I can&#x27;t help but to quote the full song <i>Modern Man</i> from Arcade Fire&#x27;s album <i>The Suburbs</i> -- which basically was an entire album chronicling this sort of issue in San Francisco.<p><i>So I wait my turn, I&#x27;m a modern man
And the people behind me, they can&#x27;t understand
Makes me feel like
Makes me feel like<p>So I wait in line, I&#x27;m a modern man
And the people behind me, they can&#x27;t understand
Makes me feel like
Something don&#x27;t feel right<p>Like a record that&#x27;s skipping
I&#x27;m a modern man
And the clock keeps ticking
I&#x27;m a modern man
Makes me feel like
Makes me feel like<p>In my dream I was almost there
Then they pulled me aside and said you&#x27;re going nowhere
They say we are the chosen few
But we waste it
And that&#x27;s why we&#x27;re still waiting
On a number from the modern man
Maybe when you&#x27;re older you will understand
Why you don&#x27;t feel right
Why you can&#x27;t sleep at night now<p>In line for a number but you don&#x27;t understand
Like a modern man
In line for a number but you don&#x27;t understand
Like a modern man<p>Oh I had a dream I was dreaming
And I feel I&#x27;m losing the feeling
Makes me feel like
Like something don&#x27;t feel right
I erase the number of the modern man
Want to break the mirror of the modern man
Makes me feel like
Makes me feel like<p>In my dream I was almost there
Then they pulled me aside and said you&#x27;re going nowhere
I know we are the chosen few
But we waste it
And that&#x27;s why we&#x27;re still waiting
In line for a number but you don&#x27;t understand
Like a modern man
In line for a number but you don&#x27;t understand
Like a modern man<p>If it&#x27;s alright
Then how come you can&#x27;t sleep at night?
In line for a number but you don&#x27;t understand
Like a modern man<p>I&#x27;m a modern man
I&#x27;m a modern man
I&#x27;m a modern man
I&#x27;m a modern man</i><p>In a Law of Rents sort of way, I can&#x27;t help but to think that these phenomena are self indictments. If land prices are driven by those who can extract the most value from them, and the result is that wealthy people land-grab property that even remains vacant in some cases, or otherwise is a living space for a twenty-something working in finance, law, or medicine, who will eventually move away and be replaced by some other twenty-something in finance, law, or medicine, this seems to say a lot more about failures on the part of the wealthy members of older generations to innovate. If the best a use of that land is dormancy, sitting like gold in a vault, instead of being a place where a working class father inspires a child or where a mother teaches her son or where an artist, like what David Byrne did in the Talking Heads days in New York, transforms a space into a freeing  creative studio ... isn&#x27;t this embarrassing to them (the wealthy older generations)? It&#x27;s basically an admission that, with the huge wealth endowment and peaceful world they were handed by <i>their</i> parents&#x27; generation, they managed to squander it to the point where the best use of land, the most inventive thing they can do with their money, is ... <i>nothing</i>. You&#x27;ve got two options: pour your money into consumer variation bullshit startups, or park it into assets like real estate that deprive younger generations of opportunity. It seems that wealth and a half century of the position of passively dominating in Western-led proxy wars has stripped away any sense of civic duty, or even basic <i>shame</i> at their failure to use capital to <i>do</i> anything.