This is a great post, but I would also make explicit the following: Every single problem you identify here is downstream of:
(1) Civil Rights laws intruding into the private sphere and taking away freedom of association.
(2) Mass immigration destroying social cohesion
(3) Government subsidies to make things "cheaper" that inevitably have made them more expensive.
Address all of these and you would make huge progress in solving these problems.
Phenomenal. Always love your articles, 9/10 for average quality is incredible
Also loved your book and bought several copies, which I have since given away. Doesn't quite have the same punch as the articles but a very valuable piece nonetheless
Bought the book as well, and recently finished it.
I feel like you reached inside my brain, took hold of a lot of loose ideas that I had floating around in there, validated them, organized them, and improved upon them.
Thank you, Johann.
“Social capital being financialized and resold”
That’s it. That’s exactly it.
That sentence near the end of the article sums it all up. Young people aren’t buying luxury, they’re literally just paying a premium to buy back normalcy and things that used to be free
Incredibly well articulated. I once told a friend “money can’t buy much now”, and I couldn’t really explain what I meant.
Took me years to realize what I meant is that money cannot buy social wealth and culture, at most it can buy a golden bubble, and it gets pricier every year.
"founder made a lot of noise about not requiring degrees! In practice, based on my experience both being interviewed and later interviewing and hiring others, the company absolutely did require degrees"
HR subverted him
Ironically, the privatization of the common good has coincided with a parabolic growth of state power and intrusion into private lives.
So good faith participation in civil society gets rewarded with permanent petty tyranny from the same state abdicating its basic obligations.
Long article that misses the clearest reason.
It’s because they faked a pandemic and doubled the money supply by injecting a shit ton of money into the economy.
It made anyone without assets much poorer and anyone with assets much richer.
Young people generally don’t have assets.
Greatest crime of this century.