I titled this The Snake That Eats Itself Is Never Full for a few reasons.

I’m going to get straight to the point. The snake I’m referring to is capitalism.

I believe capitalism is trying to eat itself, so much so that it will never be full.

Let’s dissect this snake analogy like we’re in sixth grade biology.

Snakes are interesting, calculated creatures.

Snakes take a long time to strike because they are cautious predators that prioritize energy conservation. They strike only when their confidence of success is highly likely, rather than constantly attacking. They wait for the perfect moment to avoid wasting venom, which takes time to replenish, or to prevent injury from prey. When they’re ready and have sized up their target, they strike within a tenth of a second.

Snakes are the most brutal, calculated predators in all of nature, in my opinion. Strictly carnivorous, eating their prey whole. Their flexible jaw gives them the ability to swallow prey larger than their own body size, an important feature when only a few meals per year may be eaten.

Snakes can also eat themselves, a phenomenon driven by extreme stress, overheating, confusion, or severe hunger.

I believe that American capitalism, as it exists today, represents both the snake as predator and the snake as prey.

Stay with me.

All of the gains in the past 50 years of the stock market are largely attributed to technological innovations inside a system of capitalism.

But how quickly have we forgotten that the true and honest value should always be attached to the humans who leveraged these tools to create.

With these innovations is the most precious jewel of life, and that is meaning.

It took the brightest, most talented, passionate, fearless humans on earth to be the catalyst to America’s revered modern glory.

One of my favorite movies, Transformers, wouldn’t exist without CGI. Which still stands tall, better than any AI video I’ve seen today, btw.

Social media, one of the most powerful marketing channels ever built, wouldn’t exist as it is today without phones.

I could go on and on but everything ever invented holds one true thing in common. All of these things required human capital.

Every single vertical needed a human to build it, use it, sculpt it, pioneer it, weld it, imagine it, envision it, learn it, and leverage it to create value from it.

From Hollywood cinema to video games, from transportation to construction, from SaaS to music.

Whether you had to learn Adobe Photoshop to design a graphic, Final Cut Pro to edit a video, or Pro Tools to make a song, you put in time to learn something well enough to leverage it properly. You suffered for it. You earned it. You learned it. You used it to create something.

My conclusion is that this late stage of capitalism is removing humans from that equation and the magic of suffering for something worth creating is also being removed.

If the snake lives long enough, it becomes its own prey.

What is there to eat when you’ve devoured everything?

Bills are astronomically high. The cost of living is unrealistic. Wealth inequality is higher than ever. Four people hold more wealth than most Americans combined. Our healthcare system is failing. Our school system is failing. Wages are stagnant.

America is a failing system comprised of failing systems.

And yet.

We hold the largest GDP. We have the most debt. We consume the most. Our stock market is the largest. Our companies hold the most value. We generate the most revenue. We hold the most billionaires on the planet and 40% of the world’s millionaires.

Feels China staring at me.

Problems aside, we are still arguably the world’s blueprint for economic value. If this world of capitalism were a hunting sport, the United States would be the biggest predator.

Now, flip your perspective. With all of this money being made and value being created, we actually are the biggest game. We are the fat lion full of disruption and economic firepower.

We spend $100B like its water.

The unspoken nature of capitalism is eat what you kill, and the United States labor force is on the menu.

From internationally outsourced, cheaper labor to now agentic artificial intelligence, the appetite is clear.

Big spending from all fronts, government, tech, entertainment, is communicating one thing loudly; the United States workforce is food.

From helping build this capitalistic machine to being devoured by it, we have to realize that they don’t want us anymore.

Our labor is expensive, we expect to be treated with dignity, we require health insurance, we require human dignity, we have unions, we communicate with each other, we resort to legal options when mistreated…

It’s time we start waking up and smelling the coffee.

Capitalism thinks the American workforce is spoiled and its tired of dealing with it.

They’re breaking up with us.

“It’s not me, it’s you” type thing.

The snake that eats itself is never full.

We will never get tired of devouring ourselves, until we are nothing.

Until we’ve milked every cow, cooked every chicken, turned every human into a number and ruined the very meaning of our existence for gain.

When our systems required fixing, they proposed efficiency. But things that are broken, shouldn’t be made more efficient, they should be fixed.

America is a beast and no one can tell the beast what it can and cannot eat, even if it dies in the process of eating itself.

They call this an insatiable hunger.

Like Rome, the god of capitalism wants to see blood. Instead of rulers, it’s the elite. The warriors are the workforce. And the blood is the gutting of human capital.

America, and human alike, is so addicted to pleasure that we mistake pain for it.