I had a nightmare last night. I woke up in a cold sweat because I was being pursued by a smooth-talking predatory lender offering me a great rate on a personal loan. Some people I know were in the dream, happily and absentmindedly accepting the loans, and throwing a little peer pressure my way. I’m proud to say that I held out for the whole dream. The pressure was/is intense. Pressure from salesman, from commercials, from absentminded peers. Pressure to consume. As if spending your hard-earned money is a recreational drug. It’s a wonder why people focus so much on material goods, and focus much less on building wealth. Wonder resolved: businesses have lost their way and care only for their bottom line. They would rather you spend your money on their useless plastic product then on your savings (your soul).
Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t accept the dreamy offer. But maybe I woke up before knowing how it really ended. Seriously, a torturous nightmare. “How will it end?” Thankfully my 2 year old son woke me up at 5 am this morning, ending the awkward persistent approach of the salesman.
This all got me thinking about the rat race that “our” modern society has become. I am trying to build my net worth. I come from pretty modest middle-class means. My parents worked hard their whole lives and honored (maybe more than necessary) their greatest generation parents (my grandparents) while providing a safe and loving home for me and my siblings. They’ve now more or less retired in their late 60s (Mom) and early 70s (Dad). They didn’t do poorly for themselves, but I do think their retirement funds will outrun their liveliness, which is sad.
My parents helped me financially with my undergraduate education and have supported me with reasonable gifts from time to time. But let’s be clear. Unlike President Trump, my parents did not get me started with a small million dollar loan. That would have been impossible. They did however provide something that may prove more valuable: they instilled me with a pretty strong sense of self-sufficiency and resourceful frugality. If I end up earning a very comfortable existence some day, it will be due to a strong work ethic, financial discipline, and scrappy well-researched risk taking, among other things for sure.
I’m just setting up an economic discussion here. And trying to make sense of it all. I’m not looking for pity. It is what it is. I am nearly 40 years old. From when I was 18 years old to when I was 35, I was pretty deeply in debt. Half of my life. ALL of my adult life. I had the bad types of debt. Bad types of debt are debts for living expenses or assets that don’t appreciate or provide much “value”. Like credit cards for living expenses, necessities as well as some pleasantries. Or a car loan on a fast car.
Financial discipline is SO important. We can debate how important. Lack of financial discipline could literally be what kills you. But on the other hand, it’s also not THE most important thing in life. Somewhere in between.
Some people embrace it right away, some people learn it the hard way, and some people sadly never learn financial discipline. I’m sure my experience has shaped me for the rest of my life. Thankfully, knowing what I now know, I will keep forging positively forward and will ensure that I take only the best lessons away from being so careless earlier in life.
So this nightmare has me thinking about how nice it would be if we weren’t all forced into this rat race, this ever-loving worship of the almighty dollar. This is a difficult topic. I am a capitalist. I have a degree in Economics and Finance. A society’s products and services should be rewarded or allowed to fail based on their usefulness or wastefulness respectively. But no system, no country, no philosophy is perfect. In fact, I’m beginning to think that even “perfect” is a bad goal to have.
Right now it seems that so many hard-working people of all races, colors and creeds are having their noses shoved in it. The message to them is “well you haven’t really done anything outstanding. So you shouldn’t be surprised that you’re falling behind in the rat race.”
Often times a product or service’s usefulness is exaggerated to keep the financial rewards going. This can get nasty. Sometimes a bigger segment of the world begins doubting the value of certain products or services, while the producers of said products angrily continue promoting their products. Blockchain may have a future, but bitcoin’s recent past is an example of this.
To some extent a revaluation is currently occurring in many segments of the economy. This process may be painful, but it is natural and necessary and efforts should be taken to ensure a reassessment of things like tech for instance. No doubt technology/computers are valuable. But there are obvious problems. Hacking. Piracy. Privacy. Sexting. Cyber bullying. There’s a whole lot to unpack on this topic in another article perhaps. (Once a product starts negatively impacting the lives of children/minors … something is very wrong.)
Anyway, no system is perfect. And imagining better systems is a good idea, especially when the current flaws feel rather intense. A popular idea in certain circles these days is universal basic income. It’s interesting. It’s the notion that everyone gets a check from the government that should allow him or her to maintain a certain standard of living. Let’s be clear, this is pretty much pure socialism and/or communism. Those are bad buzz words from the old Cold War. There are mostly bad consequences from socialism and communism. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least consider it, study it and/or simulate socialism and communism to understand it. Your life may depend on it.
You see, UBI is supported, if not put forward by the “uber” powerful and rich entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and even traditional finance guys like Bill Gross the “Bond King” of the ’90s and ’00s, among others. Maybe I’ll do more research to fill this essay out with more evidence, but for now suffice it to say that these titans are feeling guilty for being so successful, so rich and so powerful. Computers, robots and artificial intelligence have been harnessed by a few tinkerers to earn themselves a lot of money. And they will continue doing so to the point that the computers, robots and artificial intelligence could very likely take basically all the jobs across the economy. Some people think there will be some jobs left, but there are 7 billion people in the world. “Some jobs” won’t be enough.
No jobs = no livelihood = dead in the water = DEAD
Much worse, there are just enough crazy rich people in the world, that some of them will likely weaponize robots and AI. Maybe they already have. Malicious hackers are an example of this. The internet, which began as an altruistic ideological paradigm shift, has been weaponized. I hate to use an otherwise good company as an example, but Walmart has patented robot bees in an altruistic ideological effort to help keep plants pollinated. What happens when robot bees get weaponized? Complete and utter chaos, a la “Reign of Fire” (look it up on IMDB.com). I never saw myself as a “prepper”, but this all makes me want an underground lair somewhere that’s safe from weaponized robot bees.
This debate seems to be the most important one in the world at the present moment. We’ll see how this plays out. Mark Zuckerberg is right when he said last week that regulation of technology is inevitable. Without regulation, it seems that everyone except for a small group may be out of a job soon. In that case, the offer will be to either accept a universal basic income, or fend for yourself and find another way to earn your living.