You’re trying unbearably hard to come across as smart. Try less.

Reading comprehension is for people who paid attention in school. Nerds.

Through a postcolonialist lens this is pretty clever. Use of civilized as a term to excuse the racist and expansionist actions of one’s own country, expansion which happens to have coincided with railways being central to industrial power. Now the colonized are civilized, are we the barbarians?

Unironically thinking like that is the real ape-brained behavior.

This reads different if the woman is an economist.

As someone who studied econ, I feel like I should take offense ;D

Degenerate, in slang more commonly degen, is more or less a term for a low-life or morally repugnant behavior. It seems to have been picked up by the stock market gambling community (which is kinda funny in this context, didn’t know that), but I recall it being a thing over a decade ago in the circles that community is enmeshed with, such as 4chan. Was used to denounce gays, masturbation, that kind of thing.

“Often try,” more like almost always. There isn’t a word in economics that I’ve regularly heard used correctly. Not a fucking one.

My favorite, which is not from Econ: degenerate.