sleep just fine.

The uncomfortable truth is this: we are living through the most absurd chapter in human history, where sci-fi billionaires race each other to colonize planets while the Earth beneath their golden launchpads crumbles under inequality. Welcome to the age of wealth worship, where every second that passes, billionaires get richer by the millions, while entire populations sink deeper into despair. The world isn’t just upside down, it’s inside out and spinning toward lunacy.

You’d think that in a civilized society, one where we invented things like democracy, justice, and the welfare state, this wouldn’t be allowed. You’d think there would be a system in place, a government perhaps that steps in when things spiral out of control. But instead, what do we see? Politicians smiling for the cameras in suits bought with campaign money indirectly wired from the same tech moguls and hedge fund titans they pretend to regulate.

This is not capitalism gone rogue. This is capitalism working exactly as designed, just with the mask finally off. What started as free enterprise turned into monopoly, then evolved into full-blown oligarchy, wrapped in a Silicon Valley hoodie and served with a side of faux-philanthropy. Want to know how this game is rigged? Look no further than the tax codes carved like love letters to the ultra-rich, the regulatory agencies that sleep on the job, and the economic “experts” who preach growth while the people queue for food banks.

While billionaires ride rockets into space and call it "for humanity," children in Yemen, Gaza, and even Detroit drink contaminated water or no water at all. How do you explain that to your conscience, assuming you have one? How does the system justify that? Simple. It doesn't. It distracts.

We get served celebrity gossip like it's a moral compass. We’re told to blame immigrants, or single mothers, or lazy workers. We’re taught that asking for healthcare is “socialist,” but hoarding money you could never spend in ten lifetimes is somehow visionary. Jeff Bezos pays less tax than a schoolteacher and we call it entrepreneurship. Elon Musk manipulates markets with a single tweet, and we call it innovation. It's not clever. It's cruel. And it’s institutionalized.

And here's the final joke and it is a joke, just not a funny one. The only force with the power to change this farce is the very institution that’s been compromised from the inside: the state. Governments, those supposed guardians of justice and equality, are now board members in the shareholders' meeting of Plutocracy Inc.

But that doesn’t mean we should throw our hands in the air. That’s what they want. A disillusioned public is a quiet one. Cynicism is the most profitable silence. They want you to believe change is impossible so they can keep extracting, hoarding, and launching their little penis-shaped rockets while you ration heating in the winter.

We need to demand more, not just from the cartoonish billionaires of our era, but from the institutions that serve them like obedient interns. We need governments that remember their purpose is not to protect capital but to protect people. We need media that dares to investigate the hand that feeds it. And we need citizens, tired, angry, hopeful citizens, who remember that democracy was never meant to be a spectator sport.

Because while Elon Musk tweets in Latin and Jeff Bezos polishes his spacecraft, humanity is still here. On Earth. And no amount of rocket fuel can erase our hunger for justice.