they start to think that regulatory capture is regulations

If you were born in the last 40 years, I can’t blame you. That’s all a lot of people have ever known.

you see workers just appear as if from the ether, they don’t draw from any sort of community of skilled professionals that largely know each other and would resent some of them fucking over the others for personal gain

Workers are increasingly alienated, both socially and physically. The regional networks of professionals have largely been polluted with scam organizations and self-help hustlers. Offices and worksites have become fractured into assembly-line like sub-components with more and more of the labor outsourced overseas. And the businesses themselves get larger, while the communication between departments and offices gets routed through more and more layers of middle management.

I don’t think its safe to say skilled professionals all know each other, outside of the superficial associations like LinkedIn. We might all know the same handful of institutions that employ us, but that’s only so beneficial.