On Crony Capitalism and Playing a Crooked Game

Are the younger generations lazy whiners, or is it actually hard to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps in this day and age? The answer is both: life is too complicated for single causes. However, as most of our political discourse takes place on Twitter these days, or on other platforms looking for clips to trend on Twitter, people tend to respond to whiners with acerbic one-liners. That's no good way to address legitimate complaints, so let's take a serious look at the problem.

Stating the Problem Correctly

Let's start with the left's favorite complaint: wealth inequality. We all know the accusation is rooted in envy, agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with being rich, and understand that unequal outcomes are a necessary implication of a free system. The only way to guarantee equality is to use the vast power of the state to grind down every difference, and we know that never works; those who run the state will always end up more equal than others. However, with our free market throats sufficiently cleared, let's take a closer look.

The thing about wealth is that it comes with power. Power that is inevitably used to protect the wealth. We see this in crony capitalism, with the writing of regulations to prevent competitors. In other ways too, we've seen a hardening of the arteries of society. "Are you allowed to do that?" has replaced "It's a free country, isn't it?" And so if the younger generations are telling us that it's impossible to get ahead in this world, we should at least take a serious look at that problem. Even if we don't buy into the leftist framing.

A capitalist system only works if people can go somewhere else to earn money. One where, if you can’t make a living with the choices offered, you can make a new choice. If nobody is offering jobs at a livable wage, then you need to create your own job out of whole cloth. That isn’t easy, and a lot of our messaging problem on the right comes down to our unwillingness to acknowledge that. The way we generally talk about this is to point out that America’s prosperity is historically anomalous; that it’s easy to be rich when the rest of the industrialized world has been bombed to scrap, and that previous generations have had it harder. This is all true, but it misses the point. The young, and young men in particular, are being handed a world that's shorter on options than the one that was handed to us. That's a problem.

As the good times roll, what were luxuries previously become necessities. Consider a father trying to pay for his teenage daughter’s braces. Are braces necessary? Nine out of ten cavemen think you can get by without them. Swap out the suburban high school for a post-apocalyptic hellscape (probably to the cheers of the students), and you’d stop worrying about braces quickly. Without that, it’s hard to argue that braces aren’t necessities considering the real social landscape of modern America. Fifteen years ago, owning a cellphone was strictly a personal choice. Not owning a cellphone today would require me to get special accommodations on the order of someone who was wheelchair bound.

We started with leftists complaining about people being rich. We've come to an actual problem: a system that stifles young men. The bad news is the game is rigged. The good news is that the game has always been rigged, and that the odds are always against the up-and-comer. Whatever they're doing to rig the game now, it won't be sufficient to keep out the next generation. So let's talk about how to play when the game is crooked.

Ways to Sidestep the System

There are a couple possible responses. One is to reject Hobson’s choice, and opt out of things that most people assume you can’t opt out of. Go without the cellphone. Live without a car, a TV, a Netflix subscription. This can be done, but we should recognize that hermits and the stylites have a specialized calling that most people don’t aspire to. If we’re going to ask people to live like a monk for half their life while they build up capital and skills, then we should at least acknowledge the heavy burden we’re asking them to bear.

Another is to burn down the system. This is what friends of civilization are trying to avoid. The upside of this method is that it recalibrates ‘necessity’ much more quickly and thoroughly than anything else. The downside is everything else.

A third option is to reform the system. We could make cars more cheaply without all the safety dance. We could make starting a new business easier by making starting a new business easier. President Trump has been better at this than every other president in my memory. His results have still been laughably inadequate. I’ll mark this one down as something that absolutely should be done but that none of us should wait for.

A fourth option is to call forth a Nietzschean uberproletarian—one who can stride into the unformed possibilities and forge a new path; a new way of earning a living out of primal chaos. In America we generally do this with technology. There’s a reason young men became crypto bros. The technology offered them a path to riches moderated only by their skill and luck, not by what society thinks is a good idea. At least some of AI comes from people taking that path. I don’t think we should presume that it will always be open, or that technology is the only way to do it. This is why you need the superman to discover other new ways.

A fifth is to embrace the black market. If gas is four bucks a gallon in Nevada and seven bucks a gallon in California, why aren’t you smuggling gas past their ridiculous checkpoints? Insofar as government regulation exists not for any legitimate reason but as a cronyist's handout to the established businesses, then dodging those regulations can’t damage legitimate state interests. This might work on a large scale if every man engaging in it was a philosopher with the moral fortitude of George Washington, but absent that constraint I expect this to be the second most corrosive thing to society after a communist revolution.

The sixth option is the default. To take the choices offered, to muddle through, and patiently wait for something to happen. The downside of this method is that you have to bear injustice meekly, to watch other people get promoted ahead of you for whatever damn fool reason is popular at the moment. (Woke might be on its way out. DEI might be toxic. But don't take false comfort from that—if they go, then the masters will find other reasons to promote the wrong people.) The upside to this method is that it has the surety of inevitability. As your elders die off, you'll find yourself pushed upwards because they can't find anyone else. This isn't a heroic method, but it is depressingly realistic. That's okay. Not every soldier who goes to war earns medals, not the ones that count anyway. Those soldiers are still vital.

There are further options. Homelessness is a more extreme rejection of the expectation of society. Living like a gangsta redefines what's important as the short-term fame of the streets, and a retirement plan of a cold, cold grave by the time you're twenty-four. Living as a gangster involves racketeering, bending coppers, journalists, and politicians, and working out a life of crime. In short, none of 'em are any good.

Living in a Crony Capitalist World

Okay, all that is interesting in theory, but how are real people to actually live in these conditions? St. Paul rushes in here to remind us that the just will live by faith. Okay, but can you break it down a bit? And stick to realistic options. Not everyone can be a Nietzschean Uber driver.

First off, if you’re an employee, do your duty to your employer. Be worthy of the money he pays you. And keep an eye out for opportunities, for jobs that pay more. By swapping jobs, you don’t just increase your personal take-home pay; you increase the valuation for everyone in your position. The bosses will promote other people when they can get away with it, but when things get screwed up they know who actually gets things done. There are worse ways to get ahead than being someone who can be relied on when times are tough.

For employers, pay your employees well. There are plenty of places to save on the bottom line; paying for good workers shouldn’t be one of them. And if they are good workers, pay them a little bit more than you think they’re worth. Because I guarantee you that you’ll save money in the long run when they don’t leave their jobs. Run your company not for the next quarter, but for the next generation. That involves doing all the boring things like good customer service. You know you need to.

For the comfortable middle classes, speak with a little compassion when you talk to the struggling younger folks. Don’t automatically assume that all their problems exist because they’re idiots. I mean, they are, but so are we all. And for heaven's sake, start trying to think in 'free country' mode again. Freedom starts as a mindset. Or, as the radicals used to say, "Free your mind, and your ass will follow."

For the struggling young men, yeah, it sucks. We’re asking you to fight overwhelming odds. Take heart; it’s possible. It’s not unique to our society either. Everyone has to wrest their destiny from fearsome foes in all times and in all places. How many girls do you think you’re going to ask before one says 'yes'? Why should the market be any easier? If you can't stand the boring path, then by all means try one that requires more of you. The game is rigged, but that only earns you more glory when you beat it. Have courage. And remember that things like "Courage" and "Glory" exist even when the world tells you otherwise.

For the struggling young women, my advice is to find one of those men and marry him. (How you can manage that, I don't know. Women are a mystery.) Have some kids. You'll be happier with children. You might not be able to afford them, but have them anyway. I have faith in you. People are astonishingly good at scraping by somehow or another. Americans in particular are astoundingly generous folk when you give them a proper chance. You'll find that the folks who turn their noses up at whining will also go miles out of their way to help people in genuine need.

And for everyone, top to bottom, young to old, take heart. Do the hard thing, rather than the expedient thing. Do what you know is right. Because every time someone does, he makes the whole system a little bit better.