Withdrawing From The Rat-Race Is Going Global

Authorized by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Mere mortals are left in a hopeless situation. In response, they’re withdrawing from the competition en masse.

The planet has changed over the past 2 generations in ways that don’t fit the dense promoted narratives of “growth” and “progress.” The “growth” and “progress” narratives hold that everything is getting better in all way and all day–next stop, Mars!–but if we consider everyday life, a much different image memories.

1. Globalization shifted high-pay work overseas to the benefit of capital, who responded the profits from global wage arbitration and to the declaration of workers in developed-nation economies.

The conventional-economic apologists glorated this as a net positive: everyone who lost their jobs to globalization would decision up the food chain and get jobs as currency traders, highly paid tech workers, etc.

2. In reality, most were left with lower pay, precarious jobs as developed economies were producing always larger cohorts of elites–college graduated and creatively, these with advanced agreements–competing for these highly paid jobs.

Laid-off production-service workers could not compete with the increasing army of credentialed elites for the surviving secure, highly paid jobs.

3. At the same time, the lower levels of the university-educated elites could no longer compete due to the overproduction of elites described by historian-author Peter Turchin as a key destabilizing dynamic in eras of social order. 2 generations ago, a PhD was scarce adequate to warrant a safe occupation in academia, government or industry. Today, even a PhD from an elite university is small more than a ticket to enter the next circular of cut-throat competition for the fewer tenure-track positions available.

4. This competence for the learning security, highly paid jobs was intensified by another change: The mass entry of women into the laboratory force in the 1970s led to the emergence of houses in which both springs had well-compensated jobs in the advanced reports of the economy. These houses had far more resources to pour into the advance of their children, and a heightened awareness of the winer-take-all nature of elite competence.

5. As this illustration from a Financial Times article deductions, the net consequence is the Millennium generation is highly unequal in wellness and prospects. 2 generations ago, about 20% of the workforce had a college diploma; that percent has been completely doubled, even as the number of jobs that technically requires a university education to do the occupation has been declined. That with the support of 2 professional parents entered the competition as early as possible and continued apace into their mid-20s, leaving their less-prepared competitors in the dust.

Meanwhile, labor’s share of the economy’s income has been declining for 50 years, leaving little income, less benefits and little safety to disagree among the workers.

6. Concurrent with hyper-globalization, the hyper-financialization of the economy generated competence for productive assets and real-world assets specified as housing. Workers in the low-pay, insecure reports of the economy cannot compete with the wealthy elites (the top 10% own 90% of financial assets) for housing or another assets, while this credit-drive bubble has pushed prices higher, further reducing the purchasing power of scales.

Where 1 safe income was erstwhile adequate to support a mediate class household that owned the household home and sent the children to college, it now takes 2 safe incomes to support even the lowwest rung of mediate class results.

7. At the same time, society lost respect for essential work in favour of digital visibility. Validation, respect and being recognized for one’s work are no longer available for those doing the work that keeps civilization functioning; designation and adaptation–and envy–are reserved for that with advanced visibility on social media or mass media.

8. This competence for visibility is not only cut-throat, it is artificial. Reserving designation and respect for the fewer with advanced visibility in the planet of screens has generated a large many perverse outcomes. Since specified mortals cannot possibly compete, all competitor must present an artificial self That is simply a pastiche of what’s allowed essential to gain media visibility: not just being attractive, but super-attractive, not just wealthy but super-wealthy, not just talented but super-talented, and so on.

Mere mortals are left in a hopeless situation. In response, they’re withdrawing from the competition en masse. This abandonment of the competition is largley below the surf, as the apologists’ happy-story communicative collapses erstwhile we admit the hopelessness and the solution–withdrawal from the environment and society.

I’ll have more to say on this in my next post.

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