This is one example of the many pathologies and abject failures of capitalism. Stephanie Pullman was not some random thing. She was a person. She mattered to people. People mattered to her. Nothing short of a shift towards anarcho-communism will really save both humanity and the beautiful planet we live on. Capitalism is parasitic, amoral, and greed driven. Why else do we see virtually no improvement in mental health medications and the cost for generics of 30+ year old ones priced to the point where one almost needs to make a choice between rent and food or stable mental health.

Several states have laws against cutting off people’s utilities during the winter in order to prevent this kind of incident. I think there are other need based programs to provide lower cost (below market) utilities, and that just disallowing people’s utilities from being cut off doesn’t remove the debt or prevent them from being shut off after winter ends, but it’s the kind of program we need to establish more year round, especially with the weather moving to further extremes year after year.

Like I (and others) keep saying. We're already a Cyberpunk Dystopia, just without the Cyber.