Gen Zers struggling to stay in work or school– and the parents who are at a loss
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
But I think it was not explicit intention, but more side results of some actions to serve some actors(politicians, corps, universities) who heavily profited from these actions.
heh.
I wonder what's different?
I believe this is the "leaded gasoline" of our times. Something we will eventually correct for but at great cost to a generation of young people.
Think of all the problems facing young people today, and envision the logical solution for them. Housing: why don't young underhoused people simply pick up a hammer, saw, and some wood and build themselves a house? If you do this in any major metropolitan area today, you will get a stop-work order and a zillion zoning and building code violations. Health care: if somebody is sick, go read a few textbooks and do what they say you should do. If you do this, you'll be arrested for practicing medicine without a license, and the number of residencies (and hence new licenses granted) is strictly capped to keep wages high. Aviation: with how dysfunctional Boeing is, why haven't competitors arisen? Because building a plane is so tightly regulated that a startup that can satisfy the regulations would basically look like Boeing, have roughly the same cost structure, and move as slowly.
The one exception that lucky Millennials got into was tech, which was notoriously unregulated until about 5 years ago. That unregulation meant there was space for new people to enter the industry, and for new firms to take over other parts of the economy. Everybody else has had to fight for the limited new positions that open up in industries whose structure has already been decided.
I don't think it's as big as it used to be, but I think a lot of people bet their hopes and dreams on moonshots such as becoming streamers or athletes but that's just another way to keep everyone placated.
I appreciate your comment
Not sure if I agree or disagree. Maybe you can elaborate on this specifically. The rest of your comment seems to agree with my opinion that a ton of red tape killed opportunities previous generations had. This is fundamentally a political issue, not an economic one.
In terms of how we build our cities, for example, many of them are designed for a set number of people and then try to optimize quality of life for all those people. You can perhaps accommodate a 10% increase in citizens by building in marginal areas, upzoning parts, crowding, etc. But accommodating a 2x+ increase requires a radical revision of fundamental infrastructure. Your sewer system needs to be dug up and replaced with larger pipes. Your transit system needs to move from single-lane roads to either boulevards or mass public transit. Your educational system needs new schools, which generate new drop-offs, which further increases the strain on the transit system. Some people's property needs to be eminent domained. Some people's views will be blocked. Certainly the character of the city is going to change.
All of this generates political opposition, so it definitely is a political issue in addition to an economic one. Democratic (in the political-system sense, not the political-party sense) voters pass regulations so that it doesn't happen, looking out for their own interests. But the consequence of those regulations is that growth, renewal, and innovation becomes impossible. The system is overconstrained, and cannot adapt to either large growth in population or large environmental changes. Any attempt to re-adapt it to the new realities of the world require that you throw away large portions, because all of the systems are interconnected and tightly optimized.
>Because building a plane is so tightly regulated that a startup that can satisfy the regulations would basically look like Boeing, have roughly the same cost structure, and move as slowly.
Highly capital intensive industries like aerospace are extremely difficult to innovate in. The timeline for return is measured in decades, so you need full commitment from all involved. So it's not just that the regulatory environment is extremely onerous, it's that the aerospace industry itself, like other industries that index extremely high on complex engineering, is already so difficult that no one really wants to try (except Anduril, I guess). This is where everyone brings up Skunkworks and all the innovation that happened back in the 60s and 70s and so on, but I think we can agree that that time period really was different and we were much earlier in the curve, so to speak.
In aviation, the issue is that we've very tightly optimized along the dimensions of safety, pilot training, and ground operations - to the extent that nearly every detail of the plane is specified, and starting over is cost prohibitive on a systems-level because it requires changes at the airline level - and so when airlines introduce the new constraint of "optimize fuel economy", the only way to satisfy it is to take a 737, bolt on better engines, and compensate for the aerodynamic changes with software. This actually makes the plane less safe (though in unknown ways), because of potential bugs in the software and aerodynamic instability, but the alternative of going back to the drawing board and optimizing for all of these constraints in actual priority order is untenable. Things like pilot training and ground operations are externally imposed by the airlines, safety by regulators, and there is no room to go backward on these dimensions.
If you go to an aviation museum and look at fighter jets from the 1950s, sometimes very high-performing jets, you'll notice that they are much simpler than 4th generation fighters from the 1970s onward. Simple cylindrical airframes, turbojets that are mechanically simple but guzzle fuel, analog avionics, usually straight lines. They also perform worse in several dimensions - they have shit fuel economy, range was short, pilots lack the situational awareness that modern-day ones do, they lack the maneuverability that today's jets have. But the simplicity allowed aerospace engineers to radically optimize in certain dimensions (eg. the SR-71 or U-2) and to try new things, something that doesn't really happen now.
https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1
Note that they're targeting a very different market segment from most commercial aviation - they're going for supersonic overseas business travel at a premium price point. Hence, relaxing some constraints. Even then it's taken 10 years to go from seed funding to first flight, and they're still far away from a commercial flight.
Since the 2000s the decline in religious convictions has removed an obligation to a shared “big picture” sense of agency. Cut us open, no words, just mush and goo being crackled at by field effects. Thousands of years of communal “buzz” in our biology, absence of old routines no longer exists for the younger generations whose parents bailed in the late 90s-00s
The only shared purpose is ameliorate each other’s economic anxiety by making sure there’s enough food and TP on shelves.
The dumb rhetorical games are pointless given modern science. Debate the minutiae all you want about what it means big picture but ground truth is enough food, shelter, and healthcare, social life, is all most people want
Keep in mind “disconnection” here means “from social routines of the recent past.” The recent past was disconnected from its recent past, and so on. We don’t speak Latin anymore. The 1900s only exist as a hallucination for the people who experienced it.
In all of those scenarios you mentioned, simply working more and harder contributes to the solution.
I don't think taking digs at a group is really to help without first understanding what their parents were up to.
A lot of parents worry about is hoping their kids will be ok when they're not around anymore. Preparing for that is really the task of what kind of memories and lessons that are left behind. Many of these parents weren't always parented well either.
It seems well established now, or recently that involving kids in household chores from an early age can make a big difference.
While life starts with parents, and no child chooses the family they're born into, and ultimately the generation will have to work with the hand they're dealt, or not.
More and more, I'm wondering about the role of easy dopamine vs dopamine from investment in effort.
One of the Twitter employees who couldn’t quit. When your kids’ healthcare is literally at the whim of a capricious oligarch, it goes a bit beyond disillusionment if you ask me. And somehow falling birth rates are mysterious to some.
I’m not sure if it’s being said that working to provide for one’s family is a big compromise.
Health coverage is def something to consider, but I’m not sure if it’s in any way new in the last 10-20-30 y. It’s definitely a retention tool as well.
As time goes on I'm realizing all that will happen is the people who happen to life.
Still sucks to see it consume the lives and souls of my friends.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/04/18/reasons-to-be-c...
Much of the problems with cities for instance boil down to them being built for cars, not people. Simply replacing roads with greenery-laden paths for biking and walking would make cities much more conducive to mentally healthy citizens.
I don’t really buy this idea that’s been floating around the internet for a while now that humanity must return to thatch hut villages in the woods in order to be able to thrive.