"Today the cargo cult is exemplified by the American economy as a whole. The UFOs now land here in the form of Wal-Marts and Target Stores, but the underlying theme is the same: The magical appearance of goodies. They aren't exactly free, but they come at supernatural discount prices that are the next best thing to free. The prices are so low because of an anomalous conjunction of circumstances. Cheap energy and surplus labor have allowed Asian nations, China in particular, to ramp up the last industrial manufacturing economies of the oil age. The decay of banking and lending standards has allowed Americans bearing credit cards to hallucinate unearned wealth, and to buy goods manufactured cheaply elsewhere. For Americans, every day can be like Christmas, an orgy of consumer cargo; and the Chinese get to enjoy the illusion that they are building an economy with a future."

[...]

Jobs are not prizes handed out by a government. They are roles in a social matrix. A big box store is not a social matrix. It is a parasitical economic swarm organism like a cloud of locusts that descends on a locality and picks it clean.