We are in a YOLO economy

October 9, 2023

What kind of economy we are in, that erupted out of the end of the pandemic?

The old rules are over. The new rules have not begun. You only live once. We are in a YOLO economy.

The old rules were as follows. Upward mobility. You trained, you studied, you got a job. You worked hard. There was never fair but there was some fairness in the world. You made a living, could afford a place to live, to raise a family, and a family includes kids, not just a dog or two cats. Your neighborhood was reasonable, there wasn’t crime everywhere, human feces and used needles did not litter the street. Your country had borders, and those borders were not wide open. I mean, weren’t all those wars we fought on other people’s land to keep our land to ourselves.

Your house went up in value, steadily. You didn’t understand nor need to care why. Was it 40 years of declining interest rates? It doesn’t matter. You worked for 30, 40 years, and you could retire, at some age. Your wages would grow as your skills and experience increased. Your skills would not overnight become irrelevant. You might aspire to be your boss, to be promoted. You might not. You could live well either way. Certainly the founder and CEO of your company was not 23 years old, and though it was still a he, he probably wasn’t a billionaire. Your annoying neighbor whose wife is a secretary did not make millions overnight when her bullshit company went IPO. If you worked hard enough you could move up in the world.

You knew you were on the right side of history; whether you really were wasn’t important. Your government, though not perfect, did not consist primarily of clowns.

But now the old rules are over. You cannot afford a decent house, no matter how hard you work. You can’t even think of kids, and perhaps you don’t want them. You already have a dog. What’s right or wrong is no longer as clear. The laws are not enforced. Drugs are on the street, theft closes stores, filth – literal and allegorical – is everywhere. The borders are open. There is a feeling, even if you don’t fully allow it to be yours, that you aren’t as much on the right side of history as you once thought. The world certainly is more complicated than it was.

New technologies show up out of nowhere. Pandemics jump out of history books and into your life. For years. People can work from home. Your skills can become irrelevant overnight. At least you can see your own impending irrelevance, even if the paychecks still come every two weeks. For now.

What is there to strive for? Tax rates are about where they were, maybe a bit higher a bit lower. But to know your job is useless in the face of AI is a 100% tax, there is no hope. You can work harder, and probably won’t get anything more, but even if you did, a little bit more, you can’t afford a reasonable what once was a reasonable life. There is no amount of striving you can do to afford to have a family, and to raise that family in your home. It is a 100% tax. In the meantime, video games and youtube are free. Scrolling is free. It’s not a white picket fence, and 2.5 kids, but at least it’s something.

There is no way you can predict the future. But some of the future is already here. Your irrelevance is already known, little extrapolation is needed to see your irrelevance. You have already been swallowed by the beast, even if you haven’t been digested. 

You are not alone. Whether a doctor or a lawyer, in a factory, behind a desk, flying a plane, delivering food, in the first world or the third, basically broke or a small-time millionaire. The old rules are gone. The tax rate is 100%. There is nothing to strive for.

The future cannot be like the present. New rules will be written. A new deal will be struck by the peoples of the earth. But until that time, the old rules are already gone. You only have one life, and you are living it now. You cannot put it on pause waiting for the new rules to come. You cannot go back in time, to work under the old rules, the old bargain.

You only live once, and you are living in this YOLO economy. Spend what you can, now. YOLO. Don’t work if you can, work less if you can’t. Take a trip, get a dog. Buy that thing you want, what is money anyway if they can print it, even if they promise they have stopped printing it now. Saving is for fools, working is for fools. When nothing worth buying can be afforded the only choice is to buy what there is to buy and stop selling the little you have that is real, your time your health your energy.

I don’t know where inflation is going. That seems to be a political choice. But the price of labor is going up, and staying up. Higher for longer, baby. Real interest rates, term premium, the price of delayed gratification and compensation for uncertainty, is going up. If society wants me to work, it’s going to have to make me. If society wants me to save, it’s going to have to give me something in return, something real, not that paper that can’t buy me a house, that can’t buy me a good life even if I saved for it in a lifetime of drudgery. If there’s no deal, that’s OK. Live while we can, take what we can, use what we have, enjoy what is there. The old rules are gone. New rules will come, one day, because the way of things as they are cannot last, that I know. But you only live once, and I am alive now. Not later, not then, but now. So in this period of historical purgatory, YOLO.