Please don't hold back. All of this is discussion starter. Social commentary always runs the deep risk of being bullshit, but weapons-grade? I'm very interested.
'k. One of the fundamental things that irks me about The Last Psychiatrist is he speaks from this position of ultimate, unassailable authority that scornfully dismisses all other explanations without so much as the barest investigation. It's not "I'm right, I'm absolutely right, you might think I'm wrong but I'm right" it's "Of course I'm right because this one snarky point is the only logical interpretation of the facts at hand and anyone who disagrees is beneath contempt." And he's manic. Like off-his-meds-florid-episode manic. In short, he's my mother, about three days before she downs an entire box of wine, hides the cars up other peoples' driveways and threatens to kill the dogs. So while you might see razor-sharp insight and a jocular wit I see a crazy person dangerously unaware of their oncoming crash. And while you might see a certainty of rhetoric and nimble argumentation, I see narcissistic delusion driven by self-deification. And once you wipe away the pretense it's just bullshit. Here: NO, FUCKER. That's not what it says - but skipping around and cherry-picking parts of sentences to be offended by are hallmarks of mania so whatevs. But what it does say is that Scott has been looking for a job for two goddamn years. It's actually the subtitle of one of the photos TLP linked. Yeah - he's gotten one offer in the past five months and he turned it down and that's kinda questionable but "I graduated Colgate in 2008 and here it is, 2010 and all I can find is 'insurance adjuster'" is hella different than "I'm not taking a job because I prefer my parents' couch." So NOT HERE IT DIDN'T ASSHOLE. THAT'S THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE. But go ahead. Take a swipe at the kid for drinking iced tea, of all things. Point out that he's not getting laid while living at home. Got any other cheap shots? Four or five resumes a week for two years ain't nuthin', asshole, particularly when the gist of the argument is there are no jobs available. Hey, what do you do? Riiiiiiight. Let's cast stones from the biggest glass house on the block - academia. And you don't even teach. That means you're a big part of the problem. But okay. What's the basic point? Fucking please. You're going to cast aspersions on Scott for wanting health insurance? YOU WORK AT A HOSPITAL. Scott's got an undergrad degree in business from Colgate. In 2007, that was a pretty bitchin' degree. Now? From the NYT Article: Ohh, right. But he's a young go-getter. What sort of options has he? Here's the part you linked, bootz: So for starters, that's $200 a month for a 5-year term. Times four dudes, that's $800 a month. Ten grand a year. Also, that gets you $40k. Which, I don't know if you've checked, gets you half a used food truck. I'ma guess cgod is $40k easy into his coffee shop. I'ma guess he might be double that. And that's coffee. Know what a business major from Colgate doesn't know? Coffee. cgod has another advantage - he need not divide his profits amongst four people. $10k is a micro loan. It buys half a goddamn Honda Civic. It starts a business, if that business is selling vintage bullshit on Etsy. But clearly, there's something wrong with the kids. They lack drive or some shit. Right? RIGHT. People with rich fucking relatives overseas willing to extend the cash to keep a practice floating for three, four, five, six years until it turns a profit. See, my wife hung up her own shingle. And her outlay was miniscule - all she needed was an office and some furniture and some insurance and it was like TWENTY FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS above and beyond the medical degree and know who has two thumbs and supported her for four years while she got profitable? this guy. Doctor. Midwife. Billing four figures at a time. So sure. go get a loan to open a medical practice. It's not like there aren't any out there already, and it's not like the banks aren't going to ask how you're going to differentiate yourself. And that's why most doctors buy a practice and why it costs an easy million or more to do that because you know what? those jobs aren't there either. Which this asshole would know, if he wasn't hiding in academia slagging on everyone else. No you're not. You're slagging the shit out of them because their reality doesn't conform to your fantasy. You actually suggested that Scott isn't getting laid because he doesn't have a job. Fuck you. On behalf of every person who has ever been unemployed, everyone who has ever been underemployed, everyone who has ever taken a risk, everyone who has ever had to have someone vouch for them before they could get a foot in the door, fuck you in the neck you entitled, manic, off-your-meds bullshit artist. The world is not what you think it is, which you might realize if you'd take your fuckin' pills and stop filling the world's alt-right with bullshit.Scott, a 24 year old dean's list college grad, is smart but unemployed. According to the New York Times, in five months, only one job has given him an offer: $40k as an insurance claims adjuster.
a) the recession ended last year;
This is a guy whose entire job search is conducted online in the mornings. Anybody want to hire this go-getter?
Here's a little factoid about the medical school I work for:
The problem with Scott and his generation-- and this is most decidedly not Scott's fault but is the fault of his dad and grandfather's generations-- is that Scott just can't imagine playing without a net.
Scott Nicholson also has connections, of course, but no one in his network of family and friends has been able to steer him into marketing or finance or management training or any career-oriented opening at a big corporation, his goal. The jobs are simply not there.
Scott and his friends at the Irish Pub are in the best position imaginable: young, smart, living debt free with their parents. Four of these guys, each borrowing 10k personally (at 4% -- $400 a year to pursue your dreams?)
No one told them how to open an office, hire three therapists and three NPs, bill insurances. But you know who owns all the private psych group practices? Foreign medical graduates, i.e. people who were comfortable "playing without a net," improvising, seizing opportunity. (Sigh. Now I sound like my own father.)
'm not here offering a solution for the 45 year old guy with three kids. I am offering encouragement to a crop of college kids infantilized by terrible advice from parents and TV who have the freedom and opportunity to try something; while simultaneously describing the only long term solution to America's economic problems: more businesses.
I'm in about exactly twice that, should have been $40k bit after the city got done with permitting it was around 80k (2nd bathroom i didn't need for a place with 14 seats, a palace for my garbage to live in complete with a sanitary sewer connection, a 4'x4' landing with a ramp coming off of it for a 1and 1/2 inch door lip, but mostly just lots of rent as they strung me along finding more reasons real and imagined to fight about in the permitting process). Didn't read the piece or your response just answered the summons.
Yer a good man Charlie Brown. Buddy of mine bought a $40k grease trap because Los Angeles. Me? $12k fire alarm system. Two days ago the inspector asked to see the photos I'd taken with my phone because he wanted to see the screw pattern on the drywall. MEDICAL GRADE CONDUIT BITCH But sure. 4 friends are going to bootstrap their way to business titanhood with $40k. That was for the article, not you. As you were. ButterflyEffect and I oughtta come visit in January.
In my build out the inspectors were a breeze. The few issues they had with the shop were pretty reasonable or at least minimally expensive. They mostly walked around and marveled at the shit the permit office made me build (wow, they sure did make you build a crazy garbage area! Wonder why?) The shop would have been much nicer if I had another ten grand to out in the build out but the permitting office fucking soaked me.
That would be a fun road trip last time I was in a car to Portland the transmission died in the bumfuck area between Olympia and Vancouver, WA.
I don't quite know what to say. You're totally right that there are loads of (unnecessary) cheap shots. The stuff about zero chance of STDs, the warning to women potentially interested in him to be wary since "he'll be holding out for the full package"... it's all unverifiable and irrelevant, though the author wants to make it relevant because zeroing in on these symptoms makes his diagnosis, that Scott is being spoon fed bullshit, more valid. It's a logical fallacy, as if being "right" about some shit makes you right about other shit via the commutative property. The thing is, I can't help but think he's onto something. Yes, $40k in capital and a quarter equity is downright cute. But I see all the tough love cajoling as helpful, if in a backwards, semi-psychotic way. There's probably more caked-on bullshit than the nugget is worth to most people, but I light up at any advice that's something other than mindless boilerplate. I think there's something psychologically significant about my love for this sort of style, but I'm at a loss as to what exactly. The cocky self-assurance, the jedi mind-reading skills, the way that he summarizes and--most of the time--completely levels somebody with a casual observation. At first glance, it might seem that I like him because he's mean and therefore cool, but it's not that. A lot of his work actually push me towards self-improvement, towards empathy, pushing me to seek and root out narcissistic tendencies in myself. It's probably because I think he's really smart, and I want to be as smart as him.
I'm going to build a wall. Mexico is going to pay for it. See, that's insightful. It's novel. It's facile, it's idiotic, it's headstrong and it illustrates a pigheaded invulnerability to complexity and nuance, but fuckin' Clinton didn't think of it, did she? There's a fundamental allure to simplicity. There's an attraction to insightful mavericks. There's a belief that things are the way they are not because the world is a complex place full of compromise but because there's an idiot somewhere and he's in charge. So the millennials aren't living with their parents because the world is experiencing inequality and structural unemployment at a historic level, it's because they weren't raised right. Innovation and growth aren't stymied through a collapse of productivity and a paucity of resources, it's because somebody else is a coward. The problems faced by young people aren't a long-standing inevitability due to the economic choices made an inch at a time over forty years, they're a lack of pluck. insomniasexx and I had a discussion once about kidofspeed - an Estonian dude pretending to be a Ukranian chick riding through Chernobyl. Insom made the point that regardless of the artifice, she learned things about Chernobyl. I made the point that for those of us who want to learn more than what's presented, there's no jumping-off point because it's all false. False insight is not insight. There's a tale I like to tell about Leo Baranek. The basic point of it is this: trust the people who tell you they don't know. The ones that cop to not knowing easily are the ones you can believe without hesitation when they say they do. I make a point of not asserting things I'm not fairly certain of, and of couching my uncertainties in terms of hypotheses and educated guesses. If you are willing to be wrong, you learn. If you are willing to be proven wrong, you will be engaged with by smart people. If you speak from certainty you will only attract the unthinking. There's a great deal of artifice surrounding social issues. We all speak to them, we all speak around them, we all acknowledge the framework within which we work and we all move through it without questioning it. Renegades often disregard the framework. If you're young and inexperienced it looks like insight. If you're old and jaded it looks like bad manners. Do you know who gets to be entrepreneurial? Rich kids. Folx bankrolled by a rich uncle. Every ridiculous kickstarter you've ever seen? There's a relative that pays the lagging 80% so that Johnny gets to make an iWatch or whatthefuckever. But you can't just skip the line and slag on social privilege because that's a dog whistle to lots of people and besides, what the fuck are you going to do about it? Nobody wants to hear that they don't get to make movies because their daddy didn't make movies, but these opportunities will never be yours. I have a friend. He wants to know what to do with his life. I told him I had no easy solutions. It was true, but it isn't what he wanted to hear. And that's why people hate Hillary Clinton.But I see all the tough love cajoling as helpful, if in a backwards, semi-psychotic way. There's probably more caked-on bullshit than the nugget is worth to most people, but I light up at any advice that's something other than mindless boilerplate.
If Hillary had said, "I'm going to build a wall. Mexico is going to pay for it." people would have questioned it instinctively. And it's not because she's a woman. It's people people actually analyze what she says, how she says it, and how she will fulfill that promise. If Bush had said it or Obama or Romney or any recent politician - no one would have accepted that statement at face value. But they will for Trump. Why? It's so ridiculous you can't even write a substantial news article about why it's wrong. It just is. It just doesn't work like that. It's all false. And for that reason - the level of ridiculous or something bigger - it's now another weird "truth" in half the minds of the people voting for Trump because they don't have the energy to hear what it actually takes to solve their problems. Trump is giving people what they want: a solution. Just as Brexit was offered as a solution -- a solution that "would solve everyone's problems" -- so is Trump. Connect NHS and rapists and terrorists and throw some money signs on a cool graph and then tell them all that would go away if they vote exit...people will vote exit. A lot of the world is filled with depressed people right now. Are they millennials who expect everything on a silver platter without putting in the time? Yup. Are they old guys who refuse to enter the future? Absolutely. Are they blue collar workers who would rather hate black people instead of the robots that are taking their jobs? Yup. But, like most of my idiotic clients, they don't care why it's happening or what is happening or all multi-faceted steps to fix what is happening. They want a solution. And Trump has convinced a fuckload of people that he is the solution. Are his plans there? Nope. Will his plans work? Absolutely not. But when people have been offered a lot of talk and not a lot of delivery and are sick of hearing more talking in circles, saying "FUCK EVERYONE ELSE. I AM THE SOLUTION" will get you votes. People don't care about what the solution is right now. They just want someone to come in and fix it. And Hillary isn't getting up on stage, making people laugh, finding a common enemy, scoffing at folks left and right, and saying: "I'm your solution." And she can't. Because even with all her lies and hide-everything-from-the-people-of-your-country-nonsense, she's still rooted in reality and truth and she knows how to play the game - a massive necessary global game - to get what she wants, compromise when she needs to, make sure no one is going to nuke us tomorrow, and slowly but surely fix things one piece at a time. i didnt read the entire thread, just your comment. so sorry if i derailed a totally different conversation. i'm tired.
Well I feel humbled at being found to have the same mindset as a taken-advantage-of Trump supporter. But it goes to show the awesome psychological comfort of easy answers. That's a great story about Mr Baranek. I think most of us have the intuition that revealed vulnerability communicates security and self-assurance. Thanks for disabusing me further of TLP's style, which is more than a little manipulative.