Do you know the song, "We didn't Start the Fire"? [1] Great song. It was released in 1989 - check out the lyrics. Even more interesting though is why the song was written. [2] Billy Joel was in a recording studio talking to a friend of John Lennon's son, who was 21 at the time. They had a conversation:
- Friend: It's a terrible time to be 21 [because the world's going to shit]
- Billy Joel: Yeah, I remember when I was 21 – I thought it was an awful time and we had Vietnam, and y'know, drug problems, and civil rights problems and everything seemed to be awful.
- Friend: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's different for you. You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.
- Billy Joel: Wait a minute, didn't you hear of the Korean War or the Suez Canal Crisis?
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Didn%27t_Start_the_Fire#His...
The foundational assumption of the modern scientific era (circa 1845) is that steam engine physics are a fundamental law of the universe. This guiding constraint is referred to as the "Laws of Thermodynamics"...
Today's scientists have better numbers. Dark energy and dark matter are their realization that something is wrong with 1845's understanding of the laws of nature.
However because scarce things are driven by pseudo auction dynamics that depends on wealth disparity rather than absolute cost young people quickly realize there is a ceiling.
Because they know they can't break that ceiling money may as well be spent on fun "now" things. Or hail Marys like Bitcoin. Because in many ways, scarce things are the only things of "true" value.
There is a parallel here to the disenfranchisement of the black community. You can live "comfortably" as long as you don't try to cross the moat. Energy that could've been spent improving quality for all is spent on digging the moat deeper.
Ask people in their 20s and 30s what they think about the world, and over half of them will say the world's going to shit in one way or another. I know people on both sides of the political spectrum that will say that. This isn't a good sign for society.
Granted, I am not divorced from this phenomenon. There is a lot of things that my parents' generation did that I don't do because they seem pointless. I'm not in a relationship, hence not married, no kids, I don't intend on owning a house with a white picket fence(or any house), I don't have two cars, I don't go on vacation after vacation, I don't "pound the pavement", etc. All because I find these things to be "meh", having a low ROI in general.