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You turn to the socials, and learn it's not just you. It started overnight-- a few scattered payments started to stall, and then more and more frequently. At a certain critical point, the entire system ground to a halt as it tried to cope with endless timeouts and retries.

"Why every payment system is affected", reads an article posted by your techy friend Jen. It's some arcane verification module deep within Google. "That's bizarre", reads the first comment. "I don't even have an Android phone!"

Ah, but everything is interlinked, these days. So many steps, so many parties desperate to get a finger in every pie. Once upon a time it was a customer, a merchant, each party's bank, and a single intermediary managing it. Now nobody can tell how many steps a transaction's going to go through.

"You'd have thought if there was anything capitalism wouldn't break, it'd be taking money off people," another comment reads. "Shut up and take my money"; the meme with Fry from Futurama.

Ah. But it has. Capitalism breaks everything, eventually, even capitalism.
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