Rereading The War on Normal People Part 3

 So, this is where Yang outlines his solutions for the problems presented in the previous sections. Rereading it, and comparing it to what I was thinking with my hypothetical book, he spends a lot more time talking about the problems, and I spend a lot more time talking about the solutions. He also doesn't present a ton of policy details, which speaks to his relative weakness as a presidential candidate (keep in mind how "wonky" I am with details of policies I tend to support). But this is encouraging. To some extent, I feel like I'm overthinking the book and rereading one of my favorite existing works on the subject it makes me realize I'm way overthinking it. I mean, some of my blog posts are quite frankly more detailed than some of Yang's book chapters here, for better or for worse.

Anyway, to get into it.

Chapters 16-17

This is where he outlines his case for the freedom dividend, his term for UBI. He discusses the history of the idea briefly, he outlines the benefits, and he pushes his idea for a VAT. While I understand why he pushes for a VAT, I'm going to be honest, I'm not particularly fond of using a consumption tax for the freedom dividend. It seems to draw in less revenue than would be had from an income tax, at least by my estimates, and the VAT does cut into the UBI itself, unless you carve our exceptions for essentials (which I think Yang wants to do), which further reduces its ability to raise revenue.

All in all, I love the idea, and I'm also a very pro UBI kind of guy, so, yeah. Easy policy to support for me.

With chapter 17, he goes a bit more into the history and the surrounding data of the proposal. He notes it's been successfully tried such as with Alaskan oil dividends, and also discusses the studies that took place in the 1970s and the obvious lack of significant work disincentives there. And of course, he briefly addresses all of the common criticisms like funding, inflation boogeymen, work incentives, and people wasting the money on drugs. So, he did a pretty decent job in this section. Admittedly, I feel like some of my posts are a bit more detailed and nuanced here, but still, that's where I struggle with writing seriously, I overthink it, whereas he just freaking writes it down plainly and simply in a to the point manner. So yeah, good section. I feel like he glosses over things here and there, but still, section.

Chapter 18

Here he talks about solutions for giving people stuff to do. As we discussed previously he thinks that jobs are essential for one's well being, and believes most people will pursue work even if UBI is implemented. He's not wrong, but in a world without jobs he talks about solutions to it. He obviously rejects the idea of a job guarantee. Good on him. I see the left pushing for this all of the time, and I find the idea cringe. Who wants a guaranteed job? Jesus. What is this, the 1930s? He points out how JGs are very expensive and not really worth the money, and I generally agree. And he has the receipts on this, talking about how it costs like $30-56k to train each person and that that's what the budget is for companies like his own venture for america and the peace corps. So yeah, not exactly a worthwhile discussion. 

He talks about how UBI would allow people to work for less in fields where people work for reasons other than money, which I find kind of cringe, I mean, we should want people paid more, but eh, this is Yang, the entrepreneur we're talking about. He admits that businesses wanna hire people as cheaply as possible and that the market rewards efficiency, so...

To be fair he's not wrong either, I probably wouldn't push that as a selling point, lest we have leftists screeching into the void about underpaying people. They believe UBI is a trojan horse for that sort of stuff after all. 

Honestly, I think if people work for reasons other than money, sure, yeah, people would work for less in some cases, but in most jobs, people would work for more. Because they wouldnt work at all unless jobs provide a minimum standard of pay and worker treatment. If people are underpaid and abused they'd just walk. So lefties, keep this in mind before you turn anti UBI. Look at the big picture.

Beyond that, Yang talks about his time banking idea, which he used to call "digital social credits", not to be confused with the Chinese "social credit" rating system. Basically, instead of working for money, we do odd jobs and are rewarded with some...alternate currency? Honestly, i never liked this idea, it comes off as money with extra steps. We already have "social credits", they're called DOLLARS AND CENTS. Like, I know in these kinds of books, I know Jeremy Rifkin discussed this in "the End of Work" too, but these guys always try to come up with alternative versions to jobs in order to give people stuff to do, and it always comes off as cringe for me. First of all, I dont think all jobs will be automated. There will remain jobs well into the future. It's just that without a shift to our capitalistic system, they will be unpleasant, extremely poorly paid, and be precarious. I tend to believe more in the polarization of the job market between the low end and the high end, with jobs always being available, but people being forced to jump through hoops to do increasingly degrading things.

And honestly, I DONT think work is the end all be all, or essential to human existence, that is the big ideological difference I have from Yang himself on these questions. He thinks automation will destroy all jobs and people will be left with nothing to do. I WISH that would happen, but I believe that jobists would keep us all on a treadmill working increasingly BS jobs that we hate doing, while we lose the dignity of the middle class we used to have. Capitalism has always needed the complete opposite of trickle down economics to function. I like to call left wing capitalist economics more like trickle up, or alternatively call it pinata economics, because sometimes you need to beat the rich with a stick before the candy starts trickling down (metaphorically of course, by beating them I mean taxes, regulations, safety nets, etc). Honestly, our future is more gilded age than anything, although areas like the Mississippi Delta and West Virginia speak to our future without intervention like a UBI. Just something to think about. 

Honestly, my take? Just give people a UBI, let people choose what to do, let the federal reserve determine interest rates to create the right number of jobs, and over time, reduce the work week. That's my idea on moving away from work. And I believe it can be done. We just need to choose it over jobs. 

Chapter 19

Here, he discusses human centered capitalism. While I generally agree with him, and believe we need to move away from GDP, I really believe this section could be so much more. As I said, with me, human centered capitalism is an ethos that has naturally come from my humanist worldviews. In reality, ALL human social conventions are to be human centered. Government, democracy, ethics, the economy. If this stuff does not exist to serve us and our needs, what is the point? We are merely slaves to our own social conventions. Human centered capitalism is needed to make capitalism work for people, rather than making us slaves to work, and to the rich property owners who control everything. Again, I kinda take Yang's core idea here and combine it with ideas like Karl Widerquist's indepentarianism, or Phillippe Van Parijs' real libertarianism. Both of these ideas essentially "justify" capitalism in some ways, by giving people maximal liberty under it, including liberty to withdraw from participating more than absolutely necessary. So to me, that seems to be the best way to ensure that the market serves us, and we don't serve it. I do appreciate Yang in trying to at least start to move in this direction though. 

Chapter 20

 Here Yang discusses his ideas to crack down on corruption in politics. These ideas include things like paying people more and forbid them from participating in money making activities related to their office after leaving it. He talks about jailing CEOs of companies fined heavy amounts, a proposal I'm not sure if I support, but it's worth thinking about at least. He talks about regulating technology, which Im more leery of. And he pushes some national service program to build unity, which I find creepy as fudge. Really, like, being the indepentarian I am, I just have to say this is authoritarian, and heck no, I don't support this. I know this idea made it into the original forward party too. If you guys recall, it was the one idea of Yang's I came out 100% AGAINST, unequivocally. So these aren't all winners. I appreciate the guy for trying, but some of these proposals just...don't resonate at all. He has some good ideas though. 

Chapter 21

Here he discussed healthcare. He made some good arguments for single payer, although once again, he approaches it from his business background, whereas I look at it more as someone on the opposite side of things. Still, he makes good arguments about "job lock", and the need to reduce prices. He also discusses the high cost of education, and how that relates to high healthcare costs. Gee, if only we made college free too, why aren't you for that, Andrew? We'll discuss this a little later. 

All things considered, he made some decent arguments for single payer, some of which I'd make, some of which I wouldn't. For me, it's about the fact that we have tons of uninsured people, healthcare costs are sky high due to blatant market failures, more piecemeal approaches like the ACA have largely failed to fully resolve the accessibility issues, and we need either single payer or a public option to step in and cover everyone. Many current costs like insurance premiums, employer contributions, and deductibles would be replaced with taxes, and people would be taxed (or in a public option, billed) in line with their income. Seems like a decent way to free people from the employer based system, and expand coverage to everyone without bureaucracy, paperwork, etc. 

Chapter 22

Here, he discusses college. He talks about alternatives to college, and the need for in person interaction. IM not sure I agree with him given the prevalence of zoom post 2020. I also think online alternatives are okay too. STILL, I would support in person learning and interaction.

He doesnt support free college. While he acknowledges college is about more than just job training, but about building strong individuals, he seems to advocate for trade school instead, and talks about the perverse incentives universities have to overcharge and then have vast bureaucracies that aren't really needed. I cant help but think of my alma mater when reading this. I mean, i dont think they had insane bureaucracy per se, but they do have gall hitting people up who paid $30k a year for the privilege of going there for donations so they can rebuild the buildings they already have. When I left, they were rebuilding the science building. They already had a science building, why do they need another one? Then they purchased extra dorms by turning surrounding buildings into them, and yeah. Everything's about expanding expanding expanding. They could provide a decent experience for a fraction of the money. I mean, it dont cost THAT much for classrooms, desks, and white boards. But these colleges have to make everything bloated and expensive. Still, while I'd support forcing them to cut back, I still believe in free college.

College has a lot of positive benefits for me. It's basically needed to open the door for higher level jobs, so if we want a society based on merit and work ethic, we should be giving people the tools to compete in this new economy. A lack of that just leads to a wealthy aristocracy continuing to control the most privileged jobs and positions in society.

Second, college is about making strong citizens. Imagine how many people would vote republican if everyone had a college degree. We're talking a shift to around 60-40 in the democrats' favor if everyone had a college degree. Im not doing this simply to support the democrats, but let's face it. The GOP is a party full of people who are either very rich, or very ignorant. At this point, the party is represented by nutcases like Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Every time these people talk, I have to wonder why anyone listens, because the drivel that comes out of their mouths is so dumb idk how anyone can believe it. We have a clear education problem here. So by educating our populace, we encourage them to make better decisions. 

Third, because college isn't a guarantee for success, but we want people to go anyway, and because the alternative under the status quo is being forced to pay tons of debt people cant pay off without a good job, well, free college would solve that problem. And based on his discussion on healthcare and doctors' salaries above and how med school costs are related to that, I would think subsidizing that crap would allow us to churn out doctors more, and not pay them insane amounts, driving up healthcare costs into the stratosphere. 

So yeah. I just think free college would solve so many things here, and I think yang sleeps on this. Not saying he isnt wrong about bloat and bureaucracy and poor usage of resources in universities, that definitely happens. Again, i look at my alma mater and cringe. But, still, the solution comes with some level of free college and student debt forgiveness here.

Also, did we mention free college is relatively cheap? UBI costs like $4 trillion these days (Yang's plan is dated and has some drawbacks, but his cost $2.5-3 trillion IIRC). Medicare for all would require around $2 trillion in additional spending above what we already spend. Free college is just like, a couple hundred billion, at most. Seems like a no brainer to invest in our future. 

Conclusion (of his book)

While the title "masters and servants" is interesting, I really think tying it in with human centered capitalism the way I often do would be a good idea.

Beyond that, his conclusion is short, he talks about how he fears for the future, and believes this automation wave is coming. I'd argue it's here, and it's been here since at least 2008. That's why so many cities are already struggling. This isn't something that happens overnight, it's a slow process that hollows out american society at large. 

For as much as he talks about how he's fighting for his life here, and for the future of his children though, idk, I kinda don't feel that way about Yang at this point. Maybe he still believes this stuff deep down, but since writing this book, he's moved away from A LOT of his ideas. He's shifted away from medicare for all during the 2020 campaign itself. he shifted away from UBI post merging forward with other political parties. He's made some political compromises during the way where at least outwardly, it's like he's a different person. I know ive been very critical of yang both on this blog, and in these posts, questioning his dedication to these idea, but as I said, I feel like he merely adopted them, whereas I'm born into them and molded by them. This is personal FOR ME because I'm the one who lives in a burnt out rust belt style city in Pennsylvania that is the product of this war on normal people first hand. He talks about others living this with a sympathetic here, but I LIVE THIS. THIS IS MY LIFE. So I feel like I'm fighting for my life here in a more immediate sense than Yang, and thats why, as he distances himself from these ideas, I constantly grill him for it, and feel like I can NEVER back down. Because this stuff is real, I see it every day, and I feel like I myself have no future in this economy the way things are, and the way things are going. Yang's UBI is what's needed to make this economy serviceable for "normal people." Medicare for all is. Human centered capitalism is, for me, not just an idea, an entire ethos that sums up my entire ideological and existential approach to the economy. And I will keep pushing for it, even if Yang does not. 

Conclusion (mine)

So....rereading this book in general, what do I think?

I think in defining the problems, in section 1, he's largely dead on. I might disagree with him on work and purpose, but other than that, we're in complete agreement. In section 2, I largely still agree with him, but out clear ideological differences on work tend to grate on me as the book goes on. Still, for a normie job creator explaining a variation of my ideas to other normies to convince them to join the cause? Excellent. I know not everyone will agree with me on work. I'm ANTI work, full stop. And I tend to believe his perspective is a little too protestant work ethicy for my tastes.

In section 3, I largely agree with him on solutions, but feel like he could have fleshed things out more at times. And I ultimately feel sad he has since backed away from most of these ideas. Even on the ideas themselves there were some points of disagreement. Time banking is kinda a cringey idea for me. I wish he was for free college, his national service plan is deeply authoritarian and cringey. There's a lot about Yang I like, but rereading it and thinking critically about our differences, it does seem like despite a lot of overlap, we do have some differing viewpoints on things. 

Part of this is due to our perspectives. He's a "job creator" from the bubble who realized job creation isnt working. Im some dude who kinda approached this from my own perspectives in the labor market. He's not super educated on policy and while he had some good ideas he didn't seem very well versed in how to implement things. We've discussed his UBI plan on this blog before, it's kinda flawed. He had no plan to fund medicare for all and had since backed away from the idea, and seemed fair weather on supporting a public option, and yeah. He just....never really had the amount of education on policy that I had, I feel like in some respects, I did a better job on policy than he would, and I feel more knowledgeable and consistent on this topic. 

All in all, Yang was great at diagnosing the problems with our economy, and sketching out a vision for solutions, but he seemed lacking in retrospect for the exact details of those solutions. And he seemed to waver in dedication to his original cause IMO.

On the flip side, when I've been looking into potentially writing my own book, I mean, this blog is a repository of solutions. I have tons of solutions, with tons of details, and feel like I myself do a better job than yang does. But, in trying to justify my solutions, I kinda feel like I suck at this, and Yang does a better job. The war on normal people is an excellent book, it's an easy 9/10 from me, but yeah, there are some points that need more exploring in my opinion. I feel like this blog has done a good job in doing that over the years, but yeah. 

In some ways this is like the ideal book I wish I wrote 8-10 years ago, but in other ways, I just feel like Yang couldve expanded his ideas a lot. He is onto something here. I mean, UBI, medicare for all, human centered capitalism, all good things. But...he's not really been the best advocate for these ideas, both in terms of policy details, and in terms of his consistency in supporting them. I feel like Yang has essentially abandoned his original work, leaving it to rot, much like my community has been left to rot by the tides of change he discusses. And yeah. We kinda need better advocates for this set of ideas.

Rereading the War on Normal People Part 2

 So, same format as before, you know the drill. This is the dark part of the book where he really outlines just how screwed we are. 

Chapter 9

In chapter 9 he outlines what life in the bubble is like, how most truly successful people go to a few ivy league schools, major in roughly the same six things, and end up relocating to the same cities. This leads to extreme polarization in our economy where a handful of cities become megacenters of commerce, while the rest of the country is just...screwed. 

He does mention that life inside the bubble isn't as easy as it seems, capitalism as an idea is very much apparent here, and there's a ruthless cut throat culture in which people struggle to stay ahead of/in the pack, and try to desperately avoid falling behind. Many college students in these places suffer from major mental health issues as a result, and yeah. While I admire capitalism's ruthless efficiency in terms of producing things, its impact on people is just...not good. We are a very unhealthy society due to the extremes of capitalist ideology being imposed on every facet of life, and we really do need a form of human centered capitalism here. 

One thing I will say is going to a liberal arts school in an area where "normal people" live, I did not experience the same things. College was stressful with all of the deadlines and stuff, but there was more optimism, it was a place of more intellectual curiosity, and people worried less about what came next, although people did freak out in their senior year roughly. Especially we we graduated into the worst of the great recession (class of '10 baby! woo! it's like we all ended up working retail out of college).

 In some ways, this experience was better, it was less stressful at the time, but in others, it was worse. I admit I was delusional back in the day, I was a strong christian who believed god had a plan for me, and then the bottom fell out and it sucked and i realized just how screwed we are. Given my return to spirituality, I do think there was a plan, it just wasn't what I thought it was, and now I'm here to pass on the knowledge I gained. But yeah. Total crapshow. I feel like my generation was totally set up for failure. Go to college they said. It's the only way to not work at mcdonalds they said. What are you too good for mcdonalds now college boy?, they said. We went to college, we graduated into massive debt, and we had limited opportunities afterward. We really did screw ourselves. Screw this economy.

Again, for as much as Yang is approaching this from his "in the bubble" approach, I'm right on the front lines of the world he describes in much of this book, and my mindset is a product of those experiences.

Chapter 10

Here he talks about mindsets of scarcity and abundance. People who lives abundant lives are upper class and more willing to take risks. People who live scarce lives are more risk adverse, as scarcity becomes an all encompassing things for them. He fears in the future that real scarcity will make a mindset of scarcity in which less people will be able to take risks and become entrepreneurs. 

Honestly, since leaving college, I've gone from a delusional mindset of abundance to a scarcity mindset. It's why I'm so laser focused on this. I'm intelligent enough, given my education to know there are solutions here. And Yang has done a good job in this book in outlining the issues and later the solutions. I'll nitpick in part 3, but generally speaking I agree with his overall vision, even if I have different approaches to achieving such things. 

But yeah. It's hard to be optimistic when you dont live in the bubble. I see the systemic stuff going on, I understand it, and I understand we need the solutions i advocate for just to have long term stability in our lives. Like seriously, if we dont implement Yang's vision, we are SCREWED.

Chapter 11

Here he talks about a lot of the urban decay that we face. How cities like Youngstown Ohio, Gary Indiana, etc, have disintegrated over the past 40 or so years, and how we face no hope. Much of my own state is like this. While most people think of PA as Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other end, and a lot of alabama with snow in the middle, there are other islands of civilization there. There are tons of medium sized cities dotting the landscape. Pottstown, Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, York, Harrisburg, Wilkes Barre, Scranton, State College, Altoona, Johnstown, etc., and the story is the same for most of them. Most of these areas have malls that are dying, economies that are disintegrating, rampant poverty, rampant crime, rampant drug use, and a general sense that we are SCREWED. Most people who live in these areas talk about moving, but many don't and can't, those who do may end up in the suburbs or leave the state altogether. 

At the end of the chapter, yang talks about the high cost of living in the bubble, and how insane the cost of living is in places like NYC, San Francisco, and Washington DC. While he doesn't go into a ton of detail, I do have a lot to add here. The reason those places are so expensive to live in is BECAUSE they offer job opportunities most places don't. Either you live in a relatively low cost of living area with no jobs, or you relocate to a high cost of living area where you are in a hyper competitive environment where you're just struggling to stay above water. Pick your poison, the economy is screwed either way. 

Chapter 12

here Yang engages in some sociological analysis that is quite surprising from the left. He engages in a form of critical theory, but mostly paints a positive picture for women, and a negative picture for men. He talks about how men are falling apart and how women are thriving more in this new economy, as they mature more quickly than men. Still, he seems to fear that men dropping out of the work force will lead to fewer marriages and children, and sees us heading toward a world with more single parents.

Honestly, this is where I show myself to be more progressive than Yang. Yang, in the grand scheme of things, seems conservative. To some extent, his motivations here are to conserve the old ways of life and institutions like family, child rearing, as well as work culture and the entrepreneurial spirit. He comes from the bubble, where society works, and he speaks the bubble's values. And he seems mostly afraid of how society is going to disintegrate as the jobs disappear, and how those old values will be lost and how we will get more decay. We will see this theme persist in the next few chapters, which is why im mentioning it now as I have all of this relatively fresh in my head. 

With me, this is an anomie problem. We have a breakdown of values, and a mismatch between our values and the way things ought to be and the way things are. There are two ways to address this. One is to make society better fit its existing values. The other way is to make new values around these emerging new realities. Yang seems to be for the former, as are most people who approach these problems. I am for the latter. I would say that despite agreement on 90% of the issues here, this is my big difference from Yang. I'm someone who doesn't hold Yang's values. I've grown beyond them. And I believe we need a new set of values for the 21st century. One that shifts away from ideological capitalism and work and all of the social crap that goes along with that, and toward one in which we just acknowledge the new realities and let people adapt within it. Yang mentions later in the book that men who drop out of the work force tend to develop an air of nihilism. But on the other end of that nihilism is an intellectual freedom that lets you approach these issues from an entirely different way. Maybe all of these changes aren't bad, if we indeed adapt our social structures and values to meet these new realities, rather than trying to conserve an old world that doesnt work any more and was never great. 

But I digress, I'm getting ahead of myself here.

As far as dating goes, if we changed our values, maybe we would see an increase in dating and marriage again. If we de-emphasized economic success and didn't have such a monkey brain with this stuff where ooh ooh aah aah man big, man strong, man provider, then maybe this wouldn't be as much of a problem. If we really had a world with UBI and a deemphasized idea on work, maybe you would have successful women date successful men, but unsuccessful women and men would also date and be just fine. Allowing other options other than the ideal would allow people to seamlessly drift toward them. Right now we have a society of one size fits all and a value system imposed on everyone. And when people fail to meet those standards then suddenly they're unattractive. But if those values didn't exist in the first place, as people were better taken care of and their ability to raise and take care of kids weren't subject to the market, then suddenly the social pathology would go away. As long as society forces people to live a certain way, failure to live that way makes one unattractive. Solution: either better allow people to live that way, or to change how we view the issue altogether. Again, Yang is for the former, I'm for the latter. 

Chapter 13

Once again, Yang goes all protestant work ethic with this one. Again, for me, the problem is anomie. A mismatch between our values and our reality. We value work, we dont have work, and we can either push for more work to allow the existing value system work better, or we can just change our values. I support the latter. He talks about all of this social decay that happens without jobs, people turning to drugs, people going on disability and gaming a system while then being trapped on it due to a system of perverse incentives, while people who need it struggling to get on it, and yeah. That part seems due to having conditional safety nets. UBI would solve that. 

As far as drugs go, eh...I mean, while I admit some who dont work might be subject to fall into addiction, I think this is normally the result of some underlying pathology. Most people I know who have been addicted to substances have had other issues going on in their life. In the case of disabled people, chronic pain is often a reason. Huge reason people get addicted to opioids. Mental illness is another big one, as people use those substances to cope with issues. So when disabled people get addicted to opioids, maybe their actual disability is the cause for that.

Sometimes these issues are the fault of capitalism. Physical illnesses can be caused by work place injuries. Mental illnesses can be brought on by the scarcity mindset that accompanies capitalism. If we solved these problems at their roots, not by bringing people back to work, but by changing our values and our structures to not value work so highly any way, perhaps there would be less mental illness, and perhaps workplace injuries would be reduced.

Also, I've found in studying UBI in the past something like a UBI can give people a solid foundation to kick a drug addiction they otherwise would not drop. Think about it, if you're so screwed you cant imagine life will ever get better, you might drink away the pain like many homeless do. You give homeless regular checks and they'll make rational decisions to improve their conditions. 

I mean, again, me and yang might have a different underlying value system toward work, but we both agree UBI is the solution here. Just goes to show how we approach the issue from opposite sides and reach the same solutions.

Chapter 14

Oof. So uh, this one hits a bit closer to home for me. As you havent figured out by now, I'm one of the dropouts Yang mentions in this chapter. I spend most of my time on the computer gaming and researching and discussing politics. I'm a general failure in life. I graduated in the middle of the great recession, had no employable skills, and the only jobs available to me were minimum wage jobs I declined to take, because I pretty much know they're just slavery with extra steps. 

My own relation with work is complicated. I never really bought into it. When I was pro work it came from a "we have to live like this because some mofos ate an apple" mindset. Work was never great to me, it always sucked, I knew from watching my dad it just put him under immense stress and misery. So I've always feared work, and given the option, I would choose to avoid work.

Of course, the alternative was becoming a NEET and playing video games all day. And yes, it is more rewarding than work. I'm in my 30s now, I do have some twinges of regret about the path my life has taken, and I do fear for a future in which Im no longer financially stable and thus forced by the threat of poverty to work a job I hate. 

There are a few decisions I could have taken that would have put me in a different place. Whether I would be happier is another matter. In some ways yes, but I could always see myself resenting work. And I really don't see any "happy ending" as far as that goes, even if I'd have more financial stability and potentially a partner. 

As yang says in this chapter, men dropping out takes on an air of nihilism. With me, it coincided with me losing my faith in god, leading to a LITERAL nihilistic phase that led to my entire worldview for better or for worse.

In some ways, I wish more people would go through a nihilistic phase. I wish more people would leave this "cave" and see our society and social conventions for what they are. And I wish we would shift to a new normal where other lifestyles are valued, allowed, or at best, just not coerced to fit into cookie cutter capitalism. Seriously, I'm so nihilistic here that I just don't really value what society values. I struggle to see the point in trying to fix a system I dont believe in in the first place. While Yang seems very much in his heart to believe in the institution of work, I've long since realized that that institution was never that great and we should move beyond it. 

Again, this is what gives ME purpose, if I have purpose at all. Not working at jimmy johns for $8 an hour with the possibility of maybe, in a few years, being an assistant manager. What's so great about that? That's supposed to give me purpose? Even Yang has to admit most people hate their jobs, yet he still acknowledges this protestant work ethic BS that work is actually good for people? Come on, Yang.

Again, I keep coming back to this, but this is one major difference in perspective I have with Yang. 

I also wonder if this is why he isnt as gung ho on UBI any more. Was he convinced by all of that "no one wants to work any more" nonsense that he was mistaken and we can't just have a UBI any more? I don't know. For as much as Yang often seems based in this book, he seems to ahve backed away from a lot of his solutions over time. I really wonder if he truly believes in UBI as a solution any more, or if the post covid inflationary crapshow just turned him off, like it seems to have many others, such as joe rogan. 

Still, despite that, I have to admit that I respect Yang for discussing this problem. I feel like so few people are willing to discuss the issues with NEETs in our society, and Yang actually stepped up and advocated for us in SOME way. And again, given his big solution is UBI, well, we're once again in agreement here, value differences aside.

Chapter 15

Here, Yang seems to show some self awareness, comparing support for the system with support for a sports team he used to like, but eventually he hit a red line that broke his confidence in that and he decided to abandon it for good. He mentions in an earlier chapter (12) that it's easier to raise strong children than to fix broken men (I'd be a "broken man" by his definition). I guess that's true, but here's why. You can mold children to whatever value system you want. Maybe capitalism has failed this generation, but maybe its values can be saved with the next. if anything, that's my fear. Really, here's my take on this. If we shifted our values to just let people live as they want without trying to force them a certain way, or holding their means of sustenance to reduce them to being a wage slave, none of these problems would big a big deal. At that point its only a big deal to the weirdo authoritarians who want to force people to live a certain way, and we choose not to live their way. History is full of people like that, and too often, we cater to their wishes.

Still, he does seem downsides to us not addressing the problems. He talks about violent uprisings, some of which has already happened with the trumpers misdiagnosing the problems and pushing us toward autocracy as a solution. He does fear for the future of this country. He does believe we need to reestablish the social fabric so that we dont all resort to killing each other. I agree with him, but I have at least a partial disagreement with what his solutions are here. Again, we might have the same core solutions here, but again, we approach it from different ends. He's a dude in the bubble who wants to save this country from a more conservative viewpoint, and I instead want to transform it to make it work around us. Maybe despite these background differences we agree in actual solutions more than we disagree, but at least in the perception of the values here, he is definitely more pro status quo than me. Yang seems to be the guy who if the underlying conditions of capitalism were not happening the way they are, he would be happy to let the system continue on as normal. Whereas I readily argue the status quo was never great and that the solution is to give people freedom to live as they want. I actively look forward to a day where as a society we no longer have to work, and we shake off this protestant work ethic garbage Yang sadly still accepts to some extent. So Yang seems to come to his solutions out of necessity, and I come to them because I genuinely believe in change. I embrace the changes, and I actively support these ideas, regardless of the situation on the ground. Because much like Widerquist and Van Parijs, I see UBI as not just a necessity, but as an instrument of freedom. 

And yeah, that's where we tend to agree and disagree. As you can tell I have a much starker implicit value difference with Yang here, and that stems from our differing backgrounds. He might have adopted the war on normal people as his cause, but I was born in it, molded by it, to make a Bane reference. And as someone who has gone through all of that nihilism and came out on the other side, I just see the status quo as untenable and not worth saving. Work sucks, it's always sucked, down with work. We should live in a society that serves us, not the other way around. And yeah. Next section is his solutions and I'll probably get to that either tomorrow or in the next few days.

Rereading the War on Normal People Part 1

 So....book update. I have no idea what I'm doing here. I've been writing on and off for three months, and long story short, it's not really working. I decided to reread the war on normal people for inspiration, as my takes are generally in line with Yang's, and holy crap, like most of what I've been discussing is already in there. Maybe we don't need a full new manifesto as much as we just need to look at Yang's war on normal people, which is already pretty close to the dream book I wish I wrote like 5-10 years ago. Although i struggled to put the ideas together back then, too. 

Anyway, Yang's first book is awesome. It's literally one of the best books I've ever read, and given it's literally very close to something I could have written myself, it's well worth reading. I may not agree with yang on every point, but DANG the dude paints a bleak picture of our economy, and honestly, I really believe he's been proven right, the "jobs surplus" in recent years notwithstanding (to be fair, he lacks understanding of the federal reserve and the phillips curve it seems). 

I really hope the reason he's quietly distancing himself from UBI isn't because of the common narrative that giving people money causes inflation and doesnt want to work, because 1) inflation is a lot more complicated than just stimulus, 2) I honestly believe a lot of the anecdotes surrounding "no one wants to work any more" are largely biased and exaggerated, and 3) the perverse incentives that come from Biden's expanded unemployment can't be applied to UBI. I really think in recent years, UBI and yang's perspective has come under fire from all directions, and it's possible yang himself is shifting due to this pressure. It wouldn't be the first time (cough medicare for all cough). 

Anyway, I didn't write this to crap on Yang (mostly, although I will be pointing out some sharp disagreements at times), or to complain about how my book idea is going about as far as any of my other job prospects over the past decade. I'm here to review the first section of the war on normal people. I believe that this book deserves some active engagement from myself, and I should go through it chapter by chapter discussing it. If I wrote one post on the entire book a lot would be lost in the detail. If I wrote one on each chapter or couple chapters like with the widerquist book, well, I'd probably be boring the everloving fudge out of any readers, even if I found those books quite enlightening myself.

Introduction/chapter 1

I'm not gonna go too much into Yang's history, but he is an entrepreneur who graduated college, founded venture for america with the idea of training the next generation of entrepreneurs to create jobs, and realizing that the country is screwed. He became disillusioned with the system and wrote this book and ran for president to raise awareness to the issues and to try to change it.

The thing about me and Yang, is we're like two sides of the same coin. He's an entrepreneur who is approaching this from a "job creators" perspective, and I'm approaching it as a "job seeker" in these nether areas of the country. He's largely successful, he's made a decent amount of money, and is concerned about the future of the economy, and here I am, unsuccessful, completely screwed over by this harsh economy, and I see no real economic prospects for the future.

For me, and this is why I'm so laser focused on this, my vision, and my ideas, are personal to me. I truly believe them, and I do with my whole heart. By this point, they are a significant part of my identity, for better or for worse, and this is why, as we've been watching the shifting political landscape over the years, I haven't shifted with it, and I've grabbed onto these ideas like a pit bull grabbing onto some guy who he doesn't like's leg. And this is why I now castigate Yang for moving away from these ideas. It's like, he's move on, he has no interest in this topic, and here I am like NO, WE'RE NOT DONE, WE DON'T HAVE UBI YET. THESE IDEAS ARE NOT IMPLEMENTED. Some call me an ideologue, or a purity tester, or a bunch of other things, but what can I say? I'm really REALLY passionate about UBI, medicare for all, and human centered capitalism, and have been so since before I read this book. I remember the first time I watched his Joe Rogan interview in 2019, it seriously touched a nerve with me. And yeah, that's why I'm still championing this stuff, even after Yang himself seems to have moved on to greener pastures with his forward party efforts. 

So yeah, that's my response there. I know it seems like, at this time, Yang truly believed in these ideas. Maybe he still does, but can't talk about them. I do think he compromised himself with his forward party as it stands. But I can't help but realize that me and him are approaching the same set of problems from opposing directions, and we seem to come to the same conclusions. 

Chapter 2

Honestly, reading through to this point, the biggest thing that stands out to me, is that this dude is/was progressive as fudge. He cites the numbers in a way that blows away anything I've tried to write for the past several months. He's outlined the growing income inequality, the shift from the new deal era to the neoliberal era, and generally speaking, how Americans have been screwed for 40 years. Say what you want about Yang now, but he's spitting here. I mean, really, the left has always been too harsh on yang and his vision. They call him a "capitalist" as if its a bad thing because he doesnt wanna sieze the means of production, a techno libertarian. And I get it, the dude has gone in a bad direction since 2020, but when I talk about Yang and my admiration for him, I'm referring explicitly to his 2020 campaign and his roots in politics. This dude IS progressive. Bernie and his supporters do not have a monopoly on progressivism. If anything, I feel like in terms of making "progress", the yang left has more potential to do that long term than the bernie left, which is often stuck in the solutions of the past. As I keep saying, we need a 21st century ethos to address the problems of today, and Yang basically offers us that. And in this chapter, he's clearly pointing out the problems with jobs and employment. And he will continue to do so as the book goes on, generally agreeing with me, but coming at it, once again, from the other end of things, being this entrepreneurial capitalist type. 

Chapter 3

Here, Andrew starts really using facts and statistics to paint a picture of what "average" actually looks like in America. Ya know, since watching the dead mall stuff last week, and then comparing it to the super upscale areas, it's really baffled me how out of touch the people in "the bubble" are, and how their perspective of normal is just so out of touch with the rest of the country. How your typical person hasn't gone to college, income ranges wildly by race, educational attainment, and location, and how our social groups are often dominated by people like us and kind of insulate us from how things are elsewhere. THis is one of the reasons america is so polarized, FYI, and it's also why peoples' idea of what is normal varies. And to go in my own direction, that does influence our politics. A lot of affluent people who lean conservative often dont do so out of malice, they just see their affluence as normal, believe they have "earned" it, and dont want to give up anything to fix it. Whereas I'm, again, more outside of "the bubble" on the front lines of this war on normal people, and I just feel bubbling resentment toward more affluent groups who are so complacent for the status quo (after all, it doesn't affect THEM), and who don't want to sacrifice at all to make america better for everyone. We are ultimately individualistic, we believe peoples' problems are their problems, not the problems of systems that some people benefit from and some don't, and yeah, we're just like "this is fine, it ain't me." And I admit I am sometimes guilty of this myself. The SJWs would rip me for doing the same thing on race/gender lines and call me privileged. They're not wrong, but as Yang would say, people need the economic boot taken off of their throats before they can afford to care about other issues. Given how all encompassing the economic boot is to me and my own perspective and psyche, yeah, I literally just dont have the bandwidth to care as long as things are the way they are.

To some extent I know the affluent are in their own little world and don't or never will care either. It's a huge reason my approach to politics is to try to appeal to the other 75% of the population. We outnumber THEM. And if only we realized that, and united, we could outvote those guys. I mean, just because i recognize that most people are self interested doesn't mean that I don't support "enlightened self interest" in which people take a step back, realize the big picture, and support causes that benefit them in the long term. 

But I digress. I'm more providing commentary and going in my own direction here with these chapter reactions. Much of what Yang talks about is a lot more mundane, and he really does simply lay out the facts of what a "normal" person in America actually looks like. We're talking 50th percentile here. And he's trying to enlighten "the bubble" about how their set of conditions and circumstances...isn't really normal. Even if they think it is. 

And yang's picture is bleak, with most people not being very educated or skilled, not making a lot of money, and living paycheck to paycheck. Yes, many people are like this. Even I've come to realize my hosuehold is relatively privileged, for as much of a chip on my shoulder that I have in terms of socioeconomic status. But...I feel like I show solidarity with those less fortunate than me, because I realize that I'm a lot closer to them, and as the future progressives I very well may become one of them, and not one of the affluent. The writing's on the wall there. 

Chapter 4/5

 Over the next two chapters, he discusses most jobs "normal people" do. It's the same BS I've seen since i graduated college. Clerical work, retail, food service in chapter 4. In chapter 5 he goes into factory workers and truck drivers. I'm going to be honest, this is our economy now. Since 2008, this is most jobs. Most don't pay well (especially the chapter 4 ones), they're highly unpleasant work environments, and they're increasingly subject to automation. He talks about the hollowing out of malls and if anything, his predictions have come true almost to a T. He mentions in 2017 there were 1300 retail stores, we would see 400 fail in the next few years, and of the 900 remaining, 650 will struggle to stay open. The more recent numbers I came across point a slightly different but similarly bleak picture. We used to have 2000 malls, nowadays, we're down to like 700, and in 10 more years, we might be down to 150. Yikes. And yeah, again, I don't really support keeping malls open for the sake of employing people, i think employing people for its own sake is stupid and support the "ruthless efficiency" of the market as Yang calls it, I just don't think that people themselves should have their entire livelihoods subjected to such a process. 

Beyond that, clerical workers. Gonna be honest, in recent years, I don't see anywhere nearly as many call center jobs as I used to. I guess they have been automated.

He does mention food service is a bit more resilient, and that's what many of the post COVID jobs seem to be, and where this massive "worker's shortage" (jobs surplus) seems to be. Most places hardest hit by this phenomenon seem to be food service jobs, especially ones that opened post covid and struggle to find workers, because we kinda lost several million out of the work force since before covid due to them dying, and boomers increasingly reaching retirement age. So suddenly all of these businesses reopen at the same time post covid and between those things, and people being forced to stay at home to take care of their kids, and many being leery to work due to COVID still being a threat, yeah, we're basically seeing an environment in which we just have too many jobs.

This is one thing I feel like Yang misses. Our economy isn't completely gonna bottom out on jobs any time soon. Again, it's like a dying mall that puts up plaster with artwork over their empty stores to make mall seem more thriving than it really is. our economy is increasingly heading toward a world in which the jobs that remain for normal people are increasingly crappy. Yang does seem to mention that the middle is being hollowed out, with the future being more low wage and high wage work with little in between, but yeah. It's already happening. And will continue to happen. And while I'll discuss this more as i react to a future chapter, I do agree that people shouldnt just bend themselves to fit the market's needs, regardless of what they are, and that capitalism has to work for people. 

He seems to recognize that simply asking middle aged truckers and the like to "learn to code" is unhelpful and insulting, and I kinda agree. It's not a realistic solution for many. 

In chapter 5, he talks more about the hollowing out of the factory work over the past two decades, and how truckers are going to be subject to something similar. These are a bit more higher paying than the chapter 4 occupations, but they are too on the chopping block. Given the palmer's explosion, I have to say good riddance. Factory work was never great, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was the stuff of horrors, and the only reason it has the stature it does now is because of the gains won by unions in the early 20th century. And with those jobs going bye bye and new ones not being subject to the same prestige and being subject to starting all over again in this neoliberal environment, yeah again, we're replacing jobs that paid well and had recent regulations with jobs that are a bit more gilded age in working conditions. It's not that factory work was ever great. It was historically dull, repetitive, and sometimes back breaking work and again, it only was as good as it was because of unions and the new deal. 

Truck driving, is also a more middle class occupation expected to be replaced in the next 10 years. Hasnt happened yet, I know there seems to be more kinks with the self driving aspect of vehicles than it was believed, and they arent ready for prime time yet, but it's still to come IMO. Again when the alternative is to pay people decent money to sit in a truck for 14 hours a day and be allowed to rest and stuff, the market will eventually prefer tech.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 focuses more on high wage and white collar work. he talks about how AI are now doing stuff like writing articles and stuff, and it's reminding me a lot of chat GPT. I admit I havent touched the subject on here, I considered it a few times, but I chose not to since to use it it has a cell phone number requirement and I just aint using my family's number for that. But yeah, a lot of people are using chatGPT to write stuff and marvelling at how great it is. I know that south park lampooned it, and everyone was using it to cheat on papers, write love messages to girlfriends, and the teacher even used it to grade papers too. It really gets to the same point we seemed to have with calculators in math classes and handwriting classes in elementary schools a generation ago. How relevant are these skills in the 21st century. I know growing up we were told we wouldnt always have a calculator in our pockets, but we kinda do. And all of those years of trying to make me write stuff by hand has gone to waste. Am i writing this on a piece of paper? Hell no, Im using a keyboard at my computer. And Im actually "pecking" because I never had typing classes growing up. I was JUST too old for that. And I always sucked at it. I'm self taught, and i probably type something like idk, 40-60 WPM depending on how fast im going, but yeah. 

I know this stuff wasn't mentioned in the book, but it's worth thinking about. It's like schooling keeps training people for the last generation's work and jobs. The stuff people learn in elementary school that is totally needed in the future might not be needed at all 10-20 years from now. The stuff I learned in the 90s is often not super relevant today in the 2010s and 2020s. Perhaps that says something about Yang's stance on job retraining. Teaching some 50 year old to code doesn't work because that 50 year old went to school in the 70s and 80s and graduated around the early 90s. Gen Xers are just too old to have much relation to computers on a level where coding is an option. Even as a millennial I lack a lot of the foundational skills and background to learn how to code well. Some of my peers have picked it up, but me? I suck at this crap. I gave up around the point i got to logic gates. 

But yeah, high wage work. High wage work is also subject to automation. I know there was a story out recently about "digital blackface", it was a stupid culture war thing where if you ever used a meme of a black person to react to something on the internet, you were doing blackface. Even SJWs like Vaush were talking about how this was ridiculous and how this was created by desperate journalists trying not to lose their jobs to AI. it's a real thing. Hell, give it a few more years and maybe chat GPT could write this blog better than I can. I bet if you fed it all of my posts, it would probably have an AI that is a decent approximation of myself. 

ANd yeah, it mentioned lawyers having their jobs automated, doctors having portions of their jobs automated. And how even if 50% of tasks were automated, all that businesses need to do is fire 50% of workers and distribute the work to the other 50% so they maintain full time work. Heck, isn't that what we did in the recession? It was said we let go half of the workers and then forced the ones remaining to work twice as hard. That's capitalism for you.

Chapter 7

 Up to this point, Yang has LARGELY been preaching to the choir for me. He's discussing the great hollowing out of the American economy, the disappearance of traditional jobs and how automation is just getting too good at automating things. Not that that's a problem...for me. My stance on work is that work sucks, and we should celebrate automating this stuff, and how we should actively seek to reduce working hours, make work more voluntary, and weaken its chokehold over our lives.

But this is where Yang and I start to disagree. Chapter 7 was titled "on humanity and work", and it discusses Yang's particular ideas on the relation between work and humanity. He seems to recognize that humans aren't good workers. Humans make mistakes, they need rest, they have emotional variability that tends to impact their productivity. Robots are better workers. They ruthlessly work on tasks all day every day with no variability in performance, and no mind of their own, and that's basically what employers want (in my mind): obedient slaves. Robots are businesses' ideal slaves. Workers need to be poked and prodded to produce. And I feel like we've designed our whole society to produce willing slaves, where we're so hopelessly lost in the propaganda, that at some point we develop a stockholm syndrome toward work. 

Yang, on the other hand, seems to believe that while we shouldnt have to contort ourselves to the reality of the markets too much, that at the end of the day, humans need work, they need purpose, they need the structure it provides, and that our lives fall apart without it.

I'm sorry, but this is protestant work ethic bullcrap. Theyre the ones who created this idea that we need work and purpose and that without it our lives are empty. While Yang acknowledges that most people hate their jobs, he also acknowleges without it people seem to implode.

As an implodee, let me explain this from my perspective. First of all, I've grappled with the absurd, I've thrown off this idea of needing an inherent purpose, and if I have any purpose at all, it's in advancing the cause in trying to eliminate work. I hate work so much, I've made it my life's mission and calling, if you can call it that, to advocate for the abolishment of this oppressive institution and to give people freedom. 

Most of the negative consequences associated with not working are imposed by the system. I would have no shame for my stance, if we didn't LITERALLY DEFINE OURSELVES AROUND OUR JOBS TO THE POINT THAT YOU'RE HEAVILY STIGMATIZED FOR NOT WORKING. Seriously, If we had a society where we treated people who didn't work with dignity, and didn't act like they were the scum of the earth, then we wouldn't have this problem. If we didn't tell people they were worthless if they didn't work, maybe people wouldnt suffer these self esteem issues. If we gave people money and a paycheck, and gave them a way to survive, maybe they wouldnt worry about money, or the future when their current source of sustenance dries up and they're left to fend for themselves in a crappy heartless system whose logic is that these people should LITERALLY f off and die. Or to be forced to work for a living. Seriously, try talking to neets for a change. Most of their image issues have to do with the fact that their desired way of living is way out of sync with the expectations we impose on people. 

Biden once said something like, work is about more than a paycheck, its about dignity and being able to look your kid in the eye and to tell them that everything will be okay. I'm sorry, Joe, but it's not the 1950s any more, I don't have this value system, and honestly, it's a UBI that provides those things. People will have dignity without work when we decide not to treat them as pariahs at every opportunity. They'll have fewer mental health issues when we don't treat them like garbage. They'll be able to know everything is okay...if they have a check coming in every month that they can rely on. We've engineered a society where your dignity, self worth, and means of sustenance come from jobs, and then we complain that those without jobs seem to have broken down. Gee, I wonder why. It's just anomie, to use a sociological term. 

I say we design society around making work more voluntary, making us work less, and reducing the importance and centrality of work on our lives. The only reason we collectively think as we do is because we have a very unhealthy culture that developed literally to gaslight people into being willing slaves, and then heavily stigmatizing them if they don't. Add in the weird guilt trappings of protestant christianity, and yeah, that's why we're at where we're at. 

There's nothing great or dignified about work, and I fundamentally disagree with yang on the idea that we somehow NEED it in the 21st century. No, we do not. Our work based world is the epitome of plato's cave. It's an illusory world we created for ourselves that are mere shadows of the actual world. In reality, we're all a bunch of slaves in a system that, as rick and morty would say, is slavery with extra steps. The problem with NEETs and the like is that they have grappled with the cave, they kinda understand its an illusory world, they understand how the system really works, and it makes them miserable. They realize they can't be happy in the world as it is, because the world as it is won't let them live as they want to live. 

This is where me and Yang's different backgrounds come into play. As I said at the beginning, Yang is a successful entrepreneur in the bubble, and I'm literally on the front lines of this war on normal people and grappling with all of this crap that Yang is talking about, but hasn't actually lived. I've lived through economic failures, I've seen others work miserable jobs they hate, but still seem to look down on people for not wanting to work themselves (we really do have a crab mentality/mentality of "misery loves company" in our society, we hate work, we resent work, but we wanna coerce and force everyone to work so everyone is as miserable as we are). I've been a NEET who couldn't find a job, and knows how crappy this economy is. And I say, screw this paradigm, screw work, I don't want to make the current structure better, if we can abandon work, stop this cursed treadmill, and free humanity, I say we do it. And again, that's the one thing that I am passionate about, and that gives ME purpose. Traditional jobs dont give me purpose. I hate the very idea of them. What gives me purpose is abolishing work. Or at least forced work.

On that subject, I think Van Parijs had a point on the lazies and the crazies. I might be a "lazy" person, but I dont wanna stop the crazies from working. I just wanna stop them from forcing me to work too. I understand some work has to be done. So if you're this type a ambitious "crazy" type, a real go getter, then go for it. Dont let me stand in your way. I dont wanna stop your ability to work. I just dont wanna be forced to join you and adopt your values, which are repulsive to me. I support real freedom for all, or freedom as the power to say no.

Chapter 8

In this last section, he basically answers what he sees as the usual objections to his core arguments up to this point. He addresses the luddite fallacy, and how this time it's different because AI and technology are advancing at a rate that threaten a wide variety of tasks. He talks about how there might not be suitable work going down the line, and how there seems to be a cascading effect in failing communities where if one business goes under odds are there's a lot more going under. And yes, if things going, we're gonna be looking like the Mississippi Delta or West Virginia eventually. He mentions how these days we might see a tradeoff like 100 high school graduates being replaced with 5-10 college ones with specialized skillsets in silicon valley. And he mentions his points about how replacing 50 year old truck drivers to code isn't gonna be realistic and job retraining doesnt work anywhere near as good as we like to claim it does.

Ya know, stuff like that. All good points, I'm back to full agreement with him here. Things are screwed, they're not getting any better. 

Conclusion

That said, Yang's book is...the book I wish I would've written sooner. I havent read this one in a couple years now, but rereading it and comparing it to what I've been trying to write the past few months, Yang just did it better for the most part. He made his case, it's convincing, it's exactly what's happening, and the post covid jobs surplus notwithstanding, he's been completely right on everything. We're witnesses this happen day by day. it's not that all jobs disappear at once. Its a trend that happens over years and decades. We're witnessing the march of progress since he wrote this book 5 years ago or so. Call center jobs are disappearing, malls are going out of business faster than predicted, chatGPT is threatening white collar work. We havent seen self driving cars replacing truckers yet, that might take a bit longer than expected, but it's happening.

And the worst part is, no one seems to be talking about it any more. Yang is moving onto his forward party stuff, mainstream politics is still talking about never ending job creation and creating the jobs of the future, and people are too obsessed with what genitals people going to the bathroom have to care about this stuff.

It's really mind boggling how effective the elites' propaganda is. We dont talk about these issues. We ignore them, and then we're told we have to vote for crappy democrats or we get trump.

I admit that Yang has a point about how the problem is political dysfunction, and how ideas like ranked choice voting are needed to restore america's power to actually solve problems, and how issues are worth more to remain unaddressed than addressed. I fully acknowledge that.

I just dont think forward is the solution. Playing footsies with conservatives is not getting us UBI, Yang. I doubt you'll ever read this, but I hope you know that. You have been captured by interests hostile to UBI in an attempt to grow your organization, and now you're turning the back on your ideals. 

Any decent forward party should combine advocacy for both political system change AND human centered capitalism related issues. You shouldnt give up one for another. And while I have nothing against some third party unity coalition with people we disagree with, we human centered capitalists, the 2020 yang gang people shouldnt lose our identity in pursuing common solutions with other factions. 

Honestly, I think yang is making a mistake here. his heart may be in the right place, but his direction is bad. We can push for third party stuff AND this stuff too. Heck, I think they go together. But...separating the two? my heart will always be with the economics. Sorry, that's just how it is. The other stuff is just a means to an end. 

EDIT: Okay, I admit I've been too fair to Yang, I just went back and listened to this week's podcast, and he was talking about chat GPT and job destruction, so yeah, he does still talk about this stuff. I just wish he would do it more. And advocate for UBI more openly.

Discussing the Palmer's candy factory explosion

 So, this is more of a local event, but it's all over the news here in PA, but the other day, the Palmer candy factory in Reading, PA basically exploded. Full on exploded. BOOM! While the cause is still unknown, it's reported to be a gas explosion. People were reporting smelling gas and alerting supervisors to the smell in the days before the explosion. Heck the above article mentioned that they smelled gas months before and quit as a result. The supervisor just said don't worry, we have it covered. But they...didn't. UGI (gas company) reported never being called about it and now the factory exploded.

I'm going to be honest, I'm livid. To quote from the article:

"Everyone complained about smelling gas, and they kept making them work," he said. "The supervisors told them it was nothing. It was being taken care of."

 And I hate having to use a tragedy like this to get up on a soap box and push my political agenda, but let's think about this. Reading is a very poor city. In 2011, it was considered the poorest city in the US. It's marginally better now, but not by much. it's definitely been hit by the war on normal people. So, the people there are desperate, they're accepting any job they can get, they're underpaid, and they're saying "hey, it smells like gas in here", and the bosses are just like "keep working". And then tragedy happens. This could have been avoided. If the incident was reported they mightve shut the line down for a while to address the gas smell and probably fix it, but hey, they ain't got time for that, time is money. The profit motive ensures that potential profits are more valuable than people. Screw the workers, we gotta make money. And when people don't have a right to say no, people are forced into dangerous situations they would otherwise not be in because that's what they need to do to survive. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. It probably won't be the last either. As some lefties discussing the topic have said online, our safety regulations are written in blood.

But, to some extent, regulations aren't good enough. I'm sure there are regulations to prevent that. But the workers reported to the supervisor, and the supervisor did nothing about it. Regulations are only valuable if enforced, and violations happen regularly.  The link I just mentioned is violations that were caught. Imagine how many more go uncaught and unpunished. Don't get me wrong, these regulations do improve things somewhat. But they are, as I like to say, a band aid. The best way to protect workers is to give them the individual freedom to quit. Some people did mention quitting, not liking the smell. But then others didn't, and others might have been hired in the mean time and they didn't quit. The fact is, most people aint quitting unless they have another job lined up. And that can take time and effort to find, and there's no guarantee that the new job is any better than the old job. I mean if you're moving laterally you aren't really getting anywhere. Unless people have the freedom to say no, not just to any individual job, but to all jobs, then freedom under capitalism is just merely the freedom to choose your master. And given the system and the profit motive is what causes these kinds of calculations to be made, well, people are going to continue to do so.

This is why I'm so cynical of socialism and other leftie fixes. A lot of lefties think if only work were organized a different way this could be avoided, but they still have the same incentives. Under market socialism, people are still subjected to incentives that incentivize them to put productivity over other concerns, and while workplace democracy could fix this, i could also see it ending in a similar way if some manager (keep in mind socialist organizational structures probably have hierarchies too) ignores the concerns, or if a majority of workers stupidly decide "gee, this gas smell is concerning but if we dont keep working we'll fall behind the other company" or something like that. Nor can we trust states. I mean, a high profile disaster impressed upon me in my political science education was the problem the challenger disaster. The government knew that it was risky to launch in 20 degree weather due to a design problem with the rockets. But because Reagan wanted that thing in orbit in time for his state of the union, most people took the risk. In college, a common exercise they have people do in political science classes is to give people the facts that the people who made the decision to launch at the time had, and ask them whether they would launch. And most would. The simple pressure of deadlines and stuff like that will pressure most to engage in such behavior. This is why i dont trust market socialist mechanisms to solve the problem, nor does handing the industry over to the government solve the problem. it's only when we divorce peoples' well being and paycheck from the profit motive, IMO, that they begin to behave rationally and be like "yeah, we should shut this down and see what's up." To be fair, unions might be willing to speak up given their adversarial relationship to capital, but even then unions can be corrupt and in some cases like with the rail lines (and consider what disaster we had recently there), the unions are so detoothed they can't even strike because that might mess up productivity too much. 

 I'll say it again, as long as people are put under the pressure to perform in order to get money, they will tolerate a tons of BS for a check. This is one of the reasons why UBI is so liberating to me. While it maintains some level of profit motive to do work, it also gives individual workers to say that they want out of leadership, whatever that leadership may be, decides that productivity is more important than a potential safety concern. And with that ability for individuals to just walk out, without having to go through a union, or management, or whatever socialist mechanism leftists think of in order to think about shutting down production, it allows individuals to make the decision to not abide by the group's decision and to quit. And that provides a counter pressure to the profit motive. Sure, those who are dedicated to profits and increasing the profitability of a company at all costs will do what they do, but rather than everyone else being forced to abide by those decisions at great risk to themselves, people will be able to walk out and say no. 

Same crap as when i discussed the gamestop incident when covid began here in PA. Gamestop wanted workers to come into work during covid without taking proper safety precautions, workers had to do it, until the government shut it down. Or take when I was down on vacation in Georgia that one time and we were evacuating due to a hurricane. The entire area was under mandatory evacuation, and these businesses were forcing people to come in when they should be evacuating. It's only when the state finally steps in and say "no, too dangerous, you have to close" that these guys close. As long as profit motive is at the forefront of peoples' minds, and those people have power over other people and force them to come in for a paycheck, it doesn't matter how unsafe the conditions are, they'll make people come in and work, until the disaster happens, and the place blows up, burns down, or gets swept away by a hurricane. 

This is why we have safety regulations, and it's good we have some safety valves, but let's be honest, this isn't good enough. We need a right to say no, not just to any job, but all jobs. People are oh so worried about "oh what if some lazy person doesn't work"...so what? "But it's unfair to me". But you shouldnt be forced to work either. "But you cant give people something or nothing or they won't work". We don't need everyone working and we can balance the incentives to get people to work any way. And it just goes on and on. People are so worried about work and productivity and forcing people to work, that they dont think about the downsides of this and the issues the profit motive has with the economy. These people dont care about you. You're disposable tools to these people. And theyre there to extract maximum productivity from people and throw you away when you're done. And even if you die, I wouldn't be surprised if some wouldn't be trying to get you to cover your shift anyway. Yes, I know that was a joke, but these people care so little that yeah....

Going back to the topic at hand, I know that during the news segment on it tonight, they were interviewing people who knew one of the workers, and the behavior was bizarre. Like, they were just going on about how they were such a hard worker and blah blah blah. And yeah, we tend to do that in society, we define people through their work, and celebrate their work ethic. "Oh, they were such a hard worker"...YEAH AND NOW THEY'RE DEAD. Working hard isn't the flex you think it is, and if these people didn't have to work in such a crappy factory, then maybe they would still be alive right now. 

It's just baffling how many people miss the point on that.

Anyway, rant over. I just wanted to give my thoughts on this one.

Taking on the "luddite fallacy" fallacy (not a typo) and the religion of jobs

 So, whenever the subject of technological unemployment comes up, neolibs tend to gaslight people about it. They'll say something like "sure, technology eliminates jobs, but technology also creates more jobs so people always have stuff to do", pushing the same old "tides raising all boats BS they've been peddling since the 1980s. Now, I'm going to be honest, to some extent, they are correct. When people talk about how technology destroys jobs, they're talking about the luddite fallacy, which is the idea that technology eliminating jobs leads to more unemployment over the long term. It's considered a fallacy because this is considered wrong or fallacious. And I generally want to discuss the idea that this is, in itself, a fallacy, while also criticizing the religion of jobs.

Because let's face it, jobists love to trot this out whenever technological unemployment is mentioned to try to gaslight people into believing that it's a good thing and blah blah blah. And that's how we got an angry country full of trumpers upset at losing their living standards while these same neolibs tell them to "JuSt MoVe!!11!"

 The luddite fallacy fallacy

First of all, the only reason this is a fallacy is because jobists dominate our culture and dictate our policy on employment. Our government ACTIVELY INCENTIVIZES creating as much work as possible, to pump economic numbers as high as possible, only stopping as the economy approaches "full employment" (4% or so unemployment rate). They control this via the federal reserve via interest rates. Lower interest rates or sometimes outright stimulus leads to making the pressure from the faucet stronger, and leads to more business formation and the creation of new jobs. Higher interest rates, like we're seeing now, are introduced to try to put the brakes on inflation and slow down the job creation process, potentially driving the economy into a recession and spiking the unemployment rate a little bit. This leads to a general boom-bust cycle in economics where every 5-10 years we have a recession followed by a period of steady growth. We've talked about this before. It's actually one of my arguments for why jobs will never be the answer to our problems and why we need a basic income. We are on a treadmill as a society of trying to keep people trapped in the sisyphusian hell we call "employment" in a never ending cycle to make number on graph go up. And it's the core reason why this fallacy is a fallacy.

No one really questions the dogma of jobs in this country. Only weirdo extremists like me really are willing to take on this stuff. Most people just treat work as an unquestioning aspect of our reality, and only people like Andrew Yang even raise the possibility for technological unemployment being a threat. And they're largely ignored due to this so called fallacy, because conventional logic is "oh well, we'll just create more jobs." This is where I take things further than Yang. I really have to ask...why? Why should we create more jobs? More work? Why shouldn't we instead choose to work less? And while there are a couple practical reasons, the best of which is that GDP is a rough analogue of our ability to wage war and having the strongest economy means we have the best military which means no one can screw with us, for the most part, these reasons are more cultural than practical. it's the logic of plato's cave. The idea that America is "the land of opportunity" and that jobs are in our DNA. I mean, we've so gaslit our population that one of the worst things you could do is come out and say "I dont want to work", they'll call you lazy, wag their finger at you telling you that you're not entitled to anything and need to get a job and blah blah blah. We Americans dont like nice things. We believe people must put in the proper amount of suffering before they're entitled to the essentials to live. Much of the rest of the world isn't much better. For as progressive as I consider Europe, when Phillipe Van Parijs proposed his real libertarian theory for basic income, he often gets a lot of weirdo social democrats going on about reciprocity. I think Italy went as far at one point to circlejerk about how they're a "work based republic" and how UBI is unconstitutional. So, yeah. The biggest obstacle to UBI and reducing working hours is literally that there seems to be an implicit religion around work. I know I seem to be calling everything a "religion" lately as if I'm some fundie christian, but in some ways it's true, everyone has their sacred cows that they freak out if you try to slaughter. And the circlejerk about work seems to be one of them. 

But hear me out. What if we, instead of creating jobs, and then insisted on forcing people to work who don't want to spend their lives working, we instead insisted on using automation and technological employment to eliminate work, without creating new work to be done? Yes, growth would be lower, but honestly? it used to be a sci fi type vision of the future, but I feel like back in the 1930s and the Keynesian era, we seemed to forsee a future in which we worked a ridiculously little amount, while still being insanely productive. Keynes indicated that we could probably have the same living standards as the 1930s and work like 15 hour weeks, something I've more or less proven on this blog from a raw GDP perspective. I've also explained how our incentive system doesn't allow us to voluntary cut work hours, and how workers are trapped on a cycle of working the same amount of hours instead, with no realistic way to cut back for the most part. Then mainstream economists turn around and given the forced choices capitalism forces us to make, claim that people CHOSE to work longer and blah blah blah.

And then people turn around and claim "well, having people not work in the distant future sounds like a possibility, but we're way off from that, and we need people to work today." Sure, we need SOME people to work today. We've never gotten rid of the need for ALL labor, but we I like to say, we can probably afford to work a lot less if we wanted to. We could reduce our necessary work load via automation, NOT create new jobs, and instead invest all of that extra productivity into reducing how much we work. We could then choose to allow people to not work, via a UBI and the freedom to say no, while maintaining the incentives to work for those who want to, we could reduce the work week, we could reduce the retirement age, etc. In general, we could work far less as a result. But instead, because we keep insisting that some need to work, we insist everyone needs to work, and then we create as many jobs as possible to fill, while keeping us on this cycle of employment and being forced to work to survive. It really is a sisyphusian grind. 

My point is, the luddite fallacy is only a fallacy because our cultural ideas around work keep us chained to the concept, where we literally create new jobs, and new rocks to roll up hills, when we could instead just decide to..stop doing this. We could instead decide to invest our newfound productivity into working less for about the same amount of output, but instead, we insist on working and creating new output.

Put another say, say we have 100 million people putting out $50,000 GDP per capita a year. Each worker works 40 hours a week. We discover a technological breakthrough that increases productivity by 50%. What do we do with this? 

Well, under our current sisyphusian idea of work, we will work the same amount for $75,000 GDP per capita per year. People are expected to work just as hard as before, often with the rewards of this productivity going to the people at the top, and there's no reward for society discovering these breakthroughs to advance our productivity. 

We could instead insist that 1/3 of workers now no longer have to work, and we get the same $50,000 GDP per capita per year. We could cut working hours from 40 hours a week to 27 hours a week. We could reduce the retirement age from 66, to around 49, reducing the amount of time the average person has to work from 50 years (assuming they start at 16), to 33 years. 

Compound those kinds of breakthroughs over time and if we have been doing this all along, it's not unrealistic we eventually hit John Meynard Keynes' original prediction of 15 hour work weeks and stuff like that.

If we keep going as we are, I suspect we'll have $300k GDP per capita around 2120 or so, and we'll still insist that people can't stop working and that this is a long off thing for the future. 2220, we could be at $1.2 million GDP per capita per year (this is all accounting for inflation btw). Nah man, maybe in another 100 years. 2320, $5 million GDP per capita per year. And so on and so forth. Point is, it's never enough, because we have a system predicated on infinite growth, with no slowing down or stopping because our social structures and cultural ideals keep us on a treadmill. 

I'm not saying all growth is bad. But....honestly, there are things more important than growth. Like leisure. Freedom to self determine. Environmental sustainability. Etc. Maybe the true fallacy in the long term is the fallacy of infinite growth and infinite jobs, and how we'll hit a hard limit at some point that leads to ecological collapse. Leftists will claim this is the end result of "capitalism." Sure, IDEOLOGICAL capitalism predicated on infinite growth, but all systems are equally susceptible to this behavior, and all of them have the potential to put the brakes on. I'm not advocating for an end of capitalism mind you. I'm advocating for an end to our sisyphusian work culture. 

What technological unemployment actually looks like

The problem with the luddite fallacy fallacy is that it tends to ignore the effects that technological unemployment has on people. People often expect some sort of job apocalypse that comes along like a tidal wave throwing millions of out of work in a short amount of time, and that the effects are so catastrphic and unavoidable that we will need a policy like basic income to solve the problem. This is the problem Andrew Yang presented when pushing for his case for UBI in the war on normal people. We've read these reports for years now going on about how over the next 20 years, we're gonna see like half of all jobs automated, but still, despite this, we're currently sitting at "full employment" and have sound economic numbers. Heck, since covid, the narrative is we dont have enough workers to fill the jobs that are available. We keep acting like America has a "worker shortage" when from my perspective, I'd argue we have a "jobs surplus." (see what I said above about the federal reserve). 

But, technological unemployment is more subtle and insidious. It's more like a frog in a pot slowly being brought to boil, we don't really notice it as it's happening, it's only when we look back and go "oh crap." 

Yes, you can have a world where technological unemployment makes people losers in the economy at large, while still having an economy with roughly full employment, or acceptable levels of unemployment, and here's why. 

First of all, everyone doesn't lose their jobs overnight. Take the mall topic we've discussed recently on here and how malls are a bellweather for our economy at large. Malls aren't dying all at the same time, it's a slow progress over the past decade or so. You might see some stores go out in your local mall. Then a few more stores. Maybe once every 3 months on average you see a store going out. You don't notice the effects immediately, you see it over a few years. Then suddenly you're going into the mall a decade later, you're wondering, gee where is everyone? Where are all the stores? Why aren't there any customers? How does this place keep the lights on? And then you notice, it doesn't pay to keep the lights on. These malls have been struggling financially for years, and then they eventually close. It's a common thing going on in hundreds of communities across the US, maybe thousands. And it's not just malls. A lot of big box stores have died over the years. Factories have gone overseas and have been automated. You might notice the big tipping points happen in recessions. I remember I didn't realize how bad our economy actually was until the realities of the great recession set in. You start noticing that your community no longer has the jobs it once did, and that the economic prospects going forward start looking bleak. Neighborhoods become blighted. You see urban decay. As the economy "recovers", you notice that your community isn't bouncing back. Sure the numbers are getting better, but you also realize that there's some nuances to the numbers. A lot of people are underemployed. A lot of people take jobs that don't really fit them and their aspirations, but hey, it pays the bills as they say. They might work multiple low paying jobs just to survive. And some people might just drop out, to not be counted at all. In terms of labor participation, we never really recovered from the great recession. To some extent this is baby boomers retiring, but it's also millions of discouraged workers, like the 5 million young men who left the work force to never return. The millions more who somehow found their way onto disability. Yang talked a lot about how we're already feeling the effects of this over time. So, you can have this system just hobbling on, just doing a "good enough" job to convince people that the system works, while entire communities are decimated by technological unemployment.

Long term, we've seen the effects of job loss on areas as previous waves of technological unemployment gripped communities and they never recovered. Some of the poorest areas in the country today are so because of these previous waves of technological unemployment. Jeremy Rifkin talked about this in his book "The End of Work." For example, the mississippi delta region. Back before the 1960s, that was a relatively prosperous area as people picked cotton for a living. But then in the 1960s they automated that, and suddenly,  all of these African Americans who had jobs...suddenly didn't. Yay? Would be great if we had a system of basic income to give to these people, but we Americans don't have nice things, so the area fell into deep generational poverty instead. Those lucky enough to "JuSt MoVe" moved up north to midwestern cities like Flint and Detroit Michigan to get jobs in auto factories. And we know how that's going for them now, with those jobs being automated. Another example, West Virginia has INSANE poverty. We used to have these people work on coal mines. Then we shifted away from coal and guess what? All these appalachian regions in Kentucky and West Virginia are poor as crap! And they never recovered, and they probably never will recover because in laissez faire capitalism, your value in society is determined by your ability to do work. And given these guys no longer have jobs and good paying jobs, and because new jobs never moved into the area in large enough numbers to matter, these areas just declined and is, much like the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions of the country. I'm basically saying that current trends continue, the rust belt is going to get this next. As factories go out, as we transition to a service economy, and as that service economy also starts declining as we trend toward a Walmart and Amazon dominated economy with a large portion of the marketplace being digital, people are going to lose their jobs, and be increasingly worse off. Any low unemployment numbers are going to come either from the proliferation of more service jobs, or from people just dropping out of the workforce altogether, living on welfare services that are highly conditional or unreliable, or living off of family, if that's an option at all. We might also see a lot of homeless people start going around, which is a common problem in many areas these days. The negative effects of our economy are plainly visible if we really look for them, we just prefer to close our eyes to them and pretend the system works.

It's possible that Andrew Yang is right in that this wave will be different than the previous ones. But I honestly think that the problem with our devotion of work and jobs in this will have us kind of hobbling along trying to hide the defects of our economy like a dying mall puts up plaster walls with art on them to hide the fact that it has that many empty stores. We'll just keep going on like everything is fine until the problem gets so bad we can't ignore it any more. It might never get bad enough where we tend to acknowledge the problem. Rather, we'll just have people relocate to the prosperous large cities and outvote those who live in the more run down kinds of areas. That's what's happening now, actually. There's a lot of calls for populism on the left and the right, but the left is mostly dominated by those urban neoliberals who ignore the problem and are hostile to the progressive left who pushes for at least some sense of better treatment of workers, while the right descends into the insanity that is trumpism, originally suckered in by the promise of making america great again, and ultimately stay because of the social media echo chamber and cult of personality. Meanwhile the forces that drove us to the breaking point in 2016 go unaddressed and we tend to move on as a country engaging in superficial culture wars rather than addressing the very real issues at hand.

 That's what scares me, and that's what's happening. Americans are just too divided, and focused on superficial circuses (I would like to say bread and circuses, but again, americans dont like nice things), and they're just distracted. 

So it's very well possible that we just see another generation of americans descend into poverty while the rest of the country looks the other way and pretends it isn't happening. Those areas will never recover, things will never improve, and the cult of jobs and work and laissez faire capitalism will go on like before. Half the country will scream into the void wondering what is happening to our country while not understanding the problems, and the other half will be unaffected as they live in the more prosperous areas, and life will just keep going on. 

I mean, what will happen to all of those middle aged truck drivers? We cant teach them to code. What about the cashiers being replaced by self checkouts and the cleaners who are replaced by those giant roomba things in grocery stores. Sure, new jobs will pop up, but those jobs will be highly technical jobs in specific areas that require specific skillsets. Maybe some zoomers who go into computing and robotics and work for tesla or whatever will get by just fine, but the rest of us...won't. 

It's a mess. 

The point is, the luddite fallacy isn't really a fallacy. Technological unemployment, outsourcing, etc., it does affect us. And no matter what numbers on graph say at the end of the day, and no matter how successful we like to think the economy is, there are losers to any changes. There are winners too mind you, and you could argue in the grand scheme of things it's a net win for americans. We like to think that a growing economy with low unemployment is. But when that economy is also gripped with extreme income inequality, with massive regional differences in terms of who benefits from these changes, let's not act like the trumpers screaming DEY TUK R JERBS are really that dumb. I don't think they are. I think that while they ignore the big picture, they're speaking to real pain that exists that is being felt in the american economy at large. And while they might not be the most eloquent or educated in approaching the problem, let's not act like that pain isn't real. 

Conclusion

That said, I addressed two major points in this article. First of all, I pointed out that to some extent, our belief and obsession with jobs and work is ultimately a matter of cultural preference and our social systems rather than an ironclad reality. if we decided on redistribution and working less rather than growth, we could have a prosperous economy in which we all work less yet all reap the rewards of our ever growing economy.

Second of all, I addressed the point that no matter what the economic numbers look like on the macro level, the war on normal people is here, it's existed for decades and the effects are more insidious than we realize. Rather than being a massive crisis like the great recession that throws millions of people out of work all at once with no jobs to replace them, it's more a slow, rolling crisis in which entire communities economies are decimated by the slow and steady pace of progress. It takes the form of malls going out, stores going out, factories being automated or moving overseas. Jobs drying up in localized areas, poverty rates going on, labor participation going down, and people taking on multiple job to survive when in previous eras they could get by on one. Honestly, we're already seeing the effects of andrew yang's war on normal people. It's been impacting us since at least 2008. And it's been impacting much of the country in decades past, as many regions like the mississippi delta region and west virginia never really recovered from the past waves of job loss.

So let's stop acting like the luddite fallacy is really a fallacy. It's a neoliberal talking point like a rising tide lifts all boats, and that trickle down economics somehow works. I mean, it might be true to some degree, but it misses a lot of nuance, and these arguments only really make sense if you're a believer in neoliberal or right wing capitalistic ideologies. Job loss is a real thing, it affects real people, and many communities and people never recover. 

Honestly, my solutions to this are obvious. UBI, medicare for all, free college, student debt forgiveness, and addressing the housing crisis in some way. A green new deal might work too, but I'd rather work on actually getting the benefits of that, without insisting on employing millions of people for the sake of keeping this system based on employment hobbling on longer than it needs to. Just rip the band aid off. Work sucks and isn't that great anyway.