The Age of Late Capitalism

Author: Swagnarok

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#1
Swagnarok
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The economy of the 2020s is one that will continue and escalate the trends of the past.

While the average worker remains more or less an average guy, hiring prerequisites have grown exponentially. Gone are the days where anyone from virtually any background can simply be trained on-site and then start making a livable salary after a month or two. Requirements for prior work experience, certification, high educational attainment, and unrealistic anecdotes of "I have saved the company money by suggesting and implementing innovative solutions to problems" have outpaced the ability or willingness of many, if not most, people to meet these.
In the same vein, people who entered the workforce during a time when barriers to entry were far lower are now decades into their illustrious careers, often having ascended to affluent management positions, and who are not keen on retiring in sufficient numbers to give space to younger people (and here by "younger people" I mean the middle aged instead of the elderly; people under 30 would still have no chance in this event).

The ball is definitely in the park of the employers. They can collectively impose whatever conditions they want and it's up to the rest of us to suffer because of their unreasonableness. In addition, because of inflation and the drastic rise in home prices over time, actually managing to meet these progressively more insane hurdles will not put you "ahead" of your forebears socioeconomically. Rather, the best you can hope for is that your "higher salary" does, adjusted for inflation, match what they made. The price of this, in many cases, is tens of thousands of dollars in student debt that your forebears knew nothing of.

These are the lucky few; there are also millions of young people with a relatively passive attitude towards life who have no business being in college but their parents talked them into it because "hey why not if you have any degree it'll magically be a meal ticket for you". These people are perhaps the most screwed of all. Even if they graduate without student debt they pretty much wasted several years of their lives and are in no better shape when it's time to whip out the resume and apply for work somewhere.

The reasons for this are simple: capital and organizational efficiency can accumulate over time, but any new person being born will not inherit the knowledge of his/her forebears and so will start out life as a "blank slate" no wiser than the people who came before him/her, having zero managerial background or relevant technical expertise to begin with. As systems increase in complexity over time, humans are not well-adapted to adjust to this. In addition, there is little infrastructure in place to help them do so effectively.

This is why capitalism has failed in contemporary America: average people simply can't keep up with these institutions and as a result they are growing more and more disempowered over time.

This is where the conservative and the liberal diverge.
The liberal says remake the system. A conservative would say make better people who are more able to compete. I'd say both are needed to some degree or another. A country whose people are actually strong enough to keep up would certainly be blessed with prosperity and power as compared to the rest of the world. But this probably couldn't be sustained indefinitely.
#2
Zaradi
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@Swagnarok
This is why capitalism has failed in contemporary America

Cool. What's your alternative?
#3
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@Swagnarok
Reading this I couldn't help but wonder what world you are  living in. The one I live in does not resemble what you describe at all. The job market is so good now that employers are having trouble finding warm bodies to fill positions. The standard of living in the U.S. is better than it ever has been. I don't see how anyone could call this a systemic failure.

#4
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@Swagnarok
This is why capitalism has failed in contemporary America: average people simply can't keep up with these institutions and as a result they are growing more and more disempowered over time.

What you are describing isn't a failure of capitalism, it's a failure of the educational system.
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#5
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@Stronn
Your profile says you're at a post-doctoral level of educational attainment. This suggests that you're older, with decades of diverse workplace experience, and a very impressive resume. And to begin with, you probably joined the workforce back when it was easier to get your foot through the door.

If this accurately describes you, you do not represent the typical American experience nowadays.
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#6
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@Greyparrot
You're close. But even a reformed public education system couldn't solve this.
#7
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@Swagnarok
You're just not creative enough to imagine a world without teacher's unions.
#8
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@Stronn
Reading this I couldn't help but wonder what world you are  living in. The one I live in does not resemble what you describe at all. The job market is so good now that employers are having trouble finding warm bodies to fill positions. The standard of living in the U.S. is better than it ever has been. I don't see how anyone could call this a systemic failure.
+1. I don't understand how anyone can look at the world's richest country can think that their economic system is failing.

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#9
Swagnarok
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@Zaradi
Good question.

A big part of the problem is that population growth has been outpacing job creation for decades (assuming that this hasn't, in fact, been the trend since literally the end of WWII). It's true that low-tier jobs are plentiful, and I guess that works if you're the sort of person who enjoys serfdom. But if we're talking about good-paying middle class jobs, these are becoming more scarce relative to the number of people who could potentially fill said job. This creates kind of a women-on-Tinder situation: if you're a firm, there are so many "matches" eager to shack up with you that you can take your pick from the juiciest in the litter and give all the rest of them the shaft.

If economic growth (that is, the kind that creates plentiful good paying jobs) had been significantly greater from, say, the Reagan era until now, we really wouldn't be in this situation, and nobody in the mainstream would be talking about capitalism as this sinking behemoth. The problem with this is, corporatism represents monolithic concentration of resource allocation. These massive companies don't put their metaphorical eggs in ten dozen baskets at once because they couldn't hope to manage all of that. Instead, their operations tend to keep a relatively narrow focus, and so top-down growth is limited by this fact.

This is a similar problem to that faced by command economy of the Soviet Union. It should be noted that this top-down style is very good at implementing those ideas it does have, and filling those niches it's able to specifically focus on filling. Normal people are often unmotivated and don't have access to endless funding. If they do secure a bank loan, and their business venture goes sour, the consequences for them personally would be far greater than a corporation that could bail out or sell one of its subsidiaries.
But overall we won't get the (good) job creation needed to sustain capitalism if we remain on a top-down model. Now, just haphazardly throwing money at the bottom is extremely problematic because the bulk of that money would be squandered and the hoped-for "growth" would fail to materialize. But the bottom is our only real option.

So how exactly do we pull this off?

First, better integration of data as to allow for better communication. First off, imagine a website where everybody can post their resumes publicly, and their profiles state where they live. From where you live (also stated on your profile), you can either search for stuff based on proximity to where you live or by profession and skillsets related to such, or simply a random search.
When you "match" with somebody, you can pay them to teach you everything they know about a specific area they know a lot about so that you too now have that same skillset. The teacher's profile, if established to authentically belong to that person, can be used as an endorsement for them having learned a skillset at the end of the sessions. So instead of scrounging around desperately hoping for an unpaid internship offer or for somebody kind enough to hire an applicant who knows nothing about the job, you can take a class on literally anything (provided you find somebody willing to teach it), get a PDF certification from this person, and then go up to a human resources department and be like "Yo I learned the basics of how to do this job from Billy, and Billy's been doing it twenty years. Here are some of Billy's contacts, his old boss at X company. After that, here's the certification showing we met IRL twelve times over two months and he taught me it all."

But let's say that's not enough. Let's say there simply aren't enough good jobs to go around, and, even worse, that a sudden glut of skilled applicants makes it even harder to stand out.
What now?
Here comes the second part. You ready?

Remember that I mentioned integration of data. This would also include economic data, stated on a crisp, concise software which breaks down the enormous web of transactions taking place in the real world and online, and especially so far as is locally relevant (I say local both as in real life and as in one's "local cyberspace") in such a way that anyone can understand it, even if they get a migraine spending long hours piecing it all together.
From here, you can look and see if you can find some kind of possible niche to fill somewhere. If you don't have the job skills to fill that niche, no problem. You can take two/three month course and then roll up your sleeves. But let's say whatever it is, it's gonna take more than just you to take it off. So you use networking to see if you can find somebody willing to partner with you.
Boom. Just like that you've got a team of independent contractors coming together to accomplish a common goal. Do they need money to finance it? No problem. Either they can pool their resources or reach out over the internet to ask if anybody's interested in investing for a share in the eventual returns. Some people would make a living just doing that, peering over the pages of "e-invest.com" for new offerings that sounded promising.

And the manpower of some of these collaborations would get bigger and bigger, but without autocratic top-down management. Real-time information sharing would serve to regulate the behavior of the masses without such a person being needed. And if these megaprojects stopped carrying available space for new people to join in and share in the profits, these excluded people could start from the drawing board and find a new niche.


But for all of this to happen, some change in corporate law would be needed to accommodate these new arrangements where ownership is more vaguely defined. I have no clue what this'd look like. Consult a lawyer.
Finally, a general mindset of passivity needs to be flushed out of our collective consciousness. We should not be "looking for a master to serve in exchange for pay". We should consider ourselves to be economic actors on a market selling our valued labor, looking out for the best deal and even forging a new one if necessary.
Whether we're strong enough to make this happen is another matter. If not, then:


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#10
Swagnarok
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@Zaradi
Some people will object that apps similar to the first one described do exist currently, such as that site where a few paid contributors post videos about broad sciences/arts like "drawing" and "geometry" that subscribers can watch.
But I'm thinking something more along the lines of iTalki, which is a simply fantastic service and a very micro-level example of the above, with people knowledgeable in language instruction being able to contract out this service for whatever price they set. It wouldn't be limited to such broad abstractions in a specialized economy, and the teachers and students would decide what exactly was worth teaching/being taught based on present conditions of the job market. Whatever would help the recipient succeed in the real world, that would be what he'd pay for.
Also the fact that with iTalki you hold a face-time lesson with your instructor holds you accountable towards learning the material and not quitting after five minutes, and it allows for greater flexibility in asking questions and receiving clarification.

Others will object that trade schools exist now. But these still amount to tens of thousands of dollars spent, and as institutions with a narrow selection of fixed, perhaps even tenured professors, what they're teaching might not always be as up to date as you would like. In addition, "I'm gonna pay for some recently retired North Carolina man to teach me solar panel installation on this website" is a mentally easier commitment to make than "I'm gonna enroll in trade school" and you'd be the one in full control of what you're paying/spending time to learn. No stupid elective courses, no nitty-gritty introspection down to the molecular level of how X chemical process works when you can do the job with a more general knowledge of the science behind it (which means you can learn it a lot faster).


Even so far as some very close equivalent might actually exist, most people don't know about it and certainly aren't using it, pointing back to the whole mindset change thing.
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#11
Swagnarok
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A warning: radical individualism serves to isolate the individual, which makes him more prone both to mistakes and to manipulation from the powers that be. Coherent bonds between the members of our notoriously lonely generation will have to be re-established for this to work. That doesn't mean East Asian hive mentality, but rather what we had, say, back in the 1990s or whatever.
#12
Discipulus_Didicit
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While the average worker remains more or less an average guy, hiring prerequisites have grown exponentially.

My current job puts me solidly in the top 40% of Americans by income and I only work 4 days a week, allowing plenty of extra time to work on other non-job-related moneymaking opportunities. The prerequisites for my current job were "Have a GED or higher education, pass this 10 minute reading comprehension test on the internet and show up on time a few days from now with the 40 other suckers we are hiring this week to take a drug test, do all that and you are in."

If that is the result of 'exponential growth in hiring prerequisites' then I can't imagine how easy it must have been to get a job ten years ago according to you lol.
#13
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@Swagnarok
How old are you by the way? Your profile does not have your date of birth but I would estimate based on your posts that you are within a few years of me in age. I am fairly young myself - turning 25 in a few months - and only entered the civilian job market a bit over two years ago. I understand it can be nerve-racking when first starting off because our society is so insistant on drilling into young folks heads the blatant lie that higher education is required to be successful. In such an environment it is natural to feel like you are missing something that everyone else has but you will quickly find that the reality is our part of the world is overflowing with opportunities, you just have to be willing to put in the legwork to find and exploit said opportunities for yourself. Nobody will ever care about your success more than you do.
#14
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@Discipulus_Didicit
My current job puts me solidly in the top 40% of Americans by income and I only work 4 days a week, allowing plenty of extra time to work on other non-job-related moneymaking opportunities. The prerequisites for my current job were "Have a GED or higher education, pass this 10 minute reading comprehension test on the internet and show up on time a few days from now with the 40 other suckers we are hiring this week to take a drug test, do all that and you are in."
That's really a sweet deal.
#15
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Why are the trades suffering a shortage of people. You can apprentice and have a good wage in just a few months
#16
Discipulus_Didicit
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@SirAnonymous
That's really a sweet deal.

Litterally didn't even ask for a resume or make me do any interviews.

I am sure you have heard of my employer before, most likely in the context of how shitty they supposedly treat their workers. It's a bunch of BS, don't believe everything you hear from the news lol.

Eh, not that I really need to say that to you of all people.
#17
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@Singularity
"But working hard for your paycheck is basically slavery"

Or something like that. IDK. Swag uses the term serfdom instead of slavery. Serfdom sounds more intellectual I guess.

I actually plan on trying to get an apprenticeship with the local pipe fitters union when they start recruitment next month. Wish me luck.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I worked for Amazon also hated it, but not their fault completely. The lack of music was silly for a mind numbingly boring job. They allow a lot of unpaid and paid time off, benefits are worth about 10k more above what you earn, so it is a sweet deal


#19
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@Swagnarok
I don't need to base my opinion on personal experience. Things like long-term low unemployment and high standard of living speak for themselves.
#20
Discipulus_Didicit
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@Singularity
The lack of music was silly for a mind numbingly boring job.

Agree, though I heard that they are allowing it in some locations in Ohio as a test to see whether it is actually a safety/productivity concern, since those have always been the higher-ups main objections. IDK if this is actually true but I sure hope it is lol.
#21
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@Swagnarok
I think that what you are saying is, human society has an inherent system that no longer functions efficiently.

Which is probably correct.

These days, aspiration and expectancy tend to exceed capability and achievability. 

#22
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@Discipulus_Didicit
They are testing it, but like using it as a type if reward instead of just playing it, and they are dumb. Obviously music would increase productivity and to say it is a safety issue is ridiculous. 
#23
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@Swagnarok
Capitalism
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#24
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@Discipulus_Didicit
What about it?
#25
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@Swagnarok
It is a system of economics? Idk.

#26
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@Swagnarok
None of that which you've described is "Capitalism." The United States has been a quasi-communist nation for the better part of a 100 years (since the imposition of the Federal Reserve.) You are simply criticizing in a vacuum. You haven't considered how government regulation plays a part in any of this. And in doing so, you're only perpetuating the Marxist political narrative of Capitalism, not its merit as an economic system.
#27
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@Discipulus_Didicit
It is a system of economics? Idk.
Yes, it's an economic system.
#28
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@Athias
Yeah that's what I said. Idk what else he was really expecting me to say about it.
#29
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Thought you were asking a question.
#30
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@Athias
Not a question, I said "it is" not "is it"

Very understantable mistake though given how many people actually do incorrectly use "it is" as a format for asking questions and also the question mark that I put. It was supposed to indicate tone rather than actually indicating a question being asked but in hindsight that is rather difficult to tell over text.

So yeah that misunderstanding probably my fault.