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.
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