"It should work just fine," say the engineers, wringing their hands. And the businessmen say, "yes yes it does work fine, let's do it and get paid," while rubbing their own hands. And theoretically yes, these technological miracles should work just fine. Nuclear power can be robust and clean, and oil derricks should be capped off and sealed when they're done producing.
But then we've seen several nuclear meltdowns, and we know the waste and mines are frequently mismanaged. And the derelict derricks spread about the country steadily leak their oil. And the AI is crashing planes and cars and becoming more vulnerable to hacking and adversarial input.
All this power squandered. The trust has bled out, and only resent and suspicion remain. Which is what happens when you mismanage productive enterprises for the sake of extracting value from them, and starve all of the producers and laborers of that value. The wounds aren't healing like they used to.
