> I have lost almost all interest in it these days. It feels increasingly meaningless, and actively harmful.

Everything has this arc.

A civil engineer who signed on at a firm that did sewers, culverts and irrigation in 1970s was doing real work his customers wanted to pay for because they had water that needed to be elsewhere.

By 2000 the bulk of his trade was providing compliance solutions for customers who didn't want it, it didn't provide value for and were just doing it to check a box and get permission from the government to do the thing they actually wanted.