7 ms·

Young People Need Another Gold Rush

73 points by pdog 9y ago

pavel_lishin 9y ago
> This lack of opportunities could create more pessimism and disaffection than economic conditions warrant. An increasing body of economic research shows that people tend to form extrapolative expectations -- they expect recent trends to continue forever. Overoptimism is also a common psychological bias. Booms make a lot of young, energetic Americans believe that they’re going to get rich. On the one hand, this causes inevitable disappointment when the froth dissipates. But as long as there’s a gold rush somewhere in the economy, big dreamers can dream big. So America needs another slot machine we can present to our youth to appease their cognitive biases?
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  Perhaps we should find ways of making them feel good about living in tent cities?
  - altotrees 9y ago
    There has to be some middle ground between these ideas, surely.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      It seems to me a crime to tell a young, vibrant person "don't get too excited" and manage their expectations for life way down. Same as you'll never get me to give up delicious food by handing me a bottle of Soylent.
      - altotrees 9y ago
        No, I totally agree with that sentiment. Things have changed for our younger generation and sadly in most cases, not for the best. It blows my mind sometimes to think of my grandfather working a factory job with my grandmother not working while raising 8 children. Oh, and they owned their own home which was a nice middle-class abode and also drove decent (but not luxury) cars. Grandfather retired at 58. Grandmother died at 86, some money still in the bank. So yes, things have changed for many reasons. Our middle class, outside of those in a few booming sectors is struggling, if not outright choking. College is becoming a no-win proposition for some and at 33, I certainly am not expecting a life like that of my grandparents or great-grandparents, for better or worse. So I get it. I was just pointing out that there is a middle ground between those two viewpoints on either end, and perhaps, just perhaps a solution is somewhere in that terrain. I'm not holding out hope though, as there are so many forces at work right now and...yeah our leadership is making me a bit nervous. ^These observations is all America-centric, I know that. I don't pretend to know how things are for every young person globally and don't want to act like I do.
        Domenic_S 9y ago
        You can still get close to that today, even outside of tech. Tradespeople make plenty of dough. The problem though is survivorship bias: plenty of people in the '50s and '60s were poor, or didn't buy their own house, or etc... and likewise plenty of "kids today" are doing well.
  - toast0 9y ago
    Reasonably high density, pedestrian friendly, sense of community, what's not to like?
    - occultist_throw 9y ago
      Eco-friendly! Tiny houses! Solar-powered! Yeah, and you don't even own the 4 walls, nor the land. And companies like uber and others seek to extract the leftover and skirt employment regulations. And your stuff keeps failing as you try to fix it. And automation is an ever-present downward force that makes your degree into a $10/hr grind. But, you know, progress?
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Street food, no high buildings blocking the sky line, authentic social dynamics... It's the hipster dream, we could make bank with this.
- mc32 9y ago
  Yeah, WTF, the dotcom and post financial meltdown recoveries were great, but, looking back at the 70s, the 80s and early 90s, I don't think people thought "optimism". If anything, we were in the midst of the full swing into rust belting of the Midwest, Detroit was under heavy attack and in debt fighting off foreign rivals, and the whole Wolf of Wall-Street 80s syndrome. WTF, do today's kids just expect things to land on their laps? That said, I know lots of people in near blue collar jobs who do work hard and don't take things for granted and don't carry a woe is me attitude. So, not everyone lacks resilience.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    No kids ask for that. The journalist asks for that. Current kids do what they can in an economy with less jobs, more expensive cost of living, more regulations, increasing state surveillance and the worst leaders we had for decades, controlled and dumbed downed news, culture promoting stupidity/violence/money/consumption... And the only map they get to navigate this is the old one from their parent's time were you could pay your college tuition with a side job and being a doctor was the solutions to all your problems.
    - bruinjoe 9y ago
      This is so true. The younger generation got hosed because the older generation screwed up in a big way. Our country had a chance to clean house during the 2008 financial melt down. The big banks failing would have caused a horrible economy but we would've flushed Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, AIG, and a host of other leaches down the drain. Check out the historical prices of Goldman Sachs from 2007 to late 2008 if you don't believe me. The market was anticipating the bankruptcy of Goldman Sachs and this company is supposed to be the pillar of Wall Street. Our economy would have recovered by now but we live in an even more distorted world. Risk is not priced correctly because interest rates are too low. Take Amazon for example. They can borrow at low rates to acquire an overpriced company in Whole Foods. Had Amazon borrowed at say 8% then the transaction is a lot riskier. This miss pricing of risk is radically distorting the economy throughout the country and there will be bad consequences. Those at the bottom of the economy will have the worst time and that includes recent high school and college graduates who will be looking for the few entry level positions.
- sametmax 9y ago
  My thoughts exactly. You can't base a person/nation's health on extraordinary events. The article sounds a lot like saying "ohhh, I'm hangover, better drink more so that I don't suffer from it". This is one of the things that are very wrong with a lot of people in charges: they want magical solutions, quick fixes for the next elections. It's true the real solutions, the long term ones, the ones that matter most, are hard to set up right: education, research, building trust, leading by example... And it's far easier to sell a new gold rush: people love those stories, it gives hope, it's fun and simple to comprehend. Even better, it puts the blame on the people instead of the leaders since if they don't live the great life, it's because they failed to grab the opportunity. The American dream in essence. The fact that there can be only so many gold rushes, so many factions that will have the control of it (and the others can go to hell), and so many people from those factions that will actually benefit from those are not issues that will occur to the minds of the targets of this strategy. It's why it's such a good one.
  - pm90 9y ago
    I agree that "gold rushes" shouldn't absolve leaders of their responsibility in fixing (or trying to fix) some of the fundamental problems of our economy. But it is a fact that these gold rushes, which I'm assuming are events when entirely new markets are developed/open up, are a huge stimulus to the economy and young people in particular. The discovery of and refining of Oil set off a gold rush. So did the spread of the internet. The problem with such kind of events in the future seems to be that the workers would require a high degree of education to participate. e.g. if there is an AI gold rush, the demand would seem to be mostly for people who know CS fundamentals, math and AI principles. But maybe I'm underestimating people; a lot of wildcatters started off as oil workers, learned skills and then moved up the chain.
    - sametmax 9y ago
      > are a huge stimulus to the economy and young people in particular. Sure a gold rush is always good. However one's life should be based on the normal, not the exceptional. Otherwise it's completely unstable. You should definitely embrace the exceptional when it happens, you may even look for it or try to trigger it, but it should not be a sine qua non condition for you having a decent life. > in the future seems to be that the workers would require a high degree of education to participate It may be a good thing. Right now, society promote art and sports are mean to become rich. We communicate value about violence, sex, money, owning stuff, power... If suddenly the media see a gold rush and promote "hey, to become rich, educate yourself and try to make a dent in the world." that would not be so bad. After all, the 2000 bubble did a HUGE service to all the nerds. We are way cooler than we used to be, and our life is way easier now.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- golergka 9y ago
  As long as people have biases, we need to appease them, yes.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  It is a concept as old as Ancient Rome itself -- bread and circuses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses Superficial means of appeasement, distractions, diversions, or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace. These things have been a staple of peace since time immemorial. > This phrase originates from Rome in Satire X of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal (circa A.D. 100). In context, the Latin panem et circenses (bread and circuses) identifies the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which no longer cares for its historical birthright of political involvement. Here Juvenal displays his contempt for the declining heroism of contemporary Romans, using a range of different themes including lust for power and desire for old age to illustrate his argument.[5] Roman politicians passed laws in 140 B.C. to keep the votes of poorer citizens, by introducing a grain dole: giving out cheap food and entertainment, "bread and circuses", became the most effective way to rise to power. Humanity generally waxes and wanes between bread and circuses and political involvement. One could feasibly say they are diametrically opposed, but suffice to say it should to be clear that the pendulum has swung from the former to the latter and it will be difficult to reverse it forcefully.
- bpodgursky 9y ago
  A lot of research shows that forcing yourself to smile makes you happier.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Penguins have a gland above their eyes that filters excess salt from their bloodstream, allowing them to drink salt water.
    - justboxing 9y ago
      Wut?
  - tdeck 9y ago
    More research showed that wasn't really true: https://www.livescience.com/56740-facial-feedback-hypothesis-fails-in-replication-attempt.html https://www.livescience.com/56740-facial-feedback-hypothesis...
mobilemidget 9y ago
cryptocurrency is not enough like another gold rush already?
- sosuke 9y ago
  My perception is probably wrong but I see the cryptocurrency gold rush as already over. To mine bitcoins now is to already have lots of money on machinery or a botnet to steal the machinery to mine the bitcoins. Do you feel that cryptocurrency is still available to the individual as a gold rush?
  - mobilemidget 9y ago
    I might be the wrong person to ask, my personal opinion of cryptocurrency isn't a popular one. I have issues with the whole idea when I think about the power consumption to keep this 'alive'. And not to forget the 'early adopter' advantage. But the trade, and the price fluctuations aren't over by long, new cryptocurrencies launched daily by respectable instances and companies. So in this way, I still see a lot of 'rush' potential, even today. And like the goldrush, it was the people selling the shovels and things making the good steady profits. And there are also a lot of hardware things to change/improve on the cryptocurrency market.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      There was an article I can't find now, but it breaks down the cost of bitcoin's energy use relative to the whole world. The conclusion was something like, if bitcoin reaches a trillion dollar GDP, the energy usage would only be around ~1.5% of our total. I think I'm getting that number wrong, but the point was that we spend way more energy for trivial purposes compared to a trillion dollar GDP.
      - mobilemidget 9y ago
        By any chance would it be this site? https://realtimebitcoin.info https://realtimebitcoin.info
QAPereo 9y ago
I'll be honest the only time I've heard the word "Strivers" it was being used to mock just the kind of patronizing mindset found in this article. I'm sure it would be lovely to rest on an economic boom created by a risky new venture filled with young "expendables'" in the same way that some people pine for a world war to stiffen up the economy; it borders on evil.
ausjke 9y ago
Young kids are busy at games, used to be the PC, game console, now adding cell phones and tablets. Let's deal with this new mental-drug-war first before any Gold Rush suggestions, as the kids then young people ignore anything else, even traffic lights...their eyes are too busy on the screen these days.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  That sounds like bad parenting and foolishness becoming more visible, rather than a new threat.
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    I don't know how much of this is really new. I spent my youth watching TV and playing Sega and computer games. By age 12 I had seen every episode of "All In The Family" at least twice. I stayed up watching TV on school nights until 1AM. I also do believe I received bad parenting, but eventually I turned out OK.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      I agree completely, and honestly I did something very similar with books. It doesn't really matter if you're staying up until 1 AM imagining things, watching TV, reading a book, or any other activity… The issue is that you're not asleep getting ready for school, perhaps not having done your homework. The difference though is that somebody looking at a smart phone is seen as antisocial, where is someone buried in a book is not, although of course the person in the phone could be reading a book! Most of this is with the politicians call "optics" you know?
  - ausjke 9y ago
    the nation now has more female college students(undergraduate and master and PhD at all levels) than male students, one reason I believe is that boys are more susceptible to games. parenting is a profession without a degree and you have to learn by doing, and hard to get it totally right all the time. games are indeed a true headaches(if not the biggest headache) for many families, it is getting much worse because of the powerful smart phones and tablets these days, it is just the reality.
SubiculumCode 9y ago
Onto Mars!
adventured 9y ago
If we're talking about America's youth, they need three things. 1) A functional healthcare system like any of the other half a dozen good alternative approaches in other developed nations. 2) For the government to stop inflating the cost of education by enabling universities to raise their prices outside of market forces (eg income growth) via perpetually greater government loan backing. Compare the median income vs median tuition costs, just from the late 1990s vs today, the government made that imbalance possible. For a century the US had very reasonably priced universities (40 years ago you could pay for an Ivy League education with a part-time job), that ended in the very early 2000s when the government inflation run took off (exactly in tandem with healthcare inflation and dollar debasement under the Bush Administration, which you can see represented in the commodity bubbles, housing, gold and the dollar GDP of every other nation soaring simultaneously from the year 2001 to 2008). 3) Significantly improved cities. More people from rural America need to be encouraged to move into urban centers, to resolve the opportunity & quality of life gap (such as falling life expectancy in rural US) that is widening between the two. That includes improving infrastructure, transportation, and available housing supply (entailing, among other things, pushing back against overly aggressive zoning laws used to restrict housing). Urban improvement / renewal, would benefit basically every demographic, including poor black communities that are being persistently hammered by extreme violence. A possible #4 candidate, would be to continue ending the war on drugs, shifting to treating addiction as a health matter and decriminalizing or legalizing all drugs. Sentencing reform and police reform would also go with that item. Doing these things would radically improve the circumstances for America's youth as a whole.
- corporateslave3 9y ago
  So bigger government is the solution? All of those are manifestations of a communist/socialist society.
  - potion 9y ago
    sounds about right
  - freehunter 9y ago
    So are roads, public schools, corporate subsidies, social security, medicare/medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, WIC, and federal student loans. Yet here we are, not collapsing under our already-heavy socialist burden. Also not collapsing under heavy socialist burden: most of Western Europe. America has a long and proud socialist tradition. It'd be a shame to stop now.
sandworm101 9y ago
The young need something big to transfer relative wealth from the old. It is getting crazy. With rich people living into thier 90s those who inherit are generally already in thier 60s or even 70s. The family money is moving between retirement funds. Something like a gold rush would move that value into the hands of the 30 or 40-somethings where it might do something more.
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  It's called socialism, but it's anathema to American culture (by design). We're so bathed in delusions of our inherent affluence and power that we'll watch the wealthy suck actual blood from young people as we're surrounded by tent cities. And many still think they're "winning" because they can pay another rich person $3000 to live in a closet. https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/ambrosia-the-startup-harvesting-the-blood-of-the-young https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/am...
lithos 9y ago
Reads a little like "we need people to sell shovels and gold pans to, while simultanously keeping the young distracted enough to stay out of our politics".
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  "Keep Calm and Continue Sacrificing Your Young To Mammon"
- pm90 9y ago
  When has that NOT been the case? :) Until WW1, war was seen as a part of life, and for serving in the military was seen as brave, noble thing for young men to do. Even now, we expect most young people to start at the bottom and move up "through hard work" while the scions of the rich start at great positions and build a career without ever having to do minimum wage (exception is certain careers that require skills and are booming, such as technology). And while the young people are struggling to meet ends meet, they have even less time for politics, participation etc.
quxbar 9y ago
This article should be titled 'almost all remaining economic opportunity has been systematically monopolized by large corporations'
- sametmax 9y ago
  Which is completely false, and have been said for ever from people not seeing opportunities or unwilling to pay the price for them. I get a new business opportunity every month. The fact that I'm not a millionaire is not because of the lack of it, but because I failed in some way I could clearly see after the fact.
  - Zigurd 9y ago
    This is where the money went: http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Without addressing this, millennials are right to think capitalism screwed them. Safe bet: someone here will say it's the fault of heavy handed government regulation.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      The graph is a consequence of statistical anomalies: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-has-all-the-income-gone https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where... >Safe bet: someone here will say it's the fault of heavy handed government regulation. And why would that position be inherently wrong?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - sametmax 9y ago
      I don't deny that, I just say it's not opportunity related. My big "oh oh" moment was when I started to play the "return to your 10 years old self with your current mind" game. I realized I could have earned much more money than my parent's allowance, use much better my time and freedom, improved my health a lot, but couldn't see the opportunities. It's the same now. We have opportunities everywhere. As long as people have problems, you have opportunities to solve them and charge for it.
vonnik 9y ago
Said a journalist working a 9-to-5 job by choice.
alextheparrot 9y ago
I don't know about others, but growing up during the recession made me extremely defensive in terms of my risk taking and spending. I view risk as a luxury that is bought, buying the ability to mitigate the personal downsides. A gold rush is a bandaid, a lottery winners dream, to create the freedom to take risk. I know, risk is something that is most easily taken by the young, the uninhibited, the unindentured, but many of us are indentured to loans, inhibited by our memories, and too busy trying to get old safely to act young.
d--b 9y ago
> The economy does best when talented risk-takers are driven by the chance to strike it rich. Wha~~~t? Who says so?
scottlegrand2 9y ago
1. Launch adventurous Millennials into spaaaaaace! 2. ??? 3. PROFIT!!!* *For the companies that build rockets and launch them...
sjg007 9y ago
There are interesting studies on young adults growing up in the boom vs recession time lines.
danschumann 9y ago
It may be a ways away, but I'm excited for the space rush.. once medium and small size companies can afford space ships to explore the solar system, finding asteroids made of gold. That will be glorious.
Torai 9y ago
> But as long as there’s a gold rush somewhere in the economy, big dreamers can dream big. As long as there’s a gold rush somewhere in the economy, people will focus on getting rich without thinking if they are doing is sustainable and long term positive for the economy, without thinking if structural changes are needed to secure their well-being, which is correlated to the general well-being.
bradstewart 9y ago
Legal Cannabis.
gumby 9y ago
"Everything that can be invented already has been so soon the patent office can shut down" The quote is apocryphal but sums up the article.
hungerstrike 9y ago
The fledgling Marijuana industry might be one candidate. I know a few different people who quit jobs in finance to go do a marijuana-related startup.
linkmotif 9y ago
Young people need to MAKE a gold rush. Right now they're sitting on their asses playing video games. And when they run out of money doing that, they sit on their asses occupying Wall Street. Why does everyone either want a planned economy or God to rain money from the sky? I suppose it's because most people are uncreative or lazy or impatient. What a fallacy too, by the way, regarding the Gold Rush. The Gold Rush made very few people rich or even wealthy from mining compared to the people who supplied the miners. The money was in supplying the people whose creative capacities and earning potential was limited to searching for gold. The people who organized and exploited these unfortunate people were the ones who made it big time [0]. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nxgdd http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nxgdd
- jsutton 9y ago
  You're not generalizing at all.
djd20 9y ago
Don't we already have *coin ?
sergefaguet 9y ago
What a load of garbage. The world is awash in opportunity - biotech, genetics, AI, fledging nanotechnology, robotics/drones and other things that will transform us into posthumans in 50-100 years. The greatest fortunes in history will be created in this period. Whiny idiots will complain though. As they always had.
- googletazer 9y ago
  How many people can realistically grasp those? Or even be worker drones in those industries? ~30% of people are unable to grasp material beyond Gr 8 math. There is a huge problem looming on the horizon - human obsolescence.
  - nradov 9y ago
    Are those people really unable to grasp math or did they just have bad teachers and a lack of parental help?
losteverything 9y ago
To have another gold rush we have to slow down the flow of information. No longer can a man search for a better life, based on simple writings. Now, everything is validated or rejected before he can pack his bags and head west. We are currently living in a gold rush.. Make something and sell it online. Or support those that do.
nradov 9y ago
My high school physics teacher told me that during the first Internet bubble more students signed up for STEM electives and actually paid attention in class. Technical fields were exciting and lucrative. But when the crash hit students became disillusioned and lost interest in STEM again.
humbleMouse 9y ago
... legal marijuana??!?!
blacksmythe 9y ago
I was astounded to see that there is a perceived shorted of gold rushes. "Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
googletazer 9y ago
Bread and circuses
chamza 9y ago
As a millennial, I have observed a few perceived 'gold rushes' for individuals in my age group (25) and younger. I am defining 'gold rush' as an exponential growth of capital: -Creating a technology startup / business -Becoming YouTube famous and selling 'your own brand' -Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptocurrencies
- dwild 9y ago
  Yeah, I remember talking about the Ethereum boom that happened recently with my significant other and without even mentioning anything about it, she was interested in investing in it. I personally didn't feel like it was a good idea so we didn't but it was like the Gold Rush. She was ready to rush into it.
tarboreus 9y ago
There was a plastics gold rush in the '60s because of the massive investment in R&D and basic research made in the first part of the 20th century, due in no small part to the world wars. There was an internet gold rush in the 90s and the aughts because of the investment made by the US in programs at DARPA and Bell Labs, a public monopoly. You can't have these kinds of non-zero sum "gold rushes" without laying the groundwork through new understandings of the universe, or how to better organize society. Yet as a culture we glorify the Steve Jobses of the world that do the equivelant of carrying the letter from the mailbox to the house, forgetting that it was flown halfway around the world to be there in the first place. Entrepreneurs don't create gold rushes. Scientists create gold rushes. Forward-looking politicians create gold rushes. Strange devils sitting alone in their rooms create gold rushes. But these rushes happen 20, 30, or 40 years after the initial investment is made. So we're not going to see many gold rushes in the next few years. Sorry. Hope you have some rents to draw.

73 points by pdog 9y ago

> This lack of opportunities could create more pessimism and disaffection than economic conditions warrant. An increasing body of economic research shows that people tend to form extrapolative expectations -- they expect recent trends to continue forever. Overoptimism is also a common psychological bias. Booms make a lot of young, energetic Americans believe that they’re going to get rich. On the one hand, this causes inevitable disappointment when the froth dissipates. But as long as there’s a gold rush somewhere in the economy, big dreamers can dream big. So America needs another slot machine we can present to our youth to appease their cognitive biases?

nsxwolf 9y ago
Perhaps we should find ways of making them feel good about living in tent cities?
- altotrees 9y ago
  There has to be some middle ground between these ideas, surely.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    It seems to me a crime to tell a young, vibrant person "don't get too excited" and manage their expectations for life way down. Same as you'll never get me to give up delicious food by handing me a bottle of Soylent.
    - altotrees 9y ago
      No, I totally agree with that sentiment. Things have changed for our younger generation and sadly in most cases, not for the best. It blows my mind sometimes to think of my grandfather working a factory job with my grandmother not working while raising 8 children. Oh, and they owned their own home which was a nice middle-class abode and also drove decent (but not luxury) cars. Grandfather retired at 58. Grandmother died at 86, some money still in the bank. So yes, things have changed for many reasons. Our middle class, outside of those in a few booming sectors is struggling, if not outright choking. College is becoming a no-win proposition for some and at 33, I certainly am not expecting a life like that of my grandparents or great-grandparents, for better or worse. So I get it. I was just pointing out that there is a middle ground between those two viewpoints on either end, and perhaps, just perhaps a solution is somewhere in that terrain. I'm not holding out hope though, as there are so many forces at work right now and...yeah our leadership is making me a bit nervous. ^These observations is all America-centric, I know that. I don't pretend to know how things are for every young person globally and don't want to act like I do.
      - Domenic_S 9y ago
        You can still get close to that today, even outside of tech. Tradespeople make plenty of dough. The problem though is survivorship bias: plenty of people in the '50s and '60s were poor, or didn't buy their own house, or etc... and likewise plenty of "kids today" are doing well.
- toast0 9y ago
  Reasonably high density, pedestrian friendly, sense of community, what's not to like?
  - occultist_throw 9y ago
    Eco-friendly! Tiny houses! Solar-powered! Yeah, and you don't even own the 4 walls, nor the land. And companies like uber and others seek to extract the leftover and skirt employment regulations. And your stuff keeps failing as you try to fix it. And automation is an ever-present downward force that makes your degree into a $10/hr grind. But, you know, progress?
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Street food, no high buildings blocking the sky line, authentic social dynamics... It's the hipster dream, we could make bank with this.
mc32 9y ago
Yeah, WTF, the dotcom and post financial meltdown recoveries were great, but, looking back at the 70s, the 80s and early 90s, I don't think people thought "optimism". If anything, we were in the midst of the full swing into rust belting of the Midwest, Detroit was under heavy attack and in debt fighting off foreign rivals, and the whole Wolf of Wall-Street 80s syndrome. WTF, do today's kids just expect things to land on their laps? That said, I know lots of people in near blue collar jobs who do work hard and don't take things for granted and don't carry a woe is me attitude. So, not everyone lacks resilience.
- sametmax 9y ago
  No kids ask for that. The journalist asks for that. Current kids do what they can in an economy with less jobs, more expensive cost of living, more regulations, increasing state surveillance and the worst leaders we had for decades, controlled and dumbed downed news, culture promoting stupidity/violence/money/consumption... And the only map they get to navigate this is the old one from their parent's time were you could pay your college tuition with a side job and being a doctor was the solutions to all your problems.
  - bruinjoe 9y ago
    This is so true. The younger generation got hosed because the older generation screwed up in a big way. Our country had a chance to clean house during the 2008 financial melt down. The big banks failing would have caused a horrible economy but we would've flushed Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, AIG, and a host of other leaches down the drain. Check out the historical prices of Goldman Sachs from 2007 to late 2008 if you don't believe me. The market was anticipating the bankruptcy of Goldman Sachs and this company is supposed to be the pillar of Wall Street. Our economy would have recovered by now but we live in an even more distorted world. Risk is not priced correctly because interest rates are too low. Take Amazon for example. They can borrow at low rates to acquire an overpriced company in Whole Foods. Had Amazon borrowed at say 8% then the transaction is a lot riskier. This miss pricing of risk is radically distorting the economy throughout the country and there will be bad consequences. Those at the bottom of the economy will have the worst time and that includes recent high school and college graduates who will be looking for the few entry level positions.
sametmax 9y ago
My thoughts exactly. You can't base a person/nation's health on extraordinary events. The article sounds a lot like saying "ohhh, I'm hangover, better drink more so that I don't suffer from it". This is one of the things that are very wrong with a lot of people in charges: they want magical solutions, quick fixes for the next elections. It's true the real solutions, the long term ones, the ones that matter most, are hard to set up right: education, research, building trust, leading by example... And it's far easier to sell a new gold rush: people love those stories, it gives hope, it's fun and simple to comprehend. Even better, it puts the blame on the people instead of the leaders since if they don't live the great life, it's because they failed to grab the opportunity. The American dream in essence. The fact that there can be only so many gold rushes, so many factions that will have the control of it (and the others can go to hell), and so many people from those factions that will actually benefit from those are not issues that will occur to the minds of the targets of this strategy. It's why it's such a good one.
- pm90 9y ago
  I agree that "gold rushes" shouldn't absolve leaders of their responsibility in fixing (or trying to fix) some of the fundamental problems of our economy. But it is a fact that these gold rushes, which I'm assuming are events when entirely new markets are developed/open up, are a huge stimulus to the economy and young people in particular. The discovery of and refining of Oil set off a gold rush. So did the spread of the internet. The problem with such kind of events in the future seems to be that the workers would require a high degree of education to participate. e.g. if there is an AI gold rush, the demand would seem to be mostly for people who know CS fundamentals, math and AI principles. But maybe I'm underestimating people; a lot of wildcatters started off as oil workers, learned skills and then moved up the chain.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    > are a huge stimulus to the economy and young people in particular. Sure a gold rush is always good. However one's life should be based on the normal, not the exceptional. Otherwise it's completely unstable. You should definitely embrace the exceptional when it happens, you may even look for it or try to trigger it, but it should not be a sine qua non condition for you having a decent life. > in the future seems to be that the workers would require a high degree of education to participate It may be a good thing. Right now, society promote art and sports are mean to become rich. We communicate value about violence, sex, money, owning stuff, power... If suddenly the media see a gold rush and promote "hey, to become rich, educate yourself and try to make a dent in the world." that would not be so bad. After all, the 2000 bubble did a HUGE service to all the nerds. We are way cooler than we used to be, and our life is way easier now.
deleted 9y ago
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golergka 9y ago
As long as people have biases, we need to appease them, yes.
ihsw2 9y ago
It is a concept as old as Ancient Rome itself -- bread and circuses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses Superficial means of appeasement, distractions, diversions, or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace. These things have been a staple of peace since time immemorial. > This phrase originates from Rome in Satire X of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal (circa A.D. 100). In context, the Latin panem et circenses (bread and circuses) identifies the only remaining cares of a Roman populace which no longer cares for its historical birthright of political involvement. Here Juvenal displays his contempt for the declining heroism of contemporary Romans, using a range of different themes including lust for power and desire for old age to illustrate his argument.[5] Roman politicians passed laws in 140 B.C. to keep the votes of poorer citizens, by introducing a grain dole: giving out cheap food and entertainment, "bread and circuses", became the most effective way to rise to power. Humanity generally waxes and wanes between bread and circuses and political involvement. One could feasibly say they are diametrically opposed, but suffice to say it should to be clear that the pendulum has swung from the former to the latter and it will be difficult to reverse it forcefully.
bpodgursky 9y ago
A lot of research shows that forcing yourself to smile makes you happier.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Penguins have a gland above their eyes that filters excess salt from their bloodstream, allowing them to drink salt water.
  - justboxing 9y ago
    Wut?
- tdeck 9y ago
  More research showed that wasn't really true: https://www.livescience.com/56740-facial-feedback-hypothesis-fails-in-replication-attempt.html https://www.livescience.com/56740-facial-feedback-hypothesis...

mobilemidget 9y ago

cryptocurrency is not enough like another gold rush already?

sosuke 9y ago
My perception is probably wrong but I see the cryptocurrency gold rush as already over. To mine bitcoins now is to already have lots of money on machinery or a botnet to steal the machinery to mine the bitcoins. Do you feel that cryptocurrency is still available to the individual as a gold rush?
- mobilemidget 9y ago
  I might be the wrong person to ask, my personal opinion of cryptocurrency isn't a popular one. I have issues with the whole idea when I think about the power consumption to keep this 'alive'. And not to forget the 'early adopter' advantage. But the trade, and the price fluctuations aren't over by long, new cryptocurrencies launched daily by respectable instances and companies. So in this way, I still see a lot of 'rush' potential, even today. And like the goldrush, it was the people selling the shovels and things making the good steady profits. And there are also a lot of hardware things to change/improve on the cryptocurrency market.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    There was an article I can't find now, but it breaks down the cost of bitcoin's energy use relative to the whole world. The conclusion was something like, if bitcoin reaches a trillion dollar GDP, the energy usage would only be around ~1.5% of our total. I think I'm getting that number wrong, but the point was that we spend way more energy for trivial purposes compared to a trillion dollar GDP.
    - mobilemidget 9y ago
      By any chance would it be this site? https://realtimebitcoin.info https://realtimebitcoin.info

QAPereo 9y ago

I'll be honest the only time I've heard the word "Strivers" it was being used to mock just the kind of patronizing mindset found in this article. I'm sure it would be lovely to rest on an economic boom created by a risky new venture filled with young "expendables'" in the same way that some people pine for a world war to stiffen up the economy; it borders on evil.

ausjke 9y ago

Young kids are busy at games, used to be the PC, game console, now adding cell phones and tablets. Let's deal with this new mental-drug-war first before any Gold Rush suggestions, as the kids then young people ignore anything else, even traffic lights...their eyes are too busy on the screen these days.

QAPereo 9y ago
That sounds like bad parenting and foolishness becoming more visible, rather than a new threat.
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  I don't know how much of this is really new. I spent my youth watching TV and playing Sega and computer games. By age 12 I had seen every episode of "All In The Family" at least twice. I stayed up watching TV on school nights until 1AM. I also do believe I received bad parenting, but eventually I turned out OK.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    I agree completely, and honestly I did something very similar with books. It doesn't really matter if you're staying up until 1 AM imagining things, watching TV, reading a book, or any other activity… The issue is that you're not asleep getting ready for school, perhaps not having done your homework. The difference though is that somebody looking at a smart phone is seen as antisocial, where is someone buried in a book is not, although of course the person in the phone could be reading a book! Most of this is with the politicians call "optics" you know?
- ausjke 9y ago
  the nation now has more female college students(undergraduate and master and PhD at all levels) than male students, one reason I believe is that boys are more susceptible to games. parenting is a profession without a degree and you have to learn by doing, and hard to get it totally right all the time. games are indeed a true headaches(if not the biggest headache) for many families, it is getting much worse because of the powerful smart phones and tablets these days, it is just the reality.

SubiculumCode 9y ago

Onto Mars!

adventured 9y ago

If we're talking about America's youth, they need three things. 1) A functional healthcare system like any of the other half a dozen good alternative approaches in other developed nations. 2) For the government to stop inflating the cost of education by enabling universities to raise their prices outside of market forces (eg income growth) via perpetually greater government loan backing. Compare the median income vs median tuition costs, just from the late 1990s vs today, the government made that imbalance possible. For a century the US had very reasonably priced universities (40 years ago you could pay for an Ivy League education with a part-time job), that ended in the very early 2000s when the government inflation run took off (exactly in tandem with healthcare inflation and dollar debasement under the Bush Administration, which you can see represented in the commodity bubbles, housing, gold and the dollar GDP of every other nation soaring simultaneously from the year 2001 to 2008). 3) Significantly improved cities. More people from rural America need to be encouraged to move into urban centers, to resolve the opportunity & quality of life gap (such as falling life expectancy in rural US) that is widening between the two. That includes improving infrastructure, transportation, and available housing supply (entailing, among other things, pushing back against overly aggressive zoning laws used to restrict housing). Urban improvement / renewal, would benefit basically every demographic, including poor black communities that are being persistently hammered by extreme violence. A possible #4 candidate, would be to continue ending the war on drugs, shifting to treating addiction as a health matter and decriminalizing or legalizing all drugs. Sentencing reform and police reform would also go with that item. Doing these things would radically improve the circumstances for America's youth as a whole.

corporateslave3 9y ago
So bigger government is the solution? All of those are manifestations of a communist/socialist society.
- potion 9y ago
  sounds about right
- freehunter 9y ago
  So are roads, public schools, corporate subsidies, social security, medicare/medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, WIC, and federal student loans. Yet here we are, not collapsing under our already-heavy socialist burden. Also not collapsing under heavy socialist burden: most of Western Europe. America has a long and proud socialist tradition. It'd be a shame to stop now.

sandworm101 9y ago

The young need something big to transfer relative wealth from the old. It is getting crazy. With rich people living into thier 90s those who inherit are generally already in thier 60s or even 70s. The family money is moving between retirement funds. Something like a gold rush would move that value into the hands of the 30 or 40-somethings where it might do something more.

alphonsegaston 9y ago
It's called socialism, but it's anathema to American culture (by design). We're so bathed in delusions of our inherent affluence and power that we'll watch the wealthy suck actual blood from young people as we're surrounded by tent cities. And many still think they're "winning" because they can pay another rich person $3000 to live in a closet. https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/ambrosia-the-startup-harvesting-the-blood-of-the-young https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2017/aug/21/am...

lithos 9y ago

Reads a little like "we need people to sell shovels and gold pans to, while simultanously keeping the young distracted enough to stay out of our politics".

pavel_lishin 9y ago
"Keep Calm and Continue Sacrificing Your Young To Mammon"
pm90 9y ago
When has that NOT been the case? :) Until WW1, war was seen as a part of life, and for serving in the military was seen as brave, noble thing for young men to do. Even now, we expect most young people to start at the bottom and move up "through hard work" while the scions of the rich start at great positions and build a career without ever having to do minimum wage (exception is certain careers that require skills and are booming, such as technology). And while the young people are struggling to meet ends meet, they have even less time for politics, participation etc.

quxbar 9y ago

This article should be titled 'almost all remaining economic opportunity has been systematically monopolized by large corporations'

sametmax 9y ago
Which is completely false, and have been said for ever from people not seeing opportunities or unwilling to pay the price for them. I get a new business opportunity every month. The fact that I'm not a millionaire is not because of the lack of it, but because I failed in some way I could clearly see after the fact.
- Zigurd 9y ago
  This is where the money went: http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ Without addressing this, millennials are right to think capitalism screwed them. Safe bet: someone here will say it's the fault of heavy handed government regulation.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    The graph is a consequence of statistical anomalies: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-has-all-the-income-gone https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where... >Safe bet: someone here will say it's the fault of heavy handed government regulation. And why would that position be inherently wrong?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - sametmax 9y ago
    I don't deny that, I just say it's not opportunity related. My big "oh oh" moment was when I started to play the "return to your 10 years old self with your current mind" game. I realized I could have earned much more money than my parent's allowance, use much better my time and freedom, improved my health a lot, but couldn't see the opportunities. It's the same now. We have opportunities everywhere. As long as people have problems, you have opportunities to solve them and charge for it.

vonnik 9y ago

Said a journalist working a 9-to-5 job by choice.

alextheparrot 9y ago

I don't know about others, but growing up during the recession made me extremely defensive in terms of my risk taking and spending. I view risk as a luxury that is bought, buying the ability to mitigate the personal downsides. A gold rush is a bandaid, a lottery winners dream, to create the freedom to take risk. I know, risk is something that is most easily taken by the young, the uninhibited, the unindentured, but many of us are indentured to loans, inhibited by our memories, and too busy trying to get old safely to act young.

d--b 9y ago

> The economy does best when talented risk-takers are driven by the chance to strike it rich. Wha~~~t? Who says so?

scottlegrand2 9y ago

1. Launch adventurous Millennials into spaaaaaace! 2. ??? 3. PROFIT!!!* *For the companies that build rockets and launch them...

sjg007 9y ago

There are interesting studies on young adults growing up in the boom vs recession time lines.

danschumann 9y ago

It may be a ways away, but I'm excited for the space rush.. once medium and small size companies can afford space ships to explore the solar system, finding asteroids made of gold. That will be glorious.

Torai 9y ago

> But as long as there’s a gold rush somewhere in the economy, big dreamers can dream big. As long as there’s a gold rush somewhere in the economy, people will focus on getting rich without thinking if they are doing is sustainable and long term positive for the economy, without thinking if structural changes are needed to secure their well-being, which is correlated to the general well-being.

bradstewart 9y ago

Legal Cannabis.

gumby 9y ago

"Everything that can be invented already has been so soon the patent office can shut down" The quote is apocryphal but sums up the article.

hungerstrike 9y ago

The fledgling Marijuana industry might be one candidate. I know a few different people who quit jobs in finance to go do a marijuana-related startup.

linkmotif 9y ago

Young people need to MAKE a gold rush. Right now they're sitting on their asses playing video games. And when they run out of money doing that, they sit on their asses occupying Wall Street. Why does everyone either want a planned economy or God to rain money from the sky? I suppose it's because most people are uncreative or lazy or impatient. What a fallacy too, by the way, regarding the Gold Rush. The Gold Rush made very few people rich or even wealthy from mining compared to the people who supplied the miners. The money was in supplying the people whose creative capacities and earning potential was limited to searching for gold. The people who organized and exploited these unfortunate people were the ones who made it big time [0]. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nxgdd http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nxgdd

jsutton 9y ago
You're not generalizing at all.

djd20 9y ago

Don't we already have *coin ?

sergefaguet 9y ago

What a load of garbage. The world is awash in opportunity - biotech, genetics, AI, fledging nanotechnology, robotics/drones and other things that will transform us into posthumans in 50-100 years. The greatest fortunes in history will be created in this period. Whiny idiots will complain though. As they always had.

googletazer 9y ago
How many people can realistically grasp those? Or even be worker drones in those industries? ~30% of people are unable to grasp material beyond Gr 8 math. There is a huge problem looming on the horizon - human obsolescence.
- nradov 9y ago
  Are those people really unable to grasp math or did they just have bad teachers and a lack of parental help?

losteverything 9y ago

To have another gold rush we have to slow down the flow of information. No longer can a man search for a better life, based on simple writings. Now, everything is validated or rejected before he can pack his bags and head west. We are currently living in a gold rush.. Make something and sell it online. Or support those that do.

nradov 9y ago

My high school physics teacher told me that during the first Internet bubble more students signed up for STEM electives and actually paid attention in class. Technical fields were exciting and lucrative. But when the crash hit students became disillusioned and lost interest in STEM again.

humbleMouse 9y ago

... legal marijuana??!?!

blacksmythe 9y ago

I was astounded to see that there is a perceived shorted of gold rushes. "Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

googletazer 9y ago

Bread and circuses

chamza 9y ago

As a millennial, I have observed a few perceived 'gold rushes' for individuals in my age group (25) and younger. I am defining 'gold rush' as an exponential growth of capital: -Creating a technology startup / business -Becoming YouTube famous and selling 'your own brand' -Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cryptocurrencies

dwild 9y ago
Yeah, I remember talking about the Ethereum boom that happened recently with my significant other and without even mentioning anything about it, she was interested in investing in it. I personally didn't feel like it was a good idea so we didn't but it was like the Gold Rush. She was ready to rush into it.

tarboreus 9y ago

There was a plastics gold rush in the '60s because of the massive investment in R&D and basic research made in the first part of the 20th century, due in no small part to the world wars. There was an internet gold rush in the 90s and the aughts because of the investment made by the US in programs at DARPA and Bell Labs, a public monopoly. You can't have these kinds of non-zero sum "gold rushes" without laying the groundwork through new understandings of the universe, or how to better organize society. Yet as a culture we glorify the Steve Jobses of the world that do the equivelant of carrying the letter from the mailbox to the house, forgetting that it was flown halfway around the world to be there in the first place. Entrepreneurs don't create gold rushes. Scientists create gold rushes. Forward-looking politicians create gold rushes. Strange devils sitting alone in their rooms create gold rushes. But these rushes happen 20, 30, or 40 years after the initial investment is made. So we're not going to see many gold rushes in the next few years. Sorry. Hope you have some rents to draw.