By Erik Dolson
For the last year, a contractor friend near my home in Oregon has been unable to hire carpenters.
Three months ago, a mechanic couldn’t find a new muffler to install on my old truck.
Last month, stranded in Canada on a boat, I was told it could take three weeks to get a repair.
Two days ago, the owner of one of my favorite coffee shops announced he’s going to close because he can’t hire a barista.
Something is going on. It’s as if a whole generation of workers have disappeared. Everywhere, in every industry.
Over the last two years, explanations have included checks that went out to help workers through massive unemployment caused by COVID. Then, poor work ethics of Gen X were blamed. Supply chains from China, environmental regulations in California, lack of housing, the weather …
I recently read a book, “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning,” by Peter Zeihan, and regularly watch Zeihan’s blog. You should too — Zeihan is brilliant. He points out that the world is changing quite rapidly, with falling populations as a primary cause.
I’m at a time of life where I’m insulated to some extent from world trends that don’t have an immediate impact on this Old White Liberal. Regular readers know I think there are too many people on Earth.
More accurately, I feel that a wasteful, exploitive, and arrogant species such as mankind is destined to destroy the world’s viability through carelessness and hubris, at least as long as we poison the air and water, destroy the soils and strip mine oceans to the point where they can no longer sustain a complex web of life.
I could blame capitalism for these sins, and have, but one also has to realize that capitalism has also led to the most significant elevation in the standard of living of all mankind. This is partly the result of capitalism’s ability to quickly and efficiently reallocate resources, according to books on economics I read a half century ago.
However, a related (and often hidden) ability of capitalism is to shift costs. Not only can capitalism quickly reallocate capital to a create immensely profitable (if unnecessary) social media, or wondrously effective (if cancer-causing) weed killers, the process does not require that capitalists who profit must pay for chemotherapy to cure the diseases they cause.
Which of course, allows them to search for even more effective ways to add to the bottom line. (Unfortunately, guided by the human brain and unfettered by accountability, this search can result in fishing nets miles long bumping along the ocean bottom killing all life in search of protein to be sold at $1/pound as a can of cat food)
Here’s another old idea from economics textbooks: at some point, supply and demand will reach a balance. This would allow an Old White Liberal to buy a muffler for his old truck at least at some price, or a cookie and coffee at a café if he was willing to pay the bill and leave a tip.
This is where the process that has served us so well may be breaking down. It may no longer be the case that we can buy it if we can afford it, or buy it used if we can’t. If there’s nobody to make it, bake it, saw it or paint it, then “whateveritis” might not be available at all, or so few can afford it that everything we want is now custom and ten times as expensive as before.
Which begs another question for the Old White Liberal. Is equality attainable, or even desirable? If there was true, absolute equality, would anyone make a muffler, install an alternator, build a house, serve a muffin, clean a fish?
And here’s one for my conservative friends: If capitalistic private equity firms buy up all the starter homes and turn them into rentals at rates that prevent young workers from building their own equity, have we killed incentive? Just asking.
My hope was that less labor might cause the value of labor to increase, and provide a more equal world for those who keep it running, that the “system” might reach a new balance. But I don’t know if that’s what will happen.
It might be that the road from a world where labor was plentiful and cheap to one where there are too few to do too much is likely to be a rough one.
Well the smart money saw that when you can borrow for no interest and the stock market had risen to crazy valuations they bought land, and houses. They will pay gains on the property eventually but their money is parked in something with a likely return. We, of course, will suffer from both the money printing and the zero interest on savings. Inflation is likely to become sticky.
I suspect we have finally created a generation that eschews work or the effort to learn because life has been quite easy. Not all are so damaged, some young men really do want to be useful but they are becoming fewer. One sad example might be Mr Fetterman running for Senate in PA. I have no dog in that fight but the man has never really held a job. His parents allowed him enough income to do well in political life. I suspect there are others like him. Being a mechanic is beneath many in our zeal to have all attend college including those with no academic ability. Their needs are modest and apparently get by via the grace of others better situated.
Nicholas Eberstadt gave us a hint in "Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis" in 2016. Not much has improved. And those men are unlikely to find female partners. Worse, it seems way too many men are tending toward a degree of feminine perhaps as a result of declining testosterone. And sociologists are concerned Lionel Tiger in "The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women" in 2000 forced into obsolescent. Many don't even try anymore. National Review notes men are getting weaker https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/male-physical-decline-masculinity-threatened/. That matched decline in sperm quality https://amerigentleman.blogspot.com/2014/09/masculinity-in-decline.html.
While we might think males and females might be equally capable of most anything, that doesn't mean they are interested in the same things. As an old married guy, I am positive that my wife's brain was really helpful and the combination of male and female in solving issues is likely better than either one alone. Perhaps as our creator imagined. As I understand it male babies are interested in things while female babies are interested in faces. I suspect that's why men gravitate to the things world and females to the people world. If your car needs repair, odds on a male is more likely to be the mechanic.
Perhaps today's males no longer have the necessity to go forth and bring back the meat for the tribe so they are content to let the ladies go to work while they play video games. I don't know, I'm some 70+ years past those days of chasing skirts. But I can botch a plumbing job with the best of botchers. And at one time could tune the 4 carburetors on my Corviar - such things hardly matter that car and carburetors are long gone.
So the ladies would rather rise to run the corporations and the men are no longer needed except in trades where they really must learn a lot to be good at that work. So they might be staying home but I seriously doubt they have any desire nor ability even for domestic chores. Perhaps as the economy gets worse some may need to find something worthwhile to do.
Too much common sense. Perhaps the Old White Liberal has morphed into something New.