The future for the young is in jeopardy. There is no doubt about that. Holistic lifestyles that we thought had been ironed out over decades of trial and error by preceding generations simply seem not to apply anymore.
In practical terms, a well adjusted 20 summin' year old seems to run head long into problems that a sagely wise elder simply does not understand. There is a weird dissonance between the generations, where a piece of advice like "Youngster, a smile will turn any stranger into a friend" doesn't count for much when that stranger has their attention buried so deeply in the mundane bowels of instagram that their ocular organs may as well be treated as social taboos, soon to be covered by a coy strapless virtual reality headset.
Who's fault is this? I don't know. Speculating seems silly, as the momentum of the world seems nigh unstoppable, and the spotty teenagers who soldered together a few solenoids back in the day aren't to blame for human nature. The same way that the inventor of blue paint isn't to blame for the musical miss-adventures of the Blue Man Group.
So if you happen to be searching for meaning on the wild frontiers of the virtual, rest here a while friend. But if the inconvenient world of the real comes a nocking, please feel free to abandon this digital adventure for something more tangible. In fact, most of this "wisdom" can probably be garnered down the local pub, so, maybe head there...
[Author Note: in RPG's, quests are often given in taverns. Therefore you must go to the RW (Real World) analog of a tavern, which is a pub. So go to a pub and there your call to adventure will be answered. Just trust me on this one. I am an accredited success, with over 600 gold bullion in my vault, and have had many, many intimate partners; just ask my level 27 paladin]
Before I begin, I will quickly deploy a tactic employed by YouTubers and showmen for centuries to keep you attention for a while longer and to justify a 6000 word blog post by giving a disclaimer! DISCLAIMER! Disclaimer... discla... d...
"I am not an expert, and can not see the future. If you disagree with my opinion that's ok, just don't go being a naught person. bad people are bad. So don't be a bad person. If you disrespect people then that is mean, soooooo, just take everything I say with a pinch of salt. Ok. Let's just be kind and civil to one another. Ok with that vital information out of the way, let's go!"
[Author Note: don't you think these disclaimers are a bit patronising, YouTube ain't Mr. Rodgers' Neighbourhood. You can literally watch that scene in Scanners where a man's head explodes.]
PROBLEM 1: Arms and Legs.
Paradigm shifts seem to be like a glass of milk in the microwave suddenly boiling over. In music for instance, there was a status quo for a very long time that dictated what was popular, and then Status Quo came along and over-night change the musical landscape forever.
What accounts for these changes? It's hard to say, but an elastic band before it snaps is under increasing strain. A small constant pressure over time builds up in a system till all the potential energy is released and the system suddenly, and often violantly, changes state.
We as people have had the individual fortune of being the shepherds of the world since our brains gained a few more wrinkles and we diverged from apes a couple thousand years ago. A person could look at the world, and actively make moves to change it.
Even when times were bad, and all hope was lost, a person could look at the world and make moves to change it, in a way that they thought was meaningful. In 'Of Mice and Men' (The book not the metal band), an older character gets his hand mangled. This should spell certain doom for him. The Great Depression is in full swing, he is old, he has a disability and doesn't have no where else to go. Fortunately for this tragic character, the glass hasn't yet boiled over. He, with all his short comings, still has a useful purpose on the ranch. He is the sweeper of the step.
This is nothing to be scoffed at. Under his own volition he remains relatively independent by means of sweeping things. Even in a time when sympathies for people who had fallen off the wagon were low, a man with the deck stacked against him remains the captain of his own ship and manages to keep navigating the dark stormy seas of his fate. (small ship, granted).
The old man, Candy is his name, shows us that even someone ostensibly useless, can have value in some limited practical terms.
"Bit heartless and utilitarian there Mrs. Blogger don't you think? Candy has value, he can whistle real good yes ma'am"
It is what it is. A person needs food and water, and when the only way to access those vital necessities is to do something useful, either for someone else or for oneself, then that is what gives your life the potential to be steered t'ward sunrise.
Just ask Candy himself whether he would rather have his job and a living or his dignity and starve.
The broader point is that people, defined vaguely as having approximately two arms, two legs and a brain, had till recently all the tools they needed to change the world. Even a lonely sweeper could get by.
Today, maybe tomorrow (it's hard to tell if the pot has boiled over yet when one is floating in it. All one can tell is that the steady energy supplied is making things uncomfortably hot), a person does not have that same luxury that Candy had. Where as Candy's biggest worry was that he would one day not be able to sweep the step, our biggest worry is that there are no steps for sweeping. We have made people obsolete.
This isn't a bad thing in itself. After all, automation has made it so that people don't need to sweep steps anymore. Our society supports people, eve if they aren't practically useful. This is a sympathetic, loving, and morally a commendable choice we have made as a collective.
But something still makes this 20 summin' year old nervous. I know that things were tough back in the day, and that things are a lot better now, and I understand that things should be getting better in the future if you just extrapolate current global trends about minimum wages and rates of starvation and so on.
So why worry?
If you take away someone's potential by automating away a persons use, and instead give them what they need, then suddenly you have a whole lot of people who don't actually do anything for you. In fact, they are a burden - Jeff Bezos in a dream I had.
Imagine Jeff sitting in his moon base for a second. Now I'm not judging the man in any way, but the fact is that he, and a network of bankers, politicians and other similarly powerful people, have all the water and food, and have managed to automate the whole food and water gathering process as well, to the point where an airport sized amazon warehouse needs only 8 employees to run it, is concerning. Now imagine actually working there. This new state of being does somewhat change the whole employer employee dynamic I think, what with you on earth and Jeff on the moon.
Now it's nothing new that a few people have control over all the resources, but at least in the time of Of Mice and Men you could do a bit of sweeping for the man upstairs and that was useful enough to warrant you a living.
Nowadays however... What would Of Mice and Men look like if it was made today in a video blog format. What would Candy's role be?
Now I seriously have no idea what I'm talking about, but I think the following scenario is plausible and should be considered:
Imagine a system that can create a surplus of anything for everyone forever. A fully autonomous system that can convert resources into anything the heart desires, like the amazon supply chain and involved entities, with only 10% of people having to work there to maintain and run the thing fully for eternity. Then you wouldn't need to employ any more than 10% of the population to run the world "sustainably" for ever and ever. Happily ever after.
Then what would you do with Candy?
I think you have two options:
Option 1: Employ surplus people anyway. This gives Candy and his pals a job, and they can pay their bills. Hura! But what we have to accept is that Candy is generously being aloud to work for amazon without actually doing a whole lot of anything useful. In fact, if you think about it, why would Candy work a job no one want's him for. Why not stay at home! no-one is going to miss him.
Option 2: Candy goes home and whiles away his ours with his favourite hobby; sweeping. No one cares what he does with his time. He gets payed by amazon anyway, and everyone else follows in Candy's footsteps and stays at home and everyone gets payed and life is good. Now this option sounds like paradise to me.
So why worry? Just do option 2. let Jeff sit on his moon base doing what he does, and we'll just laze around and cloud gaze as the local amazon warehouse on the horizon pumps out anything we could ever want.
The problem is that Jeff doesn't need to care. In the OG Of Mice and Men, if the big boss man didn't pay Curly a bit of cash, curly might just starve or leave, and then who would sweep the step?
In the current Of Mice and Men, if you starve or leave, you don't change Jeff's life in any substantial way. You have no agency or autonomy or anything really to make Jeff care about your wellbeing.
You can't go on strike, because Jeff doesn't need you and so Jeff doesn't care.
You can't work hard and prove how great you are to get a job with amazon, because Jeff only needs 6 people per warehouse.
So what can you do? I'm not entirely sure.
But what I do know, as a 20 summin' year old who has worked in both industry and in the service sector is that:
In industry, you provide value to the company, and the company values you. this gives you leverage to shape your world. Your boss probably makes 10 times more money than you, but hey, if you threatened to leave, you'd catch his attention.
Service jobs are not actually all that needed in the world. You can get fired and replaced at the drop of a hat, and let's be honest, if you got you Costa Coffe from a vending machine instead of from some depressed teenager you wouldn't really mind. In fact, why not just replace waiters, and bartenders as well.
And before you say "Yea but it's nice to have a person smile at you as you get your coffee, I'd pay a bit extra for that" consider who lost their jobs first when covid struck us. It wasn't politicians, teachers, doctors or web-developers, it was waiters.
More and more people can only get gig economy jobs in the services sector, and we hail this and being alright, not everyone needs to be a software-developer. This is our new normal. But when the rubber hits the road, if everyone is sweeping steps, and we decide that actually, you know what, I'm ok with having a robot do that, in fact I don't even mind having a dirty step, then you suddenly have 90% of people who could be deemed as useless by Jeffrey and his gang of nerds.
To boil things down, and to belabour a sturdy, excellent and resilient metaphor.
A watched pot never boils.
And a stopped watch tells the time twice a day.
Point is. If you have a billion people who don't do anything useful, then the three people who do actually design the robots don't have a lot of incentive to care for your wellbeing, as they make the robots that do all the useful stuff that the billion people could do. And the robots do it without moaning about it being too hot, or being hungry, or being thirsty. Whine, whine, whine. All day long. Can't really blame Jeff for wanting to go to the moon.
The answer! That'll come later. The silver bullet! there's 2 more problems (that might actually be the same problem now I come to think of it) that I'll go over first.
If you want a hint though: Star Trek the Next Generation is where I get all my ideas :)
PROBLEM 2: Keynesian economics
The economy seems to grow, and grow and grow. Surely there is a world where every demand is catered for and supply is efficiently in slight surplus continually. Why do we need growth all the time?
It should be noted that growth through efficiency is of course a good thing. A more efficient solar panel is after all a better solar panel. But what if we live in a world where grown is achieved through inefficiency?
In the early days of baking, a person could bake a cake. This cake could be perfect, like the worlds most efficient solar panel, converting as much of the suns energy into nutritious delight. This was great because with one little oven they could bake one awesome cake and feed one satisfied customer every day. However these were simpler times, and a cake sold would go straight into buying more flower, and the little money that was left was saved. There was always a queue outside of the bakery and never enough cakes for everyone. Then some chap who was a kind-hearted and inventive fellow by nature (having previously invented blue paint), invented debt. He told his friend the baker that if she promised to give him the earnings from the next 100 cakes she baked, he would buy her a new over right there and then that could bake ten cakes instead of one. This meant she could feed more people and put more money into savings and everyone was very happy.
More cakes, more happy cake eaters. Perfection.
This system worked because the bakers cakes were good.
In a world where her cakes would have been terrible, and only the local weirdo liked her cakes enough to eat them, a bigger oven would not have resulted in more happy cake eaters. One might call this a bad investment.
Now luckily for the chap who invented blue paint, investing also came naturally to him, and he invested in a laundromat, and a butcher, and a cobbler and soon everyone had plenty of cakes, clean stuff, meat and shoes. This was a great time.
But as happened with the blue paint, soon the forces of evil used it for nefarious purposes.
Co-ordination is a difficult thing, and in an ever more complicated world we have chosen to offload a lot of our decision making to government. This is a natural consequence of trying to get more and more people to vaguely walk in the right direction, and might not be a bad thing. But governments don't necessarily need to be run by people who know what is going on.
We live in a world today where increasingly governments are the largest investors in any sector. They not only employ a lot of people, they also have the capabilities to invest in companies and industries in a multitude of ways. Some subtle like subsidising farmers, or giving tax breaks to tech firms and other less subtle like bailing out banks.
The problem with a government being an investor is that a government can't fail. They literally can't go bust the same way that an individual investor can. If they have no money, they can raise taxes, sell public assets, or even just print money.
If a bridge is built by taking out debt, and that bridge is useful (like the good bakery), then that's great. But if every year a new bridge is built right next to the first one, and no-one uses it, then that second bridge is debt without a cause. A bad investment if you will.
So why would anyone ever build a bunch of useless bridges?
Well, it employs people and contractors and it grows the economy because you technically have more bridges.
And, it makes the green line go up.
But as with many things, this is a compounding error. The debt from investing in a baker who doesn't sell more cakes never gets payed back. The debt just hangs around indefinitely. The one good baker can offset a couple of bad bakers, but the equilibrium can not support too many bad bakers. There comes a point where debt starts to grow.
Now I really am no economist, and I am often told that having increasing debt is alright.
But a second factor seems to make this looming debt create a definitive problem for the future. A problem for us young folk...
The economy's health is largely measured by stock exchanges and prices of companies therein. If things go up, everyone is happy, and as we have seen, you can make the green line go up by building bridges atop bridges ad infinitum.
A village on a river that needs only one bridge may look at the green line and see it is increasing because yet another bridge has been built. But the fact of the matter is, it still takes exactly the same amount of time to cross the river. Life has not actually gotten better.
A world where so many useless bridges have been built can remove the green line from the actual tangible value of the economy so much that people can think things are going well when they aren't.
Let us assume that no good new bakers have been created in a while, and debt has been building in the system because bad bakers are popping up left right and centre. In fact lets assume there are 1000 times more bad bakers than good bakers. And let's assume that a tiny percentage of the debt needs to be payed back, then we have a problem. We ain't got no money!
What can we do? Well we can raise taxes but people don't seem do be fond of that. We could take on more debt and hope to god that more good bakers come along fairly soon, but you can see how this situation is a bit silly, and probably could have been avoided by not building so many bad bakers in the first place.
Or we could print more money and pay off the debt that way.
Printing more money means we can pay our debt, but we also dilute the value of the actual unit of money. In short, if you have debt you can't pay back because you can't run your bakery properly, then the value of one unit of money going down because 100000000000000 more units have been printed is a good thing, because, in relative terms to the total amount of money that there is you have to pay back less. The purchasing power of your debt has decreased.
So a country in debt, is incentivised to print money to reduce their debt.
Genius! Just print money, take on debt, print money. What's the problem?
Well, money that looses value isn't very good money for one. Your savings keep evaporating away which is a little bit frustrating.
Also, it suggests that the underlying economy might not be doing as well as the green line suggests.
But most importantly, it is not fair. The people who print the money decide where it goes. We can't print money, and our votes every couple years seem to not really affect that part of government.
If we are already living in a world were automation is reducing the value of a person, then is it really a good idea to be printing money to support the factory that"employs" them?
Should we not maybe support people instead?
If a bad bakery employs 1000000 people, and is on the cusp of buying a new automatic oven that makes everyone obsolete, and this bakery is bailed out by the government, have we not just given "bad Jeff" money to run his sinking business, and only slightly delay the inevitable?
And won't "good Jeff's" amazon bakery win out sooner or later anyway?
We are bribing companies to let our nephew work there, with no promises that our nephew will get a job in the future.
This is bad, as we are fuelling the engine of our own demise.
Alright, maybe I've let the cat out of the bag. And I don't want to make it sound like it's all doom and gloom.
If governments printed all of this money, and let bad bakeries fail and made the green line turn red, as it probably should have done after the first iPhone was invented (like is iPhone 12 really that much better in practical terms than the original?), and instead gave the money to the average person, then we might actually create a world were the economy can chug along comfortably without its nitrous boost of money, and make sure that the average person can get by without having to be more useful than a laser guided robot.
Finally Candy can stop sweeping pointlessly, and Jeff's good bakery can still make enough good cakes to reach to the moon. (note to self; cake tower might actually be a viable form of lunar travel. next blog)
But what is important here, is that politicians have to stop being business people, and business people have to stop relying on politicians. The politicians are here to care for the people first and foremost, and the economy can do just fine without infinite stimulus, even if it means that we only get one new iPhone every 5 years.
Yes alright I'm sorry. Universal Basic Income is the solution to all the worlds problems. I'm not that smart, so I have to keep things simple.
Make sure everyone pays their taxes at about 30% GDP. take 10% of the tax money and distribute it equally amongst everyone fairly, rich or poor. Stop spending money employing Candy to sweep for nothing and at least people can tell Jeff to get lost without having to starve. In a good year when the economy does well on it's own, you get a bit more money, and if it does badly, you get a bit less. and if the economy does really badly, don't bail out the bankers, just bail out the people.
Alright, I don't know if this is a good solution or not, but as a 20 summin' year old person I know this. Money accumulates in weird places, and it doesn't seem to be accumulating with the depressed costa coffee baristas, and the person who got voted in to run the show seems to be a bit confused when it comes to the relationship between productive output and a safety net for everyone, and money printer go Brrrrrrrrrrrrr and everyone getting wealthy, when it seems Jeff and co. are the only ones that benefit, becoming the richest people on earth over the course of a long weekend.
PROBLEM 3: Individuality
One problem that is a bit more vague to solve for us youngsters is individuality. Not because you can't be an individual, but because your individuality is still linked to the same old competitive systems that the laws of productivity and salary obey. You are free to wear a silly hat and learn a new dance, but the fact of the matter is, that expressing oneself does not lead to being able to pay the bills.
Now we've covered that people need food and water, and I've given away the Universal Basic Income punchline early and lost all sense of mystery that this last section would have, but I'll go over the problem none the less.
People want to do what they want to do. For the first time in history, now that everyone can be fed and hydrated, people can do what they want to do. But for some reason the people who have found there calling in life in their early 20's are stuck in a quagmire, where the thing they could do, they don't want to do, and the thing they do want to do seems impossible. I am of course assuming that everyone is pretty well off here.
Why is this? Why if we assume that people have a drive to do what they do want to do, do people end up not doing what they want to do?
My grandad once said to me "believe in yourself, and you'll get to where you want to go eventually" but unfortunately this seems not to be the case in todays world.
So we've fed and hydrated everyone, what's stopping me from taking my banjo, going to Coachella, and playing the main stage?
I think I'll illustrate this with a hypothetical example, because I don't know the relevant vocabulary, and Neil Degrasse Tyson seems to get a lot of milage from letting your imagination doing all the work for him.
Close your eyes. Keep them closed. No peeking.
Imagine an island with 100 people. On this island is a man called Candy who whistles beautifully. He doesn't get any recognition, or money, but the fact that his whistling brings joy to people gives his life purpose. Now his whistling is loud enough to reach half the island, and because half the people couldn't hear his performance, he packs up his chapstick and and travels across the island to entertain the other other half of the people.
Now one day someone invents a microphone, and bang! right there he can entertain the whole island! One whistling man can for the first time in history entertain one whole island. Magical.
And then this guy with glasses comes along and hands everyone and iPhone and BANG! Suddenly Candy can whistle into this device and entertain not just his island, but 7000000000 people as well.
Every day everyone tunes into Candy's whistling. And Candy is happy that his gift can bring joy to more people.
But sadly, no one listens to the other whistlers on the other islands any more.
This is sad. And even in a world where financial burdens are non-existant a little kid with big dreams suddenly has the whole world to contend with, (and to distract himself with as well).
Obviously, if people didn't have to make a living, this would only be somewhat sad, but today, many people aren't heard and still have bills to pay.
Is there a solution to this? I'm not sure, but maybe being humble enough to accept that we are all just losers under the watchful gaze of Jeff might help bring us a bit closer. Let us not let the same systems that are ruining our financial future ruin our personal dreams as well.
Genuine love is the answer I think. Dissect love into trust, honesty, friendship etc. and you have a potential answer.
I don't know. But we can't be playing zero sum games for much longer.
PROBLEM 4: Not having a problem
I won't burden you by talking about not having a problem. But you do see how that is somewhat humorous, having a problem called not having a problem... You see the irony there, it's like the ever flowing sands of...
Alright that's enough of that.
If you have managed to get this far, thank you kindly. I'm sorry if this was a bit nonsensical, and I am sorry for the lack of polish. I am no professional writer.
And truth be told, I wrote this because I'm struggling a little bit for money and apparently you can earn crypto by writing blogs. So... Here goes nothing.
The only piece of practical advice I can give any 20 summin' year olds who have been shafted is, take you money that you do have, and put it in something that is not controlled by manipulated market forces, or a financial bubble, or some scam. I don't know what that it, maybe an oven to start a bakery is a good investment, I truly don't know.
But Bitcoin seems to be a good alternative to the rigged game we are playing at the moment.
Thank you again for your time.
b.
