Notice how the following bit of science info provides a mini-allegory of what has been happening to the Western Middle Class for the past 48 or so years (the ultimate irony residing in the name of the small molecule, with the key syllable being the 2nd).
Researchers
working on the question of antibiotic resistant found that in an
experimental Escherichia coli colony, the most antibiotic resistant
bacteria in the group produce a small molecule called indole. This
protein then floods through the communal broth of the population,
triggering protective mechanisms in the less resistant members.
However producing the indole
weakens the individuals bacteria that made it in the first time, the
scientists at Boston University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and
the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
showed. "They don't grow as well as they could, because they're
producing indole for everybody else," James Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, said in a release.
(source)
