How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition: article from The Atlantic

[polly_mer]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys-miserable-winners/594760/

I disagree with some of the details, but the overall message of how expectations have ratcheted up and knowing how to work the system is extremely important resonates with me.

Thoughts on what we could do collectively to ratchet anything back down?

[marshwiggle]

One quote from the article that was a bit puzzling:

For example, the health-care system should emphasize public health, preventive care, and other measures that can be overseen primarily by nurse practitioners, rather than high-tech treatments that require specialist doctors.

What kind of "emphasis" will result in the kind of shift in employment he's talking about?

I'm not sure the problem is really "merit", but rather life expectations. Getting people to choose fulfilling lives rather than maximum wealth and status is the challenge.

[wwwdotcom]

One quote from the article that was a bit puzzling:

For example, the health-care system should emphasize public health, preventive care, and other measures that can be overseen primarily by nurse practitioners, rather than high-tech treatments that require specialist doctors.

What kind of "emphasis" will result in the kind of shift in employment he's talking about?

I'm not sure the problem is really "merit", but rather life expectations. Getting people to choose fulfilling lives rather than maximum wealth and status is the challenge.

Well, that quote makes no practical sense since public health and health care are not the same.  If one were to emphasize public health, why would you insist that nurse practitioners be the primary?  Wouldn't that be better left up to the millions of public health practitioners in the world?  Certainly some of them are nurse practitioners, but only those who have public health training. Love it when someone writes a "here's how it should be" statement regarding the health system without a firm grasp on the players.

[fast_and_bulbous]

Oh, won't somebody think of the poor overworked lawyers and bankers...

From the article:

Jeffrey A. Winters surveys eras in human history from the classical period to the 20th century, and documents what becomes of societies that concentrate income and wealth in a narrow elite. In almost every instance, the dismantling of such inequality has been accompanied by societal collapse, such as military defeat (as in the Roman empire) or revolution (as in France and Russia).

So it's societal collapse or a huge government initiated New Deal such as what followed the Great Depression.

These seem to be our only two options, if history is a guide.

Since our government is ineffective, I have to believe we're heading down the path of collapse.

I'm just whiling away the years trying to have an interesting meaningful life with my six figure mortgage in a nice neighborhood while the world (literally) burns.

America does not wear failure well. When the collapse comes it will be epic and awful. I really think this will happen. And it will be our own fault. Every empire falls, eventually. However when America falls it may take down most of the rest of the "first" world.

I'm not really kidding here. Every so often I calculate how many more years of life I probably have in me and think, OK, just how bad will it be? Greenland's melted, crazy Americans with their guns are shooting up Walmarts twice a day now, when do the guillotines come out? And what will replace the sick system we currently wallow in?

We live in interesting times indeed.

Edit: As a salve of sorts, here's an article from Aeon that suggests being environmentally conscious can actually make you happier: https://aeon.co/ideas/going-green-is-all-about-what-you-gain-not-what-you-give-up

Echoing what marshwiggle said above, if you are lucky enough to be born into a situation that allows it, you can actually choose to live a "decent life" that does not focus on acquiring as much money and crap as possible. Then again, many people can barely get by as it is due to situations out of their control, a bad roll of the dice early on. In a compassionate society, one would think we could find a balance between obscene wealth acquisition and spreading the wealth to those who need it. But, that's just crazy commie talk, amirite?

[marshwiggle]

America does not wear failure well. When the collapse comes it will be epic and awful. I really think this will happen. And it will be our own fault. Every empire falls, eventually. However when America falls it may take down most of the rest of the "first" world.

Except there's one thing weird about the current situation; the most rabid left-wing revolutionaries in the USA are from privileged white liberal backgrounds. The working (and/or unemployed) class is not the source of most of the activists, as it was in the past.

Echoing what marshwiggle said above, if you are lucky enough to be born into a situation that allows it, you can actually choose to live a "decent life" that does not focus on acquiring as much money and crap as possible. Then again, many people can barely get by as it is due to situations out of their control, a bad roll of the dice early on. In a compassionate society, one would think we could find a balance between obscene wealth acquisition and spreading the wealth to those who need it. But, that's just crazy commie talk, amirite?

What does that b-word mean? I'm afraid it has no place in current political discourse.

[quasihumanist]

I seriously think the mechanism for societal collapse this time around will be nuclear war.

If my farmer neighbors are willing to keep me around, I have a chance of surviving it.

[waterboy]

The mechanism might be nukes, but the causal factor might well be water.

[pigou]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/meritocracys-miserable-winners/594760/

I disagree with some of the details, but the overall message of how expectations have ratcheted up and knowing how to work the system is extremely important resonates with me.

Thoughts on what we could do collectively to ratchet anything back down?

I don't see why we should. Yes, the world has gotten more competitive at the top... that's what happens when we no longer compete with other white American men and instead add a LOT more talent from around the world to the labor pool. That means life gets more stressful for the average American, but it gets massively more pleasant for the average Chinese.

The story of global development (notably not development aid) is one of massive success. Plummeting deaths due to disease and war, massively increased access to education and basic medical care, and insanely quickly growing standards of living in most of the developing world. In 1980, the per capita GDP (PPP) of China was $314. By 2000, it went up to $2,900. Now, it's $18,500.

We see it in academia: what got someone a job 10 years ago doesn't cut it anymore. But is that a problem -- or do we end up with more productive researchers? Sure, it's not so great if you're looking for an academic job... but we don't design social and economic systems to make it convenient for people to coast through life. *Someone* is paying the difference and when people reminisce about the good old times, they rarely do so from the perspective of a minority or a woman. We design social and economic systems to incentivize productivity and economic growth, which got us from living in towns and dying of diarrhea, frequent spells of famine, and using leeches in primary medical care to having a concept of "retirement" and "vacation."

Mind you, I'd never work the hours some of my colleagues in law, finance, or accounting pull... nor would I want to travel 4 days a week, like people in consulting. That's why I'm not doing any of those jobs (and not earning that salary). In fact, none of my colleagues see them as careers either. They're collecting the (very) large salary for 5-10 years and transition into a job with fewer hours, albeit lower pay.

Many of the examples in the article are basically about how the leisure class is driving itself crazy over minuscule advantages for their children. Your child isn't more likely to get into Harvard because she went to an elite private kindergarten once you control for the fact that the parents can afford it and care enough about their child's education to get that involved.

I also like this thing:

For one thing, education—whose benefits are concentrated in the extravagantly trained children of rich parents—must become open and inclusive. Private schools and universities should lose their tax-exempt status unless at least half of their students come from families in the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution. And public subsidies should encourage schools to meet this requirement by expanding enrollment. [...] A parallel policy agenda must reform work, by favoring goods and services produced by workers who do not have elaborate training or fancy degrees.

So now more people can get swamped into the supposed ills of the meritocracy and they can use their newfound wealth to buy inferior products?

Yes, there's such a thing as regulatory capture: doctors benefit when a pharmacist can't give you a flu shot, and there's really no reason why cosmetology school is a legal requirement for someone braiding your hair. We absolutely should fix that, because it's a drag on the economy. But that's really not "reforming the system" and more about smoothing out the edges. And if anything, it promotes a meritocracy, because it increases supply and hence makes those industries more competitive, too.

[spork]

[. . . ]

Yes, the world has gotten more competitive at the top... that's what happens when we no longer compete with other white American men and instead add a LOT more talent from around the world to the labor pool. That means life gets more stressful for the average American, but it gets massively more pleasant for the average Chinese.

The story of global development (notably not development aid) is one of massive success.

[. . . ]

Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic's elephant curve! Which generates baffled looks among students when I show it to them, because they don't understand percentages, rates of change, or income distributions. Nor do they understand it as depicting the cause of the white (male) resentment that got Donald Trump elected President.

[mahagonny]

The article makes an attempt at saying nobody should have tears for the wealthy, but it left out one important thing. Wealthy people who have started out with the best education and then get the most high pressure jobs do not work hard their entire lives, or almost all of it, as working classes do. They retire early. Some are employed for twenty-five years and the retired for another thirty-five. These are choices and plans, not something that happened to them.