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.