If you ever needed definitive proof that the human species is a failed evolutionary experiment, look no further than the current state of the Middle Kingdom. Beijing, currently overseeing a property market that has all the structural integrity of a wet paper bag, has decided that the cure for a looming economic apocalypse is—I kid you not—golden toilets. It is the perfect metaphor for the twenty-first century: a gleaming, expensive vessel designed specifically to receive the waste of a collapsing civilization. The Communist Party of China, an organization that ostensibly began with the goal of liberating the proletariat from the excesses of the bourgeoisie, has now reached its final, most hilarious form. They are no longer even pretending to care about Marx or Engels; they are simply trying to distract the masses from the fact that their life savings are tied up in half-finished concrete husks by installing high-end plumbing in government-sanctioned vanity projects. It’s Keynesianism for the deeply lobotomized.

The reality of the Chinese economy is a bleak, grey landscape of debt-to-GDP ratios that would make a Greek banker weep and a demographic curve that looks like a high-speed elevator with a severed cable. For decades, the ‘China Miracle’ was fueled by the simple, moronic act of building things that nobody needed. Entire ghost cities were erected in the middle of nowhere, monuments to the vanity of local party bosses and the desperation of a populace with nowhere else to put their money. But now that the bill has come due, the CCP has realized they can’t just keep building empty apartment blocks. Their solution? Make the public infrastructure as gaudy as possible. If the economy is going to hell, it might as well go there on a throne of 24-karat gold. It is the ultimate expression of face-culture run amok—a desperate, sweating attempt to project strength while the foundations are being eaten away by the termites of reality.

Of course, the Western media is watching this with a sense of bewildered superiority, which is rich coming from a collection of nations whose own economies are essentially three hedge funds in a trench coat pretending to be a society. While we mock the Chinese for their literal golden toilets, the West continues to flush its own future down the drain via the more abstract plumbing of quantitative easing and a service economy built on delivering lukewarm burritos to people who can’t afford rent. It’s a race to the bottom, and the only difference is that China wants to make sure the bottom is shiny. The arrogance of the technocrat is a universal constant. Whether it’s a Beijing bureaucrat dreaming of gilded porcelain or a Silicon Valley disruptor trying to monetize the concept of ‘breathing,’ the underlying pathology is the same: a total, pathological refusal to acknowledge that the party is over.

We are witnessing the death rattles of the great global illusion. For thirty years, the world operated on the assumption that China would provide the infinite growth required to keep the global capitalist machine from seizing up. Now that the ‘infinite’ part of that equation has been exposed as a lie, the panic is setting in. But instead of reform, instead of transparency, instead of—dare I say—competence, we get the golden toilet. It is a symbol of the utter intellectual bankruptcy of our species. We cannot fix the climate, we cannot stop the wars, and we certainly cannot figure out how to distribute resources without creating a new class of ultra-wealthy vampires, but we can, by god, make sure that when a mid-level party official takes a break from falsifying regional production data, he does so in a manner befitting a Roman emperor in the middle of a Goth invasion.

There is something profoundly poetic about the CCP’s obsession with high-end infrastructure as a stimulus. It is the architectural equivalent of a mid-life crisis. When a man realizes his youth is gone and his achievements are hollow, he buys a red convertible he can't drive. When a totalitarian regime realizes its economic model is a Ponzi scheme, it builds a billion-dollar airport in a province where the inhabitants still use donkeys for transport, and it outfits the VIP lounge with gold-plated bidets. It’s not just an economic strategy; it’s a psychiatric symptom. It is the desperate scream of a system that knows it is obsolete but refuses to die quietly.

In the end, the gold won't save them, just as the digital printing presses won't save the West. We are all trapped on a sinking ship, arguing about the quality of the silverware. The Chinese middle class, once the great hope of global stability, is now watching their net worth evaporate as the property bubble pops, and all they have to show for it is the knowledge that somewhere in a government building in a Tier-3 city, there is a toilet that costs more than their annual salary. It’s almost beautiful in its cynicism. If I weren't so bored by the predictable stupidity of it all, I might actually laugh. But as it stands, I’ll just watch the flush and wait for the water to stop rising. It won't be long now.