So, I recently came across Nick Johnson's youtube channel. It's a general travel oriented youtube channel. I'm subbed to several of those given I dont travel super often, but I do like to see what the rest of the country is like. I actually did come across his channel a while in looking up my own city on Youtube to see what people had to say about it, and he basically compared it to a third world country. I'm not going to lie, that is accurate. I live in a pretty bad hood and literally hear gunshots at night...and sometimes during the day. And earlier this year, my dad's car literally got shot up after two people got into a fire fight in front of my house. Fun.
But, I'm here to talk about his channel more broadly, and the political implications of it. Because, this guy is very politically biased, and openly seems to broadcast that bias. And he's very conservative, and it's kind of cringey.
Now, before I continue, I will say this, his channel is at least worth checking out. He tends to drive through a lot of areas, and talk about what he sees and what the areas are like. Specifically, he tends to drive through ghettos and stuff and highlights the poverty we have in this country. But...sadly, he tends to be conservative, meaning when he discusses the underlying political takes, man, they are cringe.
Like, he talks about how unaffordable big cities are, and how high housing prices are in them. And I'm going to be honest, I tend to agree with him. I've recently bashed the concept of living in a big big city, and have long been critical of cities, as my opinion of big cities is that the market forces are out of whack there, leading to supply for housing never able to meet demand, and leading to higher and higher costs of living. In my own ideology, supportive of basic income, my idea to solve the problem with American poverty is to decouple it from work, allowing people to pursue cheaper areas while having a UBI.
Nick Johnson has experimented with the idea of encouraging people to move to small towns, but then highlights the lack of job opportunities there, and often times crushing poverty and even crime (yes, small town America has a crime problem sometimes) that occur in these areas. Heck, in a lot of his videos, he encourages people to move out of these small areas, noting that they have nothing going for them and how they're dead end areas, but honestly, where will they move to? Big cities. Where there's crushing housing prices. You see, in my view, that's the problem with America, some areas have all of the opportunities, but are increasingly unlivable because everyone wants to live there. But other places are going into death spirals, where theres no jobs, theres no money, and a lot of people can't afford to move. So housing becomes incredibly cheap, but you're basically going to be poor anyway.
And sadly, Nick seems to miss a lot of sociological analysis of this due to his conservatism. He does have some social science type people on, but always the minority of conservatives who literally contradict everything I ever learned in college on the matter, and who tend to reinforce his worldview. One video mentions how poverty reduction never reduced crime, only policing, and the problem with policing right now is people are afraid to police because of BLM. I cant comment too much on the recent policing situation with BLM, but uh...reducing poverty doesn't reduce crime? That's ridiculous. A lot of crime is literally caused by poverty and other social issues. He often is critical of welfare. Once when discussing rural south carolina, he talked about how welfare was keeping people poor where they didn't want to move to prosperous areas. Then he said the same thing in talking about a more urban ghetto. He also talks constantly about jobs. And I can be honest, as an ex conservative, I understand why he would associate joblessness with a lot of crime and other issues with society. That happens...in societies in which people need jobs for a good living. But I personally tend to view the job as a modern invention and recall how when modern capitalism was invented, forcing people into jobs also caused a lot of dysfunction too, which led to the beginning of the modern far left and their rejection of capitalism and sometimes wage slavery. Perhaps there are other problems, like lack of income and psychological impacts associated with that and lack of a job in a society that puts your inherent worth of a human being based on jobs? I know, my own takes on jobs are kind of unorthodox and I go against a lot of even left wing orthodoxy in my opinions, but I have my opinions and see the modern fixation on the job to be this weird remnant of the protestant work ethic that few are willing to challenge.
The fact is, as I see it, you can't have it both ways. My views of the current issues with society mirror Andrew Yang's War on Normal People, in which he talks about America diverging into two different worlds, large cities in which opportunities abound, and many may do quite well in, and everywhere else, where joblessness is becoming increasing a way of life and causing issues due to income insecurity and psychological impacts. Most peoples' solutions to this anomie involve trying to bring jobs back and promise full employment for all, but I dont believe employment is a solution. In order for it to be, you need to basically be...like a normie who is ignorant. You need to buy into the mainstream idea of what society is, and you need to believe in this weird religious idea of having a purpose that is tied to a job. At my stage of development, I reject both, and wish to bestow this knowledge onto the masses. The answer isnt always to make society actually meet this ideal. Perhaps the solution is to change our attitudes about what the ideal should be? In the past, the idea of working less and the like was lauded by utopian thinkers. And honestly? in my own life and those of others I have observed, jobs often aren't good things. For example, lots of people like to play the lottery and win millions of dollars. And what's the first thing they talk about doing when they get their millions? Quitting their jobs. Many see this grind of working just to survive as awful, and wish, desperately, to flee it. They'll play the lottery just to have a chance, no matter how small, that they'll be able to win and rise above this sisyphusian fate. And I get it, sometimes people who win the lottery are dysfunctional too and things arent always perfect on the other side either. Some of them waste their earnings, lose their friends and family over the money, etc, but honestly, do you see them giving up the money to others? No. But you know what? The second they can, they'll give up their current jobs.
Why am I going into this on an article about some guy's youtube page? Because Im trying to debunk the jobs argument. I mean, nick himself, I can't imagine him having a normal job. i could be wrong, but it seems to me his job is...driving around the country to report to his hundreds of thousands of youtube fans how bad that ghetto he just visited was. If that is his job, then why can't our "callings" be blogging for UBI and anti work causes, or in the case of a friend of mine, storm chasing and predicting weather? I sure as heck can tell you it's not working in McDonalds for $8 an hour. So let's dispense with this idea that jobs are great and have dignity and focus more on how to adjust to a society in which we understand that the American economy will never produce just outcomes for all.
Beyond that, Nick likes to talk a lot about homelessness, viewing it as an epidemic, and viewing democrats as pandering to them and bringing them to cities through a lack of vagrancy laws and generous, albeit limited social services that keep them dependent on government. Now, I'm willing to entertain the idea that democrats...dont always have their constituents' best interests at heart. And they arent incentivized to solve problems, instead preferring to milk them and keep people trapped in a cycle of dependency that they can never break free of. But...there's problems with Nick's narrative here. The fact is, most homeless people can't even vote to my knowledge, because don't you need a home address to register to vote? I mean, generally speaking homeless people are ignored by both parties, with the debate being "should we allow them to exist in our communities or try to force them out?", with the right trying to force them out of everywhere and the left trying to at least let them live somewhere.
But let's be honest, even I will admit homelessness isnt good for the communities they occupy. I dont think having blocks and blocks and blocks of people camping in tents on sidewalks is a good thing for this country. So I do support getting them off of the street. But my approach would be a combination of UBI, housing programs, and additional help for those who need it like drug addicts and the mentally ill. There is a lot of focus on Nick's channel about how homeless people are often mentally ill or drug addicted, but uh...arent his side of the aisle's policies actually causing the issue? Wasn't it Reagan who closed down the mental asylums? Wasn't it Nixon who escalated the war on drugs and turned drug addiction into something criminal, rather than some sort of disease that needs to be treated medically? The fact is, right wing policies don't work. We can criticize the current neoliberal left for poor band aid policies that dont solve the problem or do anything, but the solution isnt to move right, it's to move left. If we want to end homelessness, we need everyone to have money, we need more access to homes, and we need better social services for the mentally ill and drug addicts.
The fact is, while Nick's youtube channel does have some value if you want to see the rest of America, particularly the more dark and less attractive parts of America, beyond the sheer entertainment value I wouldn't take his takes too seriously. He tends to view poverty as partially systemic, but mostly a character issue, claiming many people are lazy, while simultaneously complaining about lack of jobs in many areas, while simultaneously complaining about high cost of living where it is liveable.
Uh...duh. All of these things are related. America is screwed up. We have an economy that's working well for the top 20% of Americans but is increasingly not working for the other 80%. And we need policies, like UBI, healthcare at all, free college, etc., to make the economy work for the other 80% again. Both those who are working and those who are not. And we need to adapt to the new future of work, rather than sticking to the same antiquated mindset with the gospel of jobs. And we need to get rid of this nonsense about the old American can do spirit and how we just need to work harder and move to the right places to succeed. Because those shouldnt be THE answer in a society that's supposed to revolve around us, rather than the other way around. For a while I did have an article planned suggesting that human centered capitalism should preclude at least somewhat of an anti work mentality. But I kind of scrapped it due to not knowing how to argue for it. Well, I'll post the core argument here, right now. If the economy works for us, not the other way around, then we shouldnt have to jump through hoops trying to do all the right things just to remain employable. We shouldnt have to upend our lives and move to the right location, and blah blah blah. Rather, we need an economy that works with how we wish to live, with jobs, and work, existing primarily to enhance our lives through the stuff they they create. Rather than focusing so much on work and productivity, we should be trying to reduce the burden of work on people as much as possible, while reaping the rewards of it. All while having some sort of sane, capitalist, market based economy. I believe that it's possible, and that's the world we need to create.
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