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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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