From Guardian article on the banal overpriced luxury strawberry :
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/mar/15/viral-strawberry-erewhon-los-angeles#img-4

>This was bad news for the current American empire: “We have reached a very late Roman western state where the 1% does not need the state to survive,” Kulikowski said. “If the US government stops being able to do much of anything, it stops to matter to them. That’s a real parallel.”