[thrwwyfrobvrsns]

Something that intend to write on someday that I'll excerpt here: the phenomenon of "young men with nothing to do" is driven by a society-wide misallocation of capital that is itself driven by wealth inequality - specifically, old people and elites who command too large a proportion of wealth. This concentration of wealth in the hands of a cohort that is less diverse, and has less diverse interests, than the general public concentrates investment and bids up the prices of common necessities while leaving nascent demand for other goods and services to languish, often unborn. This diverse set of would-be goods and services are the ones that would have employed many of the "shiftless" young men described (myself included). Instead, there are no ventures available with which to employ our skills, or the things we could have become skillful in; we're forced to compete with elite practitioners in the fields rich old people care to invest in or purchase from.

As TFA details, this is actually to the advantage of the aforementioned cohort - whatever particular shape a family takes (and it can be successful with queer parents, or one parent, or grandparents), its instability is useful when fighting advocacy for labor, community investment, and such. The energy expended in keeping things together at home can't be redirected against elite interests. That's why they take exception, not because one-dad-one-mom-one-boy-one-girl is the only way to successfully do-the-family.

[buzzert]

I'm curious if you could expand—what exactly are these fields that rich old people only care about?

Looking at a broad picture of the economy, I'm really not sure this tracks. Lots of capital is being invested into software and AI, for example, which doesn't seem like something "old people" necessarily care about or even understand. In addition, the marijuana industry is now larger than the airline industry.

[thrwwyfrobvrsns]

It's not what they "only" care about, when it comes to investment; it's what they can make money on. Or, rather, what their investment advisers or fund managers think money can be made on, and all the more so if younger investors are shut out.

In software, anyone younger than their mid-30s is late (too young to invest in Apple when it was at lows, Facebook IPO, etc.). AI is just the latest rolling of the software hype trade, with cloud and mobile and crypto and SaaS and more before it. And investors don't have to understand marijuana to know that being at the ground floor of an industry that's high-demand, low-supply-by-regulatory-capture would be incresibly lucrative; they piled into ownership (not stock, which was a pump-and-dump for suckers) while indie growers were shut out.

But the crux of the issue isn't simply that they like these investments. It's that they'll cannibalize everything else to prop up their chosen champions. Ironically, the mass tech layoffs of the past couple years are an example, with hundreds of thousands of workers sacrificed to keep companies not just solvent, but "growing" on paper. The post-COVID "boom" that funded their positions was misallocated capital that could have gone towards jobs that were actually sustainable; those people would still be gainfully employed, rather than unemployed or underemployed as they are now.

[johnnyjeans]

This isn't much of a new phenomenon. There are many examples in European history at least where a monarch puts all of his time and energy into patronizing the arts, causing his kingdom to fall into ruin. Charles V's reign of Spain was plagued with uprisings of disgruntled peasants. Certainly worth looking into for your full write-up. "There is nothing new under the sun" is a great idiom to call upon to back up an argument.

[sjducb]

In the olden days people died much younger. If you were middle/upper class you could expect your inheritance right as you were raising your kids.

Also a lot more was expected of grandparents. They did a lot more childcare.

[NoGravitas]

Finally, some material analysis.