Tuesday, September 09, 2014

THAT'S WHAT THE NEW BREED SAY.

No less than in publishing, The State of the Youts is a staple of the propaganda industry. The idea isn’t so much to sell to the kids themselves, though, as to vampirize their vitality. Just as the glossies’ perennial kids-today spreads aren’t pitched at the youngs but at the post-youngs who enjoy a little taste of something fresh and supple, so political mags use the kids to give their movement a youthful patina.

One popular gambit is to assure oldsters that the kids are alright, i.e. just like them only with firmer butts. The latest such offering from Libertarian flagship Reason, which has of late gone all-in on millennials (check out “A Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton Prez Race Would be a DISASTER for Millennials” by Nick Gillespie), is Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s “Rise of the Hipster Capitalist.”
From riot grrrl 'zine publishers to Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, anxiety over selling out to the mainstream dominated the cultural discourse of people who came of age in the '80s and '90s. Baked into the concern was an intrinsic sense that art and social change could only be corrupted by capitalism. 
Millennials, generally considered to be those in the late teens to early 30s right now, simply do not wrestle with this issue.
They’re good capitalist kids, not like those rotten Gen Xers, and will make their bobo parents proud! Also, like all model Youts, they’re plucky in the face of adversity:
For those millennials who do have jobs, wages have stagnated or dropped… Millennials have adjusted their expectations accordingly. Job security and retirement benefits seem as quaint and anachronistic as floppy disks and fax machines. And only 6 percent of millennials think full Social Security benefits will be available to them, according to a Pew Research poll from March 2014, compared to 51 percent who think they'll get nothing.
Libertarians seem to have a love-hate relationship with this economy. On the one hand it’s bad, and they can blame it (like all bad things) on Statism; on the other, it depresses wages and wage expectations, so they can spin our current neo-feudalism as a rich environment for opportunity capitalism. And that’s how it works here:
Yet members of Generation Y, as millennials were once known, are still remarkably optimistic about controlling their own destinies, despite the mess of 21st century America. 
Why so optimistic? In part, because they’re young and fashionable, which tends to buoy one’s spirits. Brown tells us about a bunch of young small-business starter-uppers, and makes sure we know they are not uptight business drags but awesome dudes and dudesses from the hippest Brooklyn precincts: For example, Greenpoint  -- where Brown once “lived across the street" from a bright young thing with “boundless enthusiasm for taking on new, unpaid creative work” -- and Bushwick  -- where Brown “lived in a warehouse that had been converted into a semi-legal residential space”; her roommates were showing their no doubt magnificent artwork, but not in some half-assed hippie way: Their “planning from the get-go involved not merely showcasing their art for the local creative community but luring in wealthy buyers.”

So how’d that go? Who knows? Whether successful or not-telling, Brown’s hipsterpreneurs seem uniformly the sort of young-people-with-money who can afford to dick around with socially-conscious dream businesses: Before co-founding the wonderfully-titled BeGood, Brown tells us, “Mark Spera was burned out on his corporate job at the Gap. ‘I couldn't imagine the idea of sitting at a desk all day.. I was considering getting into a nonprofit and he was considering traveling abroad.’” The new breed, says Brown, “chose to take huge pay cuts to pursue their dreams and make a business out of their passions.” Sounds like they didn’t have to worry too much about money, or about getting funding even in these tight-lending times.

For those who do have to worry about it, there are other hipsterpreneurial opportunities:
In the Buzz Marketing Group/Young Entrepreneurs Council survey, 33 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old respondents had a side business. (This included activities like tutoring and selling stuff on eBay.)
Selling stuff on eBay! No word on how many of these second-tier-and-lower millenials have a side business in begging for change or going through their girlfriend’s purse.

After a bellyful of that, it’s almost refreshing to look at an example of the more traditional conservative kids-today yak, like John Hawkins’ “Millennials, Hollywood Is Lying To You About Work And Success.” Don’t worry, despite the addressing, Hawkins isn’t really talking to millenials at all, but about them to other wingnuts – partly because that’s how greybeards talk in the presence of punk kids (Look at him, I got him a nice razor but he won’t shave!) but also because it makes a nice hook for discussing the outrages that really exercise Hawkins, and which these punk kids are too dumb to understand:
However, we've done something even worse to these kids. We've left far too much of their education in life to Hollywood, musicians, and college professors who've passed on a skewed view of the world. 
Unfortunately for them, reality doesn't care about boring, mean or "uncool." It just keeps rolling on like a threshing machine, cutting anyone who ignores it to pieces. 
Many's the time, in this the autumn of my life, I’ve sat on a riverbank and thought of life in just that way.
With that in mind, do you REALLY want to know why America has been so prosperous? Want to know why we're a superpower?
Whoops, pops is talking to you again, kids.
It's because of Judeo-Christian values, Western culture, a Puritan work ethic, patriotism, capitalism, small government, adherence to the Constitution, and a capability and willingness to use our military to decimate enemies of our country. 
None of those things are being celebrated in songs by Lady Gaga, movies by James Cameron, or in women's studies courses at American colleges. 
The whole thing pretty much goes on like that. Between the two of them, I have to give the edge to Hawkins, who at least doesn't embarrass himself by pretending to like his ostensible subjects, or by telling us about his groovy years in Crown Heights.

209 comments:

  1. Jay B.3:03 PM

    I'll admit to being befuddled by millennials for the most part, not because I'm old and they are young but because I'm Gen X old and act like a teenager and they are young and act like they are worried about kids and a pension.

    The ones I know are responsible, very anxious, nice and a little needy. But that's an over-generalization and they'll have to adjust to the burnt out husk of a world we're giving them if the boomers ever finally fucking die out.

    This though is hilarious:

    It's because of Judeo-Christian values, Western culture, a Puritan work ethic, patriotism, capitalism, small government, adherence to the Constitution, and a capability and willingness to use our military to decimate enemies of our country.

    None of those things are being celebrated in songs by Lady Gaga, movies by James Cameron, or in women's studies courses at American colleges.

    It reads like Ward Cleaver stayed up for a couple of days drinking 'Gansett at the VFW and had a D-Day flashback. "YOU THINK GAGA WAS THERE WHEN I WAS HOLDING WHAT WAS LEFT OF MY BUDDY'S HEAD?" My grandfather, a union man who hated fucking Purtians and "small government" dickheads, would have thought it was beamed in from Calvin Coolidge's grave.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jaime Oria3:23 PM

    "None of those things are being celebrated in songs by Lady Gaga, movies by James Cameron, or in women's studies courses at American colleges."


    I'm fairly sure Roy elided the "None! None, I tell you!" that followed, along with Hawkins tearing away the onion he wore on his belt and dashing it to the ground in a fury (or possibly a Corvair).

    ReplyDelete
  3. tigrismus3:23 PM

    unpaid creative work

    Now there's a business plan.

    It's because of Judeo-Christian values, Western culture, a Puritan work
    ethic, patriotism, capitalism, small government, adherence to the
    Constitution, and a capability and willingness to use our military to
    decimate enemies of our country.


    "8 things Millennials need to know about why America's a superpower"

    ReplyDelete
  4. Reluctant to leave this comfy deck chair, with my umbrella drink and nice view of the mango forest, so I'm asking: does Hawkins actually have a point or some helpful advice or is he just yelling at clouds?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am more than willing to "use our military to decimate enemies of our country."


    Guessing my definition of "enemies" is a little different than Hawkins', however. I say we start w/ the "internal" enemies.

    ReplyDelete
  6. J Neo Marvin3:32 PM

    With that in mind, do you REALLY want to know why America has been so prosperous?

    I believe it involved something that started with "s" and ended with "lavery".

    ReplyDelete
  7. Millennials have adjusted their expectations accordingly. Job security and retirement benefits seem as quaint and anachronistic as floppy disks and fax machines...33 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old respondents had a side business. (This included activities like tutoring and selling stuff on eBay.)


    Fuck you, you ghoulish, manipulative piece of shit and everything you stand for. What is wrong with these people? Young people are suffering as our civilization winds its way down in the most pathetic way possible, and these fucking vultures are happy. They're smiling and rubbing their hands in anticipation of people getting used to their lives on the brink of oblivion.


    Let me run down this whole "freelancer" thing that the libertarian vultures are all crowing about, because it's really just the latest way that businesses in America screw over their workers. Technically, I'm a freelancer, which means that I do office work for about 1/3 of the pay I'd make if I did it in an office, no upward mobility and the closest thing to a benefit I get is that some office supplies are comped. Plus side, I have very flexible hours; on the other hand, I'm nearly broke so I really have nothing to do in that free time. Or is writing unmarketable novels that no one buys supposed to be my "side business"?


    And let's get into that nugget of feces for a second. I used to offer my services as a tutor for international students. I didn't do this because I felt "entrepreneurial," I did it because I like eating. The most I ever made was $10 / hour - a lot less than I made when I did that professionally. Picking through other people's castoffs for stuff you can sell or offering your services as desperation rates so that you can keep in your apartment is not a sign that things are going well, and the fact that these people defend it just proves what a pack of amoral cocks they are. Incidentally, a lot of the almighty apps these assholes obsess over only turn a profit because someone found a lot of people willing to work for below-market rates (or in some cases, for nothing). If these "freelancers" ever decide that they're tired of working for chicken feed, y'all are fucked.


    It's all part of this Horatio Alger by way of Thomas Friedman bullshit that dominates glibertarianism these days - you know, that worldview that insists that everyone is a month away from being a millionaire, so if you're not rich it means you're not trying. Fuck them and, while we're here, fuck them for assuming that everyone born within a quarter-century span is identical, like we're all just This Year's Model. And don't even get me started on that "unpaid creative work" line - leave it to a libertarian to not understand how art works, or what it means to have passion for anything aside from accumulating little green pieces of paper.


    Fuck, I need a drink.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well they're talking to ... about ... at The Youngs in the same way they talk at The Browns and The Women. (Hey, here's a nice shit sandwich, yummy!)

    We know what that means.

    In the Buzz Marketing Group/Young Entrepreneurs Council survey, 33 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old respondents had a side business. (This included activities like tutoring and selling stuff on eBay.)


    I wonder if babysitting is in there? Mowing lawns, walking dogs... You know, shit you do to make money when you can't get a steady job.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Selling off your furniture so you can pay the rent. That's the kind of entrepreneurial spirit this country needs!

    ReplyDelete
  10. unpaid creative work



    People in certain fields do work for free for purposes of promotion. There are two possible results. One, people who like the sample start paying for more, kickstarting a career. Two, people get used to getting what they need for free, devaluing labor and resulting in people being unable to make a living.


    One of these is more common than the other. Hint: I once had a guy explode at me because I wasn't willing to do hours of research for a "What's On in San Diego" article for the $5 he was offering me.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Guessing "Our military" means - "People other than me. For example unemployed young 'uns in 18-30 age range."

    ReplyDelete
  12. ohsopolite3:43 PM

    Shorter Brown and Hawkins, combined: "Step into that yoke, kids, and be grateful that you can check your Ebay auctions on your smartphone while you're dragging the Great Plow of Western Civilization!"

    ReplyDelete
  13. It's your kidney, why can't you sell it if you want?

    ReplyDelete
  14. The ones I know are responsible, very anxious, nice and a little needy. But that's an over-generalization...


    Congratulations, by acknowledging that generalizations don't tell you everything you need to know about any given individual, you're already a million miles ahead of our wonderful newsmedia.


    Judging people based on their individual traits and personalities...maybe it'll catch on some day.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yorkshireman, twenty years from now:

    FIVE DOLLARS!?!

    ReplyDelete
  16. tigrismus3:44 PM

    Selling plasma...

    ReplyDelete
  17. tigrismus3:44 PM

    Oh damn you and your damn quick fingers.

    ReplyDelete
  18. "Lavery?" Is that like washing a lot? Cleanliness is next to yada.

    ReplyDelete
  19. tigrismus3:53 PM

    Christ, I don't even know that guy and I hate him already. I had a boss who was asked to do a job for some ridiculously low price once and she told the guy it would be illegal to work for so much less than the minimum wage.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I'm not a millennial but I could rent my fingers.
    (Be quiet, Godless Liberals!)

    ReplyDelete
  21. tigrismus3:55 PM

    Also "Land: see Snatch."

    ReplyDelete
  22. I came across a tumblr blog that was all stories of (mostly) freelance designers/artists vs. clients.

    I'm not even in that field and I got so pissed off.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Matt Jones3:59 PM

    "and a capability and willingness to use our military to decimate enemies of our country"


    Stops *just* short of actually cheerleading for our country's track record of outright genocide. Gotta be the wingnut equivalent of coitus interruptus...

    ReplyDelete
  24. witlesschum4:08 PM

    I do hope the hipsters can at least get a condescending visit from Professor Rand Paul a la Howard University students before we reach the next stage. What's a thing that Rand knows way less than them about which he could lecture them? Tim and Eric?

    ReplyDelete
  25. and a fanatical devotion to the Pope...NINE chief weapons!
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  26. Helmut Monotreme4:22 PM

    Yes, Mr. Hawkins. Turn America into a place where only ruthless workaholics can succeed. When they do, see if they reward you for it.

    ReplyDelete
  27. He can tell them how his bill to ban abortion was just for fun and then dodge questions about whether he'd really legalize pot.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Helmut Monotreme4:32 PM

    Just not willing enough to enlist and help out.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Pere Ubu4:50 PM

    "'Cept those cool nookyoolar weapons! We ain't used 'em yet! Maybe we done should use 'em on ISIS so's they don't go bad, or sumthin. Them brutes gotta be exTERMEEnated, after all!"

    ReplyDelete
  30. gocart mozart4:50 PM

    None of those things are being celebrated in songs by Lady Gaga, movies
    by James Cameron, or in women's studies courses at American colleges but hey they can still be found in the classic music of Ted Nugent, old movies starring Chuck Norris and in wingnut studies courses offered at Beck's Online University.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Pere Ubu4:51 PM

    Just don't check it at work, or you're fired.

    I think your 10 minute break is over now, mister. Back on your head!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Pere Ubu4:52 PM

    What's a thing that Rand knows way less than them about which he could lecture them?

    Um... everything?

    ReplyDelete
  33. gocart mozart4:54 PM

    Why does every single person in the media have to over-generalize?

    ReplyDelete
  34. Pere Ubu4:56 PM

    Um, Brown should take a little stroll over to someplace like conceptart.com and ask those creative youngun's what they think of "unpaid creative work" to get "exposure".

    They don't take that kind of thing well over there. You want to get concept artists FUCKING PISSED, ask 'em to do some work for you "for the exposure". He'd be lucky to make it out of there like the last diplomats clutching at the copters on the roof of the Vietnamese embassy.

    ReplyDelete
  35. BigHank535:00 PM

    Want to know why we're a superpower?

    It's because of Judeo-Christian values, Western culture, a Puritan work
    ethic, patriotism, capitalism, small government, adherence to the
    Constitution, and a capability and willingness to use our military to
    decimate enemies of our country.


    Fuck me, not this ahistorical bullshit again. Let's start off with the arrival of Europeans in North America: in the blue trunks, we have gunpowder, smallpox, and syphilis! In the red trunks, paleolithic aboriginals with the immune systems of canaries! Don't blink, 'cause this fight isn't going past three rounds! Winner gets a FREE CONTINENT!

    Also: the cash crops of sugar, tobacco, and cotton, made possible only with slave labor, only one war of consequence fought on home soil (and that one just pre-industrial, when losses were more easily replaced), immense natural resources of iron, copper, lead, gold, timber, coal, fertile farmland, oil, etc.

    Also: THEFT. land from the Indians, corn from the Indians, tobacco from the Indians, labor from every slave, copyright from everyone else in the world before 1891, every bit of English colonial infrastructure in the Revolution (and all the money the Founders had borrowed from England), and every single piece of Nazi intellectual property we could get out mitts on after WWII.

    That last one...the outcome of WWII is the main reason we're a superpower. The US hadn't been invaded. We were an oil and coal exporter. We had the only intact industrial base on the planet. We didn't have to spend half a decade scraping up rubble before getting on with the vital business of selling everyone and their brother a shiny new Chevrolet. Fuck me if I know what Judeo-Christian values have to do with any of that.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Pere Ubu5:01 PM

    And only 6 percent of millennials think full Social Security benefits
    will be available to them, according to a Pew Research poll from March
    2014, compared to 51 percent who think they'll get nothing.



    Amazing!


    If you lie to people about something over and over and over, they'll come to believe it.


    Whooda thunk?

    ReplyDelete
  37. BigHank535:02 PM

    Professional licensing?

    ReplyDelete
  38. gocart mozart5:06 PM

    Unpaid?! What luxury. I had to pay for the privilege of doing creative work.

    ReplyDelete
  39. RogerAiles5:07 PM

    If you want to know what kind of fathead John Hawkins is, here's his 2nd most influential conservative of 2014 (as of September 6, 2014):

    "2) John Roberts: Will Obamacare survive the legal challenges it faces? ... In a world where the Executive branch is running roughshod over Congress -- the Supreme Court in general and John Roberts in particular are the last, best check on a lawless presidency."



    Bonus fatheadedness: MIC Number 1 is Eggs Drudge.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Pere Ubu5:12 PM

    MIC Number 1 is Eggs Drudge

    Pardon me?

    As of 2014? Mr. One Hit Wonder Drudge? Mr. Increasingly Irrelevant Drudge? Mr. My Website Has That 1997 Charm Drudge?

    *guffaw*

    ReplyDelete
  41. Pere Ubu5:16 PM

    land from the Indians, corn from the Indians, tobacco from the Indians

    Dakota from the Indians! New Jersey from
    the Indians! New Hampshire from the Indians! New England from the
    Indians! New Delhi from the Indians! ...

    ReplyDelete
  42. FMguru5:18 PM

    "anxiety over selling out to the mainstream dominated the cultural discourse of people who came of age in the '80s and '90s."

    That's funny, because I was alive in the 80s and 90s and Reason et al were then full of articles arguing that Gen X was naturally inclined to be Libertarian because they were rebelling against the stale hippy-dippy statist Boomer culture that they were raised in. I guess in the 2030s, NickGillespie-bot 2000 will be writing about how Generation Z is going to be the most Libertarian generation ever because they want a clean break from the Obama-socialist ways of the dominant Millennial culture. And so on, and so on.

    ReplyDelete
  43. tigrismus5:19 PM

    Or maybe they're realistically afraid of what the Republicans will do if they regain power?

    ReplyDelete
  44. Pere Ubu5:21 PM

    I'm going to take "Both of The Above" for $1000, Alex.

    ReplyDelete
  45. billcinsd5:25 PM

    "We've left far too much of their education in life to Hollywood,
    musicians, and college professors who've passed on a skewed view of the
    world."



    It is a good thing that those Hollywood people, musicians and college professors were staunch conservatives until very recently. Otherwise, Hawkins would have a skewed view of the world and would have to start an unskewed world website

    ReplyDelete
  46. Pere Ubu5:29 PM

    Hey kids! Want some job training in uncritically obeying - *ahem*, I mean, life skills?

    ReplyDelete
  47. smut clyde5:30 PM

    I think it's a kind of edible seaweed.

    ReplyDelete
  48. Gromet5:30 PM

    None of those things are being celebrated in songs by Lady Gaga, movies by James Cameron



    Ah yes, the director of Aliens, The Terminator, True Lies, and cowriter of Rambo: First Blood Part 2 -- the one where Rambo returns to Vietnam on a secret mission -- James Cameron, truly the Eugene Debs of pop culture.


    As for Lady Gaga, in what way does she exist outside of "Western culture"? I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find some other culture where she'd fit in better. (Although I do enjoy her latest hit single, "Fuck the US Constitution, I Want Big Government." So danceable.)

    ReplyDelete
  49. Spaghetti Lee5:31 PM

    Two books that went a long way towards forming my political beliefs as a teenager were Culture Jam (1999) and No Logo (2000), and you could pull a lot of quotes about freelancing being the future, the libertarianism of the younger generation (Gen X at the time), and various capitalist fairy-dust solutions to serious problems right from those books. (The authors were against all that, for the record)

    The Reasonoids may have a point about this generation being more conservative, or at least less inclined to active radicalism. In the 90's you had stuff like the WTO protests, Reclaim the Streets, Critical Mass and so forth, and now my cohort is clicking 'share' on Tumblr and calling it a day.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Pere Ubu5:33 PM

    Well, then he could arrest himself!

    ReplyDelete
  51. billcinsd5:34 PM

    even most of the married ones over-generalize

    ReplyDelete
  52. BigHank535:34 PM

    I'm an American. I steal the best shit I can find.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Pere Ubu5:35 PM

    Masses of the Peoples give noble song a big 10, Dick. Have good beat for liberation of oppressed everywhere.

    (envision the above in a faux-Cyrillic font, natch)

    ReplyDelete
  54. Spaghetti Lee5:37 PM

    The idea that people selling their belongings on eBay in order to pay the fucking rent is a good sign would be pretty rich under any circumstances, but somehow it feels especially so coming from the most materialistic people on the planet.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Pere Ubu5:39 PM

    every single piece of Nazi intellectual property we could get out mitts on after WWII

    Hey, now, don't forget the services the Japanese did for us! Not only did they do all that research on bio-warfare at Unit 731 (with live subjects, even!), the results of which we cheerfully took after 1945 in exchange for keeping them out of the war crimes trials, but those nice folks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did ever so much to advance our understanding of radiation effects on human beings.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Spaghetti Lee5:42 PM

    Unfortunately for them, reality doesn't care about boring, mean or
    "uncool." It just keeps rolling on like a threshing machine, cutting
    anyone who ignores it to pieces.



    Oh, Hawkins. Please just stick to ranking which hair metal bands are the most conservative, 'kay? This is embarrassing. A member of the political party that is singlehandedly keeping young-earth creationism, goldbug revivalism, Objectivism, and NWO conspiracy theories from the dustbin of history is going to lecture other people about being out of touch with reality?

    ReplyDelete
  57. FMguru5:45 PM

    I vaguely recall VP Cheney praising the way millions of Americans sell garbage on eBay to help pay the bills as inspiring and a triumph of the American Spirit, so this is has been going around for a while.

    ReplyDelete
  58. BigHank535:52 PM

    Back in '92 (also known as the late Cretaceous Period) Dan Quayle ordered his campaign bus to pull over at the side of the road so he could leap out and run back and point at the "Help Wanted" sign that was taped up in the front window of a Burger King, thereby demonstrating to all the journalists on the bus that Bush's economic policies were working. I read about this in the New Hampshire Business Insider, as reliable a Republican organ as ever existed, and the writer's disgust just rolled off the page.

    These are people who get a boner reading The Little Match Girl, and then go limp when they realize that since she burnt up all her matches there won't be anything of value to loot from the body.

    ReplyDelete
  59. willf5:53 PM

    It's because of Judeo-Christian, values Western culture [...] and a capability and willingness to use our military to decimate enemies of our country.



    "But I repeat myself"

    ReplyDelete
  60. Pere Ubu6:00 PM

    "Hey, hand me those pliers, I want to see if she has any fillings we can get."

    ReplyDelete
  61. Spaghetti Lee6:00 PM

    Cards on the table: not only was I born in 1990, I'm fairly close to the stereotype of the 'creatively-inclined', self-doubt-wracked, nostalgia-obsessed, internet addict people often think of when they think of upper-middle-class millenials.

    The sort of people Brown is going on about feel unusual in a couple ways, namely that unflagging optimism about their potential start-ups and web ventures has always been limited to a small group of people that Roy correctly pegs as those who can afford it (a lot of whom indeed live in Brooklyn or Manhattan: Reason is far from the first publication to assume that anything that's trendy in a few square miles of New York City is the wave of the future), and I suspect the people Brown is talking about are not only richer than usual, but are old enough to actually remember, and maybe even made some money off of the tech bubble or the housing bubble--born in 1980 vs. born in 1990 amounts to a big difference here. Some of my friends have good jobs, the sort of jobs that conservative huff about young people being too impractical to get (when they're not encouraging us to jump off a cliff and synergize our wings on the way down)--salesmen, accountants, etc. But over all the generational optimism that old people always seem to think is abundant when talking about young people isn't really there.

    I don't think that such a small number of millennials assuming Social Security won't be around for them isn't a sign that they've all drunk libertarian kool-aid (another trend that Reason overstates, as usual: even among my friends who aren't particularly liberal, they're far more likely to bitch about big business than about the government), but I think a justified belief that the world is falling apart around them. I think a lot of us who don't follow politics don't know quite how badly we've been swindled in terms of job security and wages compared to previous generations, but there's definitely a sense that something's gone wrong, even if we're too apathetic in general to do anything about it.

    ReplyDelete
  62. willf6:01 PM

    http://clientsfromhell.net/


    Used to be on tumbler, but I think it grew into its own site.

    CLIENT: Okay, I want my site’s content to be edgy, to stand out. I’m thinking all black text on a black background.

    ME: I’m not sure that’s going to really stand out much.

    CLIENT: Why did you get into web design if you have no imagination? Just try to picture it for more than a minute and you’ll see why it’ll work.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Spaghetti Lee6:05 PM

    Also, is there any dumber duo one could use to prove the downfall of western civilization than Lady Gaga and James Cameron? Hawkins might as well just say "I just hate everything that's popular and don't really care why." Or maybe he just looked up 'highest-earning singers' and 'highest-earning directors' and went with it.

    ReplyDelete
  64. FMguru6:05 PM

    That goes back ever further - I remember Reagan pointing to the Help Wanted section of the newspaper as proof that there were plenty of jobs out there for the asking during the 81-82 recession (kids, ask your parents what a 'newspaper' was). Bush senior pointed at the 'Now Hiring' signs at fast food restaurants during his recession, too.

    ReplyDelete
  65. bulletsarepeopletoo6:09 PM

    And then sell it on ebay.

    ReplyDelete
  66. J Neo Marvin6:10 PM

    Sooooooo how about that, Mr. Smarty Pants Communist? Mr. College Professor? Mr. Beatnik? Mr. Hippie?

    ReplyDelete
  67. Indonesia for the Indonesians!!

    ReplyDelete
  68. M. Krebs6:13 PM

    You are a freak of nature, young man!

    ReplyDelete
  69. Jay B.6:13 PM

    I don't think that such a small number of millennials assuming Social Security won't be around for them isn't a sign that they've all drunk libertarian kool-aid...but I think a justified belief that the world is falling apart around them.



    But that's the thing, we (born in 1970) were handing the same shit hand. We eventually got enormously lucky with the tech/housing bubble, but when I was 23 I was working as a saute cook at a middlebrow restaurant in Austin, we were in a recession -- not as bad as the one a few years ago, but stagnant wages, etc. Still, the end of the Reagan years and the first Bush administration were as dismal it got in a lot of ways, lawless administration, useless institutions, a war in the Middle East. The good part was everyone wanted to get in on Prague before the post Curtain bloom was gone.


    I know things are shit today, but the "end of the world" thing I think is acerbated by the ceaseless droning of the Internet and the constant connectivity. Things are bad of course, but they usually are. Nixon had 49 states convinced he stood as the white bulwark against black lawlessness and hippies — and the guy was a criminal who started a Constitutional Crisis that could have ended even worse than it did, then his VP pardoned him anyway.


    Social Security, by the way, is fully solvent until 2037 at present. Now if we could just have a functional economy again.

    ReplyDelete
  70. M. Krebs6:14 PM

    I suspect that he wrote the whole column just to set up the dig at women's studies courses.

    ReplyDelete
  71. Pere Ubu6:14 PM

    Somewhere, Michael Moore sheds a tear for those who have forgotten him.

    ReplyDelete
  72. Pere Ubu6:15 PM

    But who AM us, anyway?

    ReplyDelete
  73. M. Krebs6:17 PM

    Also "War, perpetual."

    ReplyDelete
  74. M. Krebs6:20 PM

    Selling off your furniture so you can pay the rent. That's the kind of entrepreneurial spirit this country needs!


    And thank goodness there are huge corporations to make it so easy.

    ReplyDelete
  75. mortimer20006:21 PM

    The Silver-Foot himself, to divorced mother of three: "You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."

    Yes. Fantastic.

    ReplyDelete
  76. ADHDJ6:38 PM

    "Because that's where the boobies are" -- Willie Sutton, horndog

    ReplyDelete
  77. mortimer20006:44 PM

    Not to mention, why would anyone take seriously what 20 yr. olds say about retirement? No one that age even thinks about retirement, or anything that's 40 or 50 fucking years off.

    ReplyDelete
  78. mortimer20006:45 PM

    Brown: Take Bellhops, a small-scale moving company founded by two college students in 2011. Bellhops now employs more than 8,000 part-time workers across 42 states. These student movers control their own jobs, choosing not just when and how much they work....

    Bellhops COO Matt Patterson told Forbes his motto is "Bellhops are entrepreneurs in their own rights." ... In the new lexicon, Bellhops, Uber drivers, and AirBnB hosts are all entrepreneurs.

    Sure they are. Users pay Bellhops $40/hr per worker (over and above any cost of a truck). The laboring "entrepreneurs" get $15/hr., while $25/hr goes to the überentrepreneurs who own the company. No wonder Reasonoids like Brown love them.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Socialist Cubone6:59 PM

    [quote]Millennials have adjusted their expectations accordingly. Job security and retirement benefits seem as quaint and anachronistic as floppy disks and fax machines...33 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old respondents had a side business. (This included activities like tutoring and selling stuff on eBay.)[/quote]



    "In our coming libertarian utopia, public education and clean running water seem as quaint and anachronistic as floppy disks and fax machines."

    ReplyDelete
  80. lawguy6:59 PM

    Do mellenials really believe that Social Security is going belly up by those percentages? If so that is really the triumph of the right wing noise machine over any reality.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Spaghetti Lee7:03 PM

    Average tyrants just ruin your life. Masters of the craft ruin your life and convince you that it's for your own good.

    ReplyDelete
  82. gocart mozart7:06 PM

    Libertarian economics is so good at job creation, soon everyone will have three jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  83. you had stuff like the WTO protests, Reclaim the Streets, Critical Mass
    and so forth, and now my cohort is clicking 'share' on Tumblr and
    calling it a day


    True, though I wonder if you can chalk some of that up to your cohort simply having less money than its 90s counterpart.

    ReplyDelete
  84. I'm fairly close to the stereotype of the 'creatively-inclined', self-doubt-wracked, nostalgia-obsessed, internet addict people often think of when they think of upper-middle-class millenials.


    Me too, more or less, although I've had so many labels applied to me that I think "Wedgie" (h/t Tom Tomorrow) might be a better one.


    The notion that most of these start-ups are from young people of means is something that's obviously a problem for the Reason crowd, which is why they don't mention it. This "every man his own boss" talk - whether it comes from a libertarian or neoliberal perspective - is based around a specific strain of digital utopianism, one that bears little resemblance to the way business works in the real world. There are two fallacies at play: 1.) Start-ups have no initial costs, and 2.) The internet is a totally free marketplace. Together, this lets us conjure up visions of poor, scrappy kids starting businesses on library computers and becoming millionaires by the weekend.


    Of course it's not as simple as that in real life. The idea that it costs nothing to start a business is preposterous - if nothing else, there are opportunity costs in creating and marketing a product that limit such opportunities to people with some sort of safety net. Then there are the connections one needs to accomplish anything these days - connections that are likely to be tied to class. That the Reasonoids and Friedmanites don't get this just shows how little actual marketplace experience market worshipers have. Yes, more people have access to opportunity now than in the past, but that doesn't mean we're all equal now.


    There's so much that these people don't get. I live in an artsy community, so the kind of "entrepreneurship" you hear about is more likely to be an independent music label or homemade jewelry line than a service getting people to work for starvation wages. Nevertheless, there are some common factors. Most of these aspiring capitalists are from middle class or better backgrounds. They're likely to have college degrees. They're likely to have money and access to resources that allow them to put more time into their passion than most people can. And they're likely to have connections among local artists, musicians, merchants and academics (and I don't care what kind of social media genius you think you are, you ain't getting nowhere without local support). It would be really nice if everyone had those opportunities, but that's not the world we live in, so why doe we pretend that it is?

    ReplyDelete
  85. johnwcasey7:53 PM

    Right now today, 'pay to play' is the NFL's business plan for the Superbowl halftime show.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Ah yes, an episode from my brief, undignified stint on Fiverr - a website that only fails to make the glibertarian list because it never got big media trendy. After receiving that offer, I sent the guy a polite message telling him that, as I live in Kansas and I've never been to San Diego, I'm probably not the best choice, but I'm glad he considered me anyway. He comes back with an invective-laden response calling me lazy and unprofessional, asking (paraphrase) "So what, you only write about things you already know about?" Well, you offered me five bucks so...yeah, that's what you get. If you want something more involved, I charge by the hour; my rates are low but I don't work fast.


    That was what convinced me to get out of the "small pay for small jobs" racket. I figure that it's not worth risking running into that breed of asshole for anything less than three figures.

    ReplyDelete
  87. ken_lov8:02 PM

    Hawkins would be an expert on raising the kids, him being more than 40 years old, unmarried and childless.

    ReplyDelete
  88. $15/hour for movers? Fuck me. You know, where I live you could spend a few bucks and an evening hanging flyers offering moving services, get just as much work, and keep all of the money you make. You really would be your own boss, and you wouldn't have to pay 60% of what you made wrecking your body to some other asshole.


    The greatest success of these "entrepreneurs" may be that they got us all to stop thinking locally.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Socialist Cubone8:10 PM

    I'm a millenial, and like Spaghetti Lee said, I suspect it's more that a lot of people just figure the country will be half under water and in a civil war by 2050 as much as fear mongering about the budget.

    ReplyDelete
  90. glennisw8:21 PM

    ....and a capability and willingness to use our military to decimate enemies of our country.
    None of those things are being celebrated in songs....

    There would be some awfully catchy tunes, don't you think?

    ReplyDelete
  91. There's a negligible difference between the people spouting this nonsense and sad dudes who talk about what studs they are and how much the hot chicks dig 'em and any minute now they'll have to fight off the attentions of horny women. Think Steve Dallas, only less likely to get any.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Pere Ubu8:23 PM

    "None of those things"?

    Has someone missed, oh, pretty much half the goddamn country music industry?

    ReplyDelete
  93. Ze burn, she is malade.

    ReplyDelete
  94. Pere Ubu8:28 PM

    Why not be a proper entrepreneur and sell those fingers?



    You've got ten, after all - how many do you really need? I'm sure Thomas Sowell would pen you a column if you needed encouragement.

    ReplyDelete
  95. This raises another issue. Perhaps the answers may be found by getting off the boat, but I ain't budging - Is the idea that people aged 18-29 will continue to do these part-time jobs for the rest of their lives?

    Or are we into Logan's Run territory?

    They probably have no fucking idea.

    ReplyDelete
  96. Pere Ubu8:44 PM

    In the world of wingnut welfare, where Phil Robertson comments on Middle East geopolitics, Bernard Kerik is an informed pundit on national security, and Oliver North waxes lyrical on military issues, it makes perfect sense.

    ReplyDelete
  97. It would be really nice if everyone had those opportunities, but that's
    not the world we live in, so why do we pretend that it is?


    Pshaw! If we acknowledge that it takes more than pluck and sand to succeed we can't call people who don't succeed lazy moochers.



    And we certainly can't engage in prolonged wanks about how great it would be to shred the safety net, because people - freed from the soporific embrace of welfare - would go out there and engage in all sorts of wonderful free market innovation in order to eat.

    ReplyDelete
  98. StringOnAStick8:47 PM

    When I was in my mid-20's (30 years ago) I recall saying to my mom the exact same thing: Social Security won't be there for me. Since she actually worked at the Social Security Administration, she told me that was total BS; the people wouldn't stand for it.
    What makes this story slightly interesting is that my now-retired mom is a total, Fox-infected, wingnut rethug, who still believes Social Security will always be there. Apparently she has failed to properly absorb all the Koolaide.

    ReplyDelete
  99. basenjibrian8:49 PM

    He does not update NEARLY enough, but he is very,very funny!

    http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p2.html

    ReplyDelete
  100. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person8:49 PM

    And only 6 percent of millennials think full Social Security benefits
    will be available to them, according to a Pew Research poll from March
    2014, compared to 51 percent who think they'll get nothing.


    That sentence originally ended with "Mission accomplished, motherfuckers!", but her Editor was sober that day...

    ReplyDelete
  101. StringOnAStick8:55 PM

    Pete Peterson and crew have done a fine job of bad mouthing SS's prospects, but mainly so they can reap that last big reward when it all gets privatized and dumped into the stock market. Someone needs to tell him that millenials just aren't that fond of the stock market or Wall Street in general.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Bill Fitzhugh riffs on the limbs for $ idea in The Organ Grinders.

    I wonder if you could get a libertarian to admit that if a single kidney is worth ... say $500K, then limits on injury/wrongful death lawsuits should start at that level and rise from there.

    ReplyDelete
  103. redoubtagain9:09 PM

    unpaid creative work

    i.e., third shift in Jonah's Nerve Gas Factory

    ReplyDelete
  104. XeckyGilchrist9:11 PM

    Inorite? What is this guff - "They’re good capitalist kids, not like those rotten Gen Xers," as Roy paraphrases.

    Here I was thinkin' we were all Alex Fucking Keaton. I must have been listening to the wrong Boomers.

    ReplyDelete
  105. And by "succeed", you mean "survive."

    ReplyDelete
  106. Socialist Cubone9:14 PM

    There are a lot of things you can criticize Occupy for, but I think accusing them of being more useless than the WTO protests might be going a little bit too far.

    ReplyDelete
  107. redoubtagain9:19 PM

    I want to see Sowell's column the day after he wakes up in a bathtub, on a bed of ice, with one kidney missing.

    ReplyDelete
  108. redoubtagain9:24 PM

    Libertarian economics is so good at job creation, soon everyone will have three jobs.


    You left out "in China" there at the end.

    ReplyDelete
  109. satch9:40 PM

    "It's all part of this Horatio Alger by way of Thomas Friedman bullshit that dominates glibertarianism these day..."


    Yep... we can all aspire to be cab drivers in Mumbai.

    ReplyDelete
  110. 1990, what, that can't be right-- that was like... 10 years ago or something.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Spaghetti Lee9:55 PM

    (Flips Hob the bird, pops Public Enemy into cassette player, and skateboards away)

    ReplyDelete
  112. "That last one...the outcome of WWII is the main reason we're a
    superpower. The US hadn't been invaded. We were an oil and coal
    exporter. We had the only intact industrial base on the planet. We
    didn't have to spend half a decade scraping up rubble before getting on
    with the vital business of selling everyone and their brother a shiny
    new Chevrolet."


    Yep. We had all that, and we STILL wouldn't give ourselves universal health care.

    ReplyDelete
  113. Y'know though... if I'm a hard working, entrepreneurial organ harvester, and feeling the way I do about Thomas Sowell in general, i think I'd take both kidneys and forget about the ice...

    ReplyDelete
  114. I always thought this country was prosperous due to its rich and fertile farmland. In fact I still do. Somebody's not dealing in root causes but manifestations.

    ReplyDelete
  115. THE Youngs. THE Blacks. Hell, I go back far enough to remember THE long hair.

    ReplyDelete
  116. tigrismus10:43 PM

    Hollywood, musicians, and college professors

    One of these things is not like the others...

    ReplyDelete
  117. Pere Ubu10:59 PM

    Unfortunately though, as your business model consists entirely of
    "Facebook is cool, I am going to make a website just like that", this
    non exchange of free services has no foundation as you offer nothing of
    which I wont ask for.



    Isn't that basically the kind of thing Brown and Hawkins are so enthusiastic about?

    ReplyDelete
  118. Pere Ubu11:02 PM

    the onion he wore on his belt

    A big yellow onion, because ISIS is keeping us from all the white ones.

    ReplyDelete
  119. Jeebus, I delivered furniture during school breaks in the late-80's. I made $275/wk salary and about $100/wk extra in tips. That's about $750/wk ($18.75/hr) in today's dollars. However, furniture is much more cheaply made nowadays so my moving job was slightly harder, puny Millenials...heh.

    ReplyDelete
  120. pay 60% of what you made wrecking your body to some other asshole.That's the clue for 7 down in today's crossword, and the answer is "sharing economy."

    ReplyDelete
  121. Never mind the column, I want to see photos.

    ReplyDelete
  122. Think Steve Dallas, only less likely to get any.Psst! Shakezula! Millenials, remember?

    ReplyDelete
  123. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:28 PM

    that worldview that insists that everyone is a month away from being a millionaire


    In 2008 that was true for a lot of folks (not all Wall St-ers). Unfortunately, they were a month away in the wrong direction...

    ReplyDelete
  124. and Oliver North waxes lyrical on military issuesHey, committing treason while in uniform is a kind of military issue.

    ReplyDelete
  125. montag211:32 PM

    An "entrepreneur" that slow on the uptake is going to need a time machine.

    ReplyDelete
  126. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:35 PM

    then his VP pardoned him anyway.


    There's a Constitutional Amendment begging to be written over that shit. How about this: "All Exec Branch pardons must be granted by a 2/3 vote of both the House and Senate". Never happen, of course, but it has a nice beat, I'd give it a 94...

    ReplyDelete
  127. For those millennials who do have jobs, wages have stagnated or dropped…"Thanks to the economic policies we've championed, and the obstruction of actual fixes for same."
    And only 6 percent of millennials think full Social Security benefits will be available to them"Thanks to the assaults on Social Security we've championed, and the obstruction of actual fixes for same."
    Yet members of Generation Y, as millennials were once known, are still remarkably optimistic about controlling their own destinies, despite the mess of 21st century America."A mess due in large part to the policies we've championed, and the obstruction of actual fixes for same."


    (In fairness to these pustules, they've probably seen how avidly the mainstream media have lined up to lick the asses of the same warmongers who caused the mess in Iraq in the first place, and figured, "What the hell, it's worth a try.")

    ReplyDelete
  128. AGoodQuestion11:45 PM

    At first I wondered why Nolan Brown called Rent "a Disneyfied depiction of Gen X bohemians" and then endorsed pretty much everything it said about the time. Then I realized "Disneyfied" was a compliment. They're the biggest media company in the world. They must be doing something right, goes the logic.

    ReplyDelete
  129. AGoodQuestion11:49 PM

    Hawkins' column is something else again. I remember these "multiculturalism and pc are destroying America" handwringings from when I was in college in the early 90s. This reads like someone let one of them ferment for 20 years to cultivate extra dourness.

    ReplyDelete
  130. anonymouse11:51 PM

    And yet Gen X failed to prevent globalisation, or even slightly modify it, while Occupy helped prevent a global austerity regime and gave people my age a political voice. It's still pretty much the only global, grassroots response to globalisation/robber-baron capitalism.

    Gen Y are far more politically active (in ways more pragmatic than you or I may agree with) as shown by the amount of political money thrown at Gen Y friendly media (internet secondary news sources and content aggregators) in the 2008 and 2012 US elections.

    ReplyDelete
  131. AGoodQuestion11:52 PM

    Ah, but if they only think they've convinced you they made it better, then what are they?


    Masters of the bate, that's what.

    ReplyDelete
  132. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:53 PM

    If not for the link I'd never believe you're not making that up. Man, that is some fucked-up shit right there.

    Say what you really mean, Tom:

    others who are not so fortunate must suffer and die because these physically healthy poor people won't let loose of a damn kidney to help their betters.

    ReplyDelete
  133. Pere Ubu11:55 PM

    This reads like someone let one of them ferment for 20 years to cultivate extra dourness.

    I like to think of it as "vintage wingnut, with the minty finish of batshit crazy".

    ReplyDelete
  134. Pere Ubu11:57 PM

    You wouldn't want to put a potential dialysis startup out of business, after all.

    ReplyDelete
  135. AGoodQuestion12:00 AM

    I'm sure he'd put women's studies courses on the top ten list of reasons why he's not getting any.

    ReplyDelete
  136. AGoodQuestion12:07 AM

    Colleges sure as hell don't let you take classes "for the exposure." Now that we come to it, you can't really live rent-free by promising your landlord a sterling Yelp review. Unpaid creative work might have a better reputation if the world were like that.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:10 AM

    If Silver-Foot is RMoney--the presumptive GOP nominee in '16--I have no doubt of that at all. In fact, I'd be surprised if he *didn't* say exactly that if the situation presented itself. Note to Dem strategists, see about arranging that, eh?.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:13 AM

    Forget it Jake, it's Conservatown...

    ReplyDelete
  139. AGoodQuestion12:15 AM

    It's your kidney, why can't you sell it if you want?

    Are we sure Megan hasn't already written that one?

    ReplyDelete
  140. Wrangler12:39 AM

    And what about that "squeamishness"? Is it squeamishness about being cut into? Obviously not, otherwise all but the most necessary operations would be illegal or at least heavily frowned upon. Could it be, then, that people are squeamish about a probable future in which the poor are nothing but mobile organ banks for sickly rich people? Why would anyone be squeamish about that?

    ReplyDelete
  141. Mark Spera was burned out on his corporate job at the Gap. ‘I couldn't imagine the idea of sitting at a desk all day..

    That's a far cry from the experience of the nineteen year-old girl who's working on the shop floor, commuting down from the less fashionable districts of the South Bronx.

    ReplyDelete
  142. Unfortunately for them, reality doesn't care about boring, mean or
    "uncool." It just keeps rolling on like a threshing machine, cutting
    anyone who ignores it to pieces.


    Threshing is most definitely not cutting... hello, clerics can use flails. I think the fucker means "combine harvester".

    ReplyDelete
  143. Nuh-uh, the country got rich off of amber waves of ambition.

    ReplyDelete
  144. They sound better in the original German.

    ReplyDelete
  145. You play with the punditry bingo card you have, not the one you wish you had.

    ReplyDelete
  146. That would have led to the racial integration of hospitals... couldn't have that!

    ReplyDelete
  147. Also, for everyone who commented on the "sharing economy" and the expectation that free work will be provided, this one's for you.

    Pay the writer!

    ReplyDelete
  148. Glock H. Palin, Esq.4:59 AM

    Quagmire, then?

    ReplyDelete
  149. Shakezula6:19 AM

    Bloom County is like The Beatles.

    ReplyDelete
  150. montag26:19 AM

    Umm, a number of confusions, there, I think (too many aristocratic families dominating politics, perhaps?). Silver-Foot, I'm pretty sure, refers to Ann Richards' remark about George H.W. Bush being born, not with a silver spoon in his mouth, but, rather, a silver foot, and mortimer2000 ascribes that description to George W. Bush, though the original comment was directed at father, not son.

    So, no, Rmoney is blameless on that score. Not that he wasn't thinking the same thing, though.

    ReplyDelete
  151. montag27:03 AM

    it is odd, isn't it? By the late `50s, much of the fervor of hard-line Stalinists in the West was gone, never to return, but right-wingers manage to hang onto every crackpot idea that surfaces from the muck and goo. Frequently, when I read something the Fox gargoyles are gnashing teeth over, I think to myself, "geez, weren't the Birchers pitching this over fifty years ago?" And today, that's true. They're the intellectual equivalent of hoarders. Every crazy, authoritarian idea that comes along, no matter how goofy, no matter how absurd--or disproven--they file it away for future use. The NWO conspiracies are just recycled Bircherite world-government hysteria, for example.

    Gotta admit, though, it's a helluva way to destroy the Enlightenment.

    ReplyDelete
  152. montag27:12 AM

    Boy, does that list go on and on. Cliven Bundy as an expert on the Constitution. Joe the Plumber an expert on elections. Scary Sarah as an expert on, well, anything and everything. Ah-nold Fucking Schwarzenegger an expert on economics. Looney Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann as experts on, apparently, running their mouths.

    It's bound to make people either stupid or believe that it's governance as carnival sideshow.

    ReplyDelete
  153. Jaime Oria7:38 AM

    Here you go -

    "Массы народов дать благородное песню большой 10, Дик. Иметь хорошие ритм для освобождения угнетенных во всем мире."

    ReplyDelete
  154. Lancelot Link7:39 AM

    FFS, some of those people are still freaking out about fluoridation.

    ReplyDelete
  155. A young woman just died of catnapping in her car between her three jobs.

    ReplyDelete
  156. They really know how to sell libertarianism!

    ReplyDelete
  157. Leave it to libertarians to twist a word like "sharing" into an inhuman mockery of itself.

    ReplyDelete
  158. If you back a libertarian or a regular conservative into a corner about this, they usually will admit that opportunities are unequal and that not everyone is going to succeed no matter how hard they work. Then, of course, they fall back on the "life's not fair" line.


    Fine, of course it's not. So why are you trying your damnedest to make it even less fair?


    "We'll always need miners and burger flippers," they readily acknowledge. So why shouldn't we make sure that miners and burger flippers can feed their damn families?


    And when you've backed a libertarian this far into the corner, assuming they're still talking to you, they'll usually admit that they literally just don't care if poor people starve.

    ReplyDelete
  159. mortimer20008:34 AM

    Ach. I misremberated that it was W. I need to bring some more accuracy to my witless snerk.

    ReplyDelete
  160. BigHank538:54 AM

    Starving poor people isn't a bug, it's a feature. How else are you going to know you're a winner unless you get to watch the losers suffer and die? (Waiting for an eternal reward from some "God" character is so old-school.)

    I once spent some time with a guy who'd served in Korea in the seventies. He related a story about how it was common practice for GIs to swap a can of C-rations with a peasant woman in exchange for a blowjob. That's the world libertarians want to live in...they just need to create more misery and poverty first.

    ReplyDelete
  161. Helmut Monotreme9:02 AM

    Killing on command is a kind of life skill.

    ReplyDelete
  162. TGuerrant9:08 AM

    Despite Erik Prince having shown how entrepreneurial military service can be!

    ReplyDelete
  163. hello, clerics can use flails.I told people that playing D&D taught useful skills.

    ReplyDelete
  164. Helmut Monotreme9:10 AM

    I love this comment so much.

    ReplyDelete
  165. TGuerrant9:17 AM

    And of course we Judeo-Christianly made ourselves the only people on earth to have ever loosed atomic weapons on other people, not that that gave us any edge when bullying the world around...

    ReplyDelete
  166. But that's the thing, we (born in 1970) were handed the same shit hand.Woo-hoo! 1970 represent! High five!


    ... Ow! My back!

    ReplyDelete
  167. Pere Ubu9:39 AM

    Christ, what's not all about job skills in D&D?

    Filling out forms accurately, logistics, managing people...

    And yet they'd look at me askance if I put it down on the job application. No justice, I tells ya.

    ReplyDelete
  168. Pere Ubu9:43 AM

    A couple backwards Rs and Ns and I would have been good. Nice work though. Horosho!

    ReplyDelete
  169. I like to listen to a lot of podcasts during my working day, and some of them are run by young progressives.

    The Majority Report is probably my favorite podcast, and the two producers of that show are millennials who are as anti-Libertarian as anyone I've ever known. The Citizen Radio podcast is hosted by two millennials who were very involved in the Occupy movement, and are as progressive as the day is long.

    You know, sometimes it occurs to me that the kids ARE alright.

    ReplyDelete
  170. Pere Ubu9:50 AM

    "Everybody else may be an asshole, but I'm not."


    God, I love Harlan. You DON'T fuck with him.

    ReplyDelete
  171. Derelict9:51 AM

    One of these is more common than the other. Hint: I once had a guy explode at me because I wasn't willing to do hours of research for a "What's On in San Diego" article for the $5 he was offering me.

    Every one of us who survives by freelancing faces this kind of crap every fucking day. I've come to the conclusion that a lot of it is due to people who were told by their 9th-grade English teacher that they wrote a nice essay--and decided right then that they were F. Scott Fitzgerald. Thus armed with ignorance, all they needed was exposure to get that one big break to a novel and a million-dollar advance.

    And thus D.J. do we find ourselves "competing" against semi-literate people, and thus do we find "editors" who don't really care about quality, and thus do we find ourselves getting offers of $25 for a 1,500-word feature article (with original photos).

    And thus has many an editor heard me gently explain that, no, I don't need exposure after 35 years as a professional writer. And, no, I'm not going to write that 1,500-word feature for $25. And, by the by, you might want to consider proofreading your email before sending it to me because an "editor" who is illiterate is not inspiring confidence in the prospects of the publication.

    ReplyDelete
  172. Pere Ubu9:53 AM

    A young woman just supported a young millennial's Internet funeral startup.

    Get it right, now.

    ReplyDelete
  173. Hawkins could always keep The Battle Hymn of The Republic and Onward Christian Soldiers on a loop if he wants to sing that sort of thing.

    ReplyDelete
  174. TGuerrant9:58 AM

    Doing work for exposure generates one thing - only: Insistent requests from a greater number of people to do more work for exposure.

    ReplyDelete
  175. Halloween_Jack9:58 AM

    They probably didn't realize that they were parroting an old Doonesbury strip from the seventies, in which BD was bitching about all the jobs in the classified section of the paper, and Zonker sardonically saying, yeah, all those chemical engineers should get off their butts and apply.

    ReplyDelete
  176. Some of it is absolutely timeless...

    ReplyDelete
  177. The Battle Hymn of the Republic is out because of... you know.

    ReplyDelete
  178. Pere Ubu11:54 AM

    Those papers get awfully heavy after a couple hours, you know.

    ReplyDelete
  179. Yeah, no kidding. I have a friend who makes and sells art coffins. I'm always urging her to begin an internet start up called "Funeral in a Box" which contains all the stuff you need to run your loved one's funeral.

    ReplyDelete
  180. The libertarian would say the GI was a chump. They want blowjobs for a tin that once contained C-rations after they've eaten the C-rations and refilled it with roadkill.

    ReplyDelete
  181. Leaving a thick trail of slime wherever he - CLICK!

    ReplyDelete
  182. Tony Prost12:10 PM

    my definition of "decimate" is a little different too, although his is the popular current version.

    ReplyDelete
  183. TGuerrant12:12 PM

    I would so kickstart that.

    ReplyDelete
  184. You remembered correctly. In case anyone misses the sound of GWB saying ridiculous shit, here it is.

    ReplyDelete
  185. mgmonklewis12:55 PM

    It just keeps rolling on like a threshing machine, cutting anyone who ignores it to pieces.

    This is such an awful metaphor, for so many reasons — not least of which, because olde tyme threshing machines weren't sentient, ambulatory, Stephen King-like devices roaming the fields in search of the unwary to devour.

    ReplyDelete
  186. mgmonklewis1:01 PM

    Re: Horatio Alger — they never understand how those stories actually worked out, either. The hero worked his ass off, but did his gumption, pluck, and tenacity lead to wealth and comfort? No. That happened when, inevitably, he saved and/or married a rich man's daughter. The end.

    ReplyDelete
  187. mgmonklewis1:12 PM

    Upvoted for Steve Dallas reference.

    ReplyDelete
  188. Wooderson1:22 PM

    That's what I love about the youth demographic, man. I get older, they stay the same age. Yes they do.

    ReplyDelete
  189. mgmonklewis1:28 PM

    Why limit yourself to coffins? You can also sell found items on eBay. Call it "Coffins Etcetera" in a nice floral script.

    ReplyDelete
  190. Gromet1:40 PM

    Fair point, but the main takeaway from Aliens was more like "the military is super awesome and heroic, but they get betrayed by an ambitious weakling." The corporation that creates Skynet is mainly too amazing at what it does for its own good. And Titanic depends heavily on an air of "life was more romantic in the olden days"; actually if not for class conflict, there wouldn't be much that's interesting in the love affair. It would just be "two people fuck on a cruise."

    But also, what you said is true. I didn't bring up Avatar because it is kind of a more straight "army and corporations bad" movie. But it's just one, and he's made a bunch. Seems strange to make Cameron liberalism's poster child. (Also I think the army and corporations win in Avatar? It's been a while.)

    ReplyDelete
  191. ...which it was able to purse because subsistence was not an issue in a country where rich farmland allowed few to do the job that would otherwise take many.


    I've addressed the matter in its fundamental, most essential terms. You are speaking of the manifestations of that.

    ReplyDelete
  192. RogerAiles1:55 PM

    Eggy's No. 1 and Roberts is No. 2, whereas Scalia and Thomas only get honorable mentions (they're behind J. O'Queef at No. 24). The Drudge thing must be a suck-up.

    ReplyDelete
  193. realinterrobang3:07 PM

    We did stop the FTAA and the MAI, give us a little credit. Also, we were the people who put the "corporations can be evil" meme on the map.

    I was born in 1975, which means I was just young enough to miss getting prosperous in the dot-com boom, and just old enough to come of age during the late '90s recession here in Soviet Canuckistan. My economic life's been fucked since I hit the age of majority.

    ReplyDelete
  194. realinterrobang3:08 PM

    Even gladder my side won the War of 1812-14, then...

    ReplyDelete
  195. realinterrobang3:09 PM

    Well, Europeans stole Judeo-Christianity from the Jews and the Christians in the Levant. Bad move, if you ask me.

    ReplyDelete
  196. realinterrobang3:12 PM

    I once had a guy explode at me because I wasn't willing to do hours of
    research for a "What's On in San Diego" article for the $5 he was
    offering me.


    Reason #1 why Interrobang does not do oDesk, eLancer, Rent-a-Coder, or any of those other freelancer gig-brokering sites. Less than a hundred bucks to write you a chapbook on [foo complicated technical subject]? I don't think so. I'd rather starve with my self-respect intact, thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  197. Pere Ubu3:28 PM

    olde tyme threshing machines weren't sentient, ambulatory, Stephen
    King-like devices roaming the fields in search of the unwary to devour


    Huh. Y' learn something new every day!

    ReplyDelete
  198. mgmonklewis3:42 PM

    Yes. Plus, I'm fairly sure an Olde Tyme thresher was a stationary machine; you brought your grain to it. A combine harvester gets driven up and down the field, separating the grain and spewing out the chaff/stalks as it goes. And even then, anybody "ignoring it" still wouldn't get mangled by it unless the person driving it willfully ran over them.

    In short, someone thought the word "thresher" was fun, and was determined to use it no matter what.

    ReplyDelete