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Comment by BigRedDog1669 | Hacker News Reader

What does it mean to 'act your age'? The author says people used to act older than their age and now they act younger. Maybe people prefer informality to the Mad Men pretense of charm and authority.

They also say older people are reluctant now to assert their authority.

This just seems like a call for a more rigid hierarchical society based on age that I don't want. I agree that people try to hard to please others, but I don't think using age or 'seriousness' as an organizing principle is the solution.

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>Maybe people prefer informality to the Mad Men pretense of charm and authority.

It's crazy that you can take the cultural conventions of respect and formality that have existed around the world and distill it down to "man men pretense". Some might say those cultural conventions have some value, and that's why they existed in the first place. I think people just have so little experience with these things that they totally forgot the purpose. I don't believe civility is out of fashion.

The mad men model I meant isn't just civility and manners. It is a veneer of manners and charm but pushing off responsibility and externalities onto others because you have prestige. There is plenty of abusive behavior, adultery, and lying to family by the Mad Men characters.

The rigid hierarchical society based on age is literally what created all the prosperity that surrounds you. Silicon Valley in its heyday the 1970s and 1980s was the product of people who grew up in the 1950s.

Society is now transitioning to being run by millennials, the first generation to be raised by parents who wanted to be their friends instead of authority figures. How’s that working out? As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

I don’t think the parent child relationship style is the single most important factor in all the changes that have happened since then.

It’s not just that. It’s a generation of adults who are uncomfortable with the notion of being adults and in charge.

Being an adult and in charge are two different things. Further, it only takes 1 person to steer a ship, plenty of people don't need to be in charge for society to function well.

That still doesn’t seem like the main issue to me.

Stagnant growth in wages? Huge increases in costs of housing, education, medicine? Globalization? Change in social customs regarding relationships, marriage, etc? Political shifts?

Or conversely, was post-wwii prosperity in the US directly attributable to a rigid hierarchical age-oriented society? I am not sure that’s entirely clear either.

A lot of those problems can be traced back to the failure of the older generation to teach the next generation to preserve the customs and institutions that served them well. E.g. college has replaced several traditional institutions not just for training workers, but in social functions. People go to college to socialize and find marriage partners the way they used to rely on churches. The difference is that college costs a lot more money.

That's such a huge reach, its hilarious.

That is some really strong post rationalization. Capitalism is a system that eventually fails so it needs to be reset in a war. Anyone who lives in a post war era has an easier time because currency collapse wipes out debt and widespread destruction of real estate makes land worthless for the purpose of extracting ground rent.

The fact that problems are popping up exactly 80 years after world war 2 isn't some coincidence. That is in fact completely normal. What is new is that central bankers this time didn't insist on tightening the money supply which means the collapse gets to be delayed again. This means there is now time to experiment and find a solution than start world war three.

> the first generation to be raised by parents who wanted to be their friends instead of authority figures

The first?

Written history goes back 5.5k years. Modern humans appeared about 200k years ago. I very much doubt that “parents trying to be friends rather than authority figures” were never tried even once during that time.

> As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

I agree with that. The economy is in the gutter. Chance of nuclear war is non-zero. The climate is fckd. Huge amount of hate. Democratic processes in danger.

On the other hand what does any of that have to do with “milenials”?

>Society is now transitioning to being run by millennials... As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

I would argue what is pushing us off the rails is that millennials (and other youngish people) aren't transitioning into power positions. The average age of our politicians for example is constantly creeping upwards as boomers are consistently refusing to step aside for younger generations.

On the contrary. Society remains largely being run by ever older and ever more out of touch people.

We're likely decades from any serious level of "society being run by millennials".

This thread touches on some good examples of how we've basically had a blockade of the boomer generation in leadership for the past 20 years or so.

https://mobile.twitter.com/p_millerd/status/1220728129737707...

The oldest millennials are about 40 years today.

To the extent they’re running anything its in a handful of cases over the past couple of years.

So the fact that you think it’s going off the rails it’s almost entirely because of Boomers, which basically disproves your thesis.

Also, with boomers living and working longer than ever, there’s a huge issue where millennials are getting screwed since they’re unable to enter positions of power since the boomers will just not leave.

This is a massive problem in companies whose middle management has simply not changed and has fossilized for example.

> As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

What exactly is "going off the rails" and how has that been millennials' fault? Be more specific, please.

Where are millenials in charge and sending things off the rails? I am sincerely curious, I haven’t noticed power has really been transitioned to them in any major way yet, for various reasons.

If anything it seems like there is a much older generation or two that is aging but never giving up control. Every ten years the average age of those in power seems to increase by about ten years.

I found a way to put those two together. Theoretically. The people ‘really’ in power prioritise staying in power and morph to whatever shape that requires. The strats don’t really change so the avg goes up 10 years every 10 years. “Don’t you worry about blank, let me worry about blank” where blank is whatever ever those who would have power want.

So the people who control are taking their cues from millennials, (maybe because they care too much about what young people think?), and therefore the youngins can be driving things without being driver.

How’s that? Obvious next question is where did millennials take their cues from then?

In Europe, especially Spain, the problem is that the old people aren't willing to give up their posts to their young successors.

Because old people are harder to fire and unwilling to quit, companies hire and fire young adults with extremely flexible work contracts which means it is much harder for them to live off their own work and basically their best option is to live off the work off their parents or grandparents. They are literally waiting for the old people to die so they get a spot at work.

Also, I don't own a significant portion of the wealth that surrounds me, in fact I have to pay the owners of the "wealth" that surrounds me and give up a non significant portion of my income so that they can pretend to provide more prosperity than me. Having an opportunity to replace them and get rid of their prosperity would actually make my life easier.

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