August 9, 2025 • 30 mins
"Anti-work" influencers and anti-capitalism content are rife across social media. But what are these people really upset about, and why is their content actually resonating? Reason Magazine journalist Emma Camp joins me on the Brad vs Everyone podcast to discuss.
Read her Reason essay: https://reason.com/2025/08/04/capitalism-isnt-why-youre-unhappy/
Support My Show: https://linktr.ee/bradpolumbo
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There is no way that you're going to tell me
I'm going to work my whole life. I'm going to
see behind a death and work nine to five each
day of my life until retirement.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
There is the long way. That is what life is about.
People in that bomb.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Emma, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
So you just did this great piece for Reason magazine
where you're a writer talking about the online hatred for capitalism,
which is one of the most pervasive things you'll see
on the Internet. Yet at the same time, I mean,
do people when they talk about capitalism online, do any
of them know what that word means?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I don't think they do. And that was the genesis
of this piece for me, is I cap seeing on
TikTok and Instagram reels and Twitter people complaining about problems
that are perhaps real problems, but sort of blaming capital
in ways that didn't make any sense, like it had
nothing to do with free markets. So this would be
(01:05):
things like capitalism is why you feel pressure to have
a prestigious job, Capitalism is why there are sexist beauty standards.
Capitalism is why your friends won't pick you up from
the airport. And I was like, Okay, something is happening here.
And I think for a lot of libertarian types, the
impulse is to say no, no, no, no, no, you
misunderstand what capitalism is. You know, crony capitalism is in capitalism,
(01:29):
consumerism is in capitalism. And I don't think that that's
really attacking the source of the problem here, because it's
like they're not talking about capitalism. They're just using this
as an all purpose way to complain about modern American life,
and we need to pay attention to what it is
they're complaining about and respond to like the lack that
is being identified there.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, well, I actually so. I pulled a couple of
videos that you cited in your article, and I want
to play them here so people know, like just how
pervasive what you're describing actually is. Some of the things
they blame on capitalism are real doozies. Take a listen
to this.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Do feel horrible?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
That's capitalism, babe. Is your self worth based on who
you are or what you do?
Speaker 4 (02:09):
If it's what you do and the value you create,
that's internalized capitalism.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I thought I wanted to be polyamorous, but I really
wanted to deconstruct capitalism.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
I think it's okay to ask your friends who ride
to the airport. In the past, people used to rely
on their community, their network, their neighbors for small favors,
things like rides to the airport, things like a cup
of sugar, things like borrowing a dress for an event.
But now with late stage capitalism, those things all seem
like rude for us to ask, because we could just
do them ourselves.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
So, since you're new to LA, do you think late
stage capitalism has in any way negatively impacted your ability
to make community here. What I've noticed more than anything
is the way that I see people, Like we're going
out to dinner or we're getting coffee, I'm always.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Gonna run a check.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
It becomes challenging when it's like all I want to
do is just like sit.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Somewhere, not spend money.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
I just want to yap for like hours on end
where on the same. But then like I go to
a coffee shop and I don't buy, I'm like looking
around like I'm a criminal, right same, I feel like
a freak and like trying to make new friends.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
There's not as many like commonplaces to like meet friends, but.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
There's pace Exactly.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
I've seen a lot about that, about how people used
to have these third spaces, places outside of like working
home where people would just commune, like libraries sometimes even
religious spaces.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
So my favorite one is the last one at the
end there, because they're talking about the lack of third spaces,
which I think is to some extent a real phenomenon.
But they're talking about how there's there, we need places
to just go hang out where you don't have to
pay to get in, you don't have to buy something,
and they're having that whole conversation in a beautiful public park.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yes, that was the When I saw that, and I
think I wrote about the article. I was like, you're
literally in a public park. You are in a third
space right now. Uh yeah. I also love the therapy
Jeff one. I have a one sided beef with therapy Jeff,
who is the first guy the like do you feel horrible?
That's latest age capitalism baby. He is this like wildly
(03:58):
popular therapy and flu and served, But a lot of
his videos just seem designed to make people more lonely.
Like he's sort of famous for these videos that are like,
here's five questions you should have answered about your partner
within three months, and there are these like weird and
like very much about Like here are all the red
flags that just seem designed to make people like become
(04:20):
very neurotic about their relationships. So I spend too much
time looking at therapy making me angry.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
In particular, like in this video, which is the only
one I've seen from him, But it seems destructive in
a couple of ways. One, it seems like he's assigning
blame for pretty normal human emotions that are just to
some extent part of the human condition and what exists
in a socialist country as well. But then two, and
you touch on this in your piece. But when the
(04:48):
problems in your life, when your anxiety or your self
esteem issues, when they are because of a system, When
he's telling people it's because of capitalism that you feel
that way, well, an individual has no ability to change
the system of their society. So what you are essentially
telling people is that they are powerless and can't do
anything to improve their mental state, even though they very
(05:09):
much can.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah. I think that's what makes this attractive to a
lot of people is because fundamentally, you know, I think
we do have quite a lot of agency in this life.
And especially in our like big, beautiful, quite wealthy, free
market world. But having so much agency is really destabilizing,
and to a certain degree it means that like if
(05:33):
things are disappointing for you, if you feel kind of lonely,
if you feel sort of dissatisfied, there is, to one
degree or another that is somewhat due to your own choices.
And that's terrifying. It's really terrifying to admit that you've
messed up in some way. And I think the sort
of capitalism blame game allows people to say, this isn't
my fault. I had no control and there's nothing I
(05:55):
can do about it. Therefore I have no sort of
moral obligation. I'd imperative to try to change my circumstances.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective on it, because you
wouldn't think that people want to be helpless or want
to be powerless, but that actually is attractive. You look
at the way that Congress, for example, has like delegated
away most of their power, and the founders thought that
Congress would guard their power jealousy, jealously, but instead they've
given it away because they want the job but not
(06:25):
the pressure. And I think this is like a microcosm
of that. If people have agency, which they do to
improve your health. Right, obviously, there's so many things. Life
is never going to be perfectly fair, there's so many
things beyond your control. But people have tremendous degree of
agency when it comes to improving their mental health exercise, seeking, therapy, practicing, gratitude.
(06:46):
I mean, there are thousands and thousands of pages written
by experts much more qualified to me to talk about
things people can do to improve how they feel and
their self esteem and their anxiety and their depression meditation.
But no, if it's all just because of late stage capitalism, right,
the communist buzzword they love to cite, then you actually
can't do anything about it, which I guess to them
(07:08):
maybe relieves them of a burden and maybe to some
extent makes them feel better about their own failure to
launch or failure to succeed, because after all, it was
always all out of my hands because of late stage capitalism.
That enton like cue the terrible music.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I think there's also a real utopian element of this.
You know, a lot of the way these creators are
talking about capitalism, it comes off of us that they
think like work itself was created by capitalism, that you know,
needing to work for living. A lot of the videos
I cite are from people who are really really unhappy
(07:46):
with their jobs and are like, you know, I can't
believe I'm going to have to work for the rest
of my life. This is so terrifying, This is horrible,
And the implication is that if we didn't have capitalism,
you would sort of be able to sit around all
day making art, even though like in all human societies
throughout history, capitalist or not, people have had to work
to earn their keep, and the only people who could
(08:09):
accurately be described as being economically kind of comfortable and
not working are the ultra rich, which presumably, if you're
a leftist you don't think those people should exist, and
a really reminds me. I think what typifies the sort
of utopia and anti capitalist attitude is the now kind
of famous Twitter thread of like, what are y'all doing
(08:31):
on the leftist commune? I'm going to be brewing lattes
and teaching radical theory, and you know, all of the
people being like, I'm going to be keeping the library
and making art, and no one's like on the leftist commune,
I will be digging ditches and scrubbing latrines. And so
it's sort of this like fantasy that the only thing
keeping you from a life of endless leisure is the oppressive,
(08:53):
shadowy force of capitalism, when that's just could not be
further from the truth.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, it's actually the opposite of the truth in some ways,
because capitalism has led to massive prosperity and growth and
incomes and living standards over time. And if you look
at America today verse fifty years ago or one hundred
years ago, working conditions, working hours, they're lower, they're better,
They have improved as capitalism has expanded and grown the economy,
(09:19):
and people have more opportunities to climb the economic ladder.
The number of workplace deaths and injuries goes down and down.
The amount of hours and days that people get off
has gone up over time, and not all of that
is purely due to market forces, but a significant portion
of it is. And then also I feel like there's
a flattening of this worldview where everything is to blame
(09:43):
for capitalism, but there's so many other things going on
in society and in life, whether it's declining religiosity, whether
it's expanding technologies and social media's effect on people's mental
health and so many other things that it It really
makes you wonder if you're blaming everything on capitalism, are
(10:04):
you missing other things we should be talking about and addressing.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Oh yeah, totally. I mean my great grandparents worked their
entire lives at a in a paper mill, and I
am so glad that instead of having to work in
a paper mill, I get to tap on my laptop
for eight hours a day and publish the things I
write on Reason dot com and like that March progress
is I think, I think it is very it is underrated,
(10:33):
and yeah, the community element is huge, and I think
it goes back to that agency question, right, like declining religiosity.
There's nothing that's keeping you from finding a church or
a mosc or a synagog or any other you know,
religious organization and joining that and finding community. Like when
I first moved to DC, I had a couple of
friends from college that were living in the same city.
(10:55):
But how I found a friend group, How I actually
found like a community as I went to church. And
you know that requires when you're a little hungover getting
up and showing up somewhere at ten thirty on a Sunday,
and it's not the easiest thing in the world to do,
but there are really huge benefits. And I think what
we're seeing is a lot of people sort of choosing
(11:16):
the easier, lonelier path. And it's really depressing because I
was having this conversation so I'm also like a really
I'm an ideological party thrower. I love throwing parties. I
have big house parties, like literally on Saturday and that
party at my house. But I also have dinner parties.
And I've started doing these dinner parties where I sort
(11:36):
of give everyone an article or a topic of discussion
and then we discuss it over dinner. And something we
discussed was this Francis Pukiyama article and persuasion about how
liberalism needs community. And we start talking about community and like,
you know, the whole problem of people our age not
having any friends, not having community, not finding partners, not
even like having sex, and sort of a thing I
(11:59):
realized about my as I'm like, I think, I think
this is because we're opting out of it, Like I like,
why am I the only person I know who throws
house parties multiple times? A month, and I don't want
to be like it's because I'm better than everybody else,
but it's because I'm a ninety ninth percentile extrovert and
I like want to do it very much, but like
(12:19):
it's a choice. I didn't have to choose to do that.
And I think my life is very rich and I
have a lot of social connections and I have a
lot of friends in part because I actively choose community,
even when it means like waking up really early or
spending like hours of my Friday prepping batch cocktails.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, I mean it's still there. I definitely think it's
maybe less built into modern life than it used to be,
especially with people the rise of social media and people
being more digitally distant and bearing themselves in their screens more.
But it is very much still there and people can
go seek it out. But maybe it's easier, maybe it's
more comforting to just stay at home alone and be like, well,
(12:59):
the reason I don't how many friends is because of
late stage capitalism or something. The reason I'm anxious all
the time is because of that, not because I know,
eat Doritos and lay on the couch and just think
about the world. Falling to pieces all the time. But
it's interesting you talking to your piece as well, because
when we're talking about the Internet, we're talking about young people.
We're not exclusively, but we are largely talking about a
(13:20):
left leaning demographic of content creator and of audience member,
especially when we're talking about like late stage capitalism, that's
more of a term that a progressive young person would use.
But you've also noticed this kind of anti capitalist sentiment
or this yearning for pre industrial times almost on the right,
(13:42):
haven't you.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Oh yeah, this also happens on the right. I think
the stereotype is insteaded. It's like a TikToker complaining about
late stage capitalism. It's an anonymous account on x with
like a like a stone bust profile photo posting an
AI generated tradwife with like seventeen kids, with the caption
(14:04):
this is what they took from us. Uh So, I
think it's very very much all the right. There is
this idea that like, the reason their lives suck, the
reason why they don't have you know, tradwives that manage
to stay trim and with ginormous knockers, you know, five
kids in is because of feminism allowed women to like
work and get jobs and not need men and immigration.
(14:26):
That means that they can't, you know, toil in a
factory all day, even though it's it's not really clear
to me that any of these people actually want to
work in factories.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean there's some openings. I hear the Amazon
where hell that's actually.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Think what any think?
Speaker 5 (14:39):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
There are factory jobs in the United States. People just
don't want them because they suck. I don't.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah, and Trump is deporting a lot of I have
a good friend who works in an Amazon fulfillment center
and a lot of his colleagues are no longer with us.
So there are jobs hiring for twenty bucks an hour,
twenty five bucks an hour physical labor packing boxes, but
I don't see a lot of the ex anonymous accounts
lining up for those jobs. My favorite thing is when
(15:06):
they post the like commercials, the stylized art from magazines
from the nineteen fifties, with like the guy smoking the
pipe with the house and the two kids, the one
boy and the one daughter and the beautiful wife, and
they're like what life used to be like, And it's
insane that people actually on ironically use advertisements and drawings
(15:30):
to suggest what to reminisce about what life was Actually
life was rough in the fifties.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, it was not great. I was recently so both
of my grandparents on my dad's side were born in
the mid nineteen thirties, and I was talking to them recently,
and I asked them, like, you know, I want it
because I was like, you know, I want to really
really asked them deep questions about what life was like
in the forties and fifties, and like I learned that
(15:57):
my grandfather grew up in a house that didn't have
complete plumbing. His family didn't have a car, so they
had to walk everywhere, and like small ish town, sort
of exurban South Carolina, things were not great, you know,
they didn't and even on like sort of the soft
cultural side, like they didn't have pizza until the mid
nineteen fifties, and like when my grandparents first got married,
(16:18):
my grandfather was in the military. My grandmother was like, oh, yeah,
we were in like Panama City, Florida, living in with
like two kids in the world's tiniest apartment, and like
they didn't really give us enough money for food. So
and this is where the community park comes in. You know,
all the other like poor military couples in the building,
we'd like get together and put our little like hamburger together,
(16:39):
and I'm like, oh my god, life is so much
better now, and like, you know, they look back from
those memories and they sort of laugh and and you know,
but I am so grateful that, like at the same
age that my grandmother was, that she was like living
under these circumstances, I have far more material abundance. Not
to mention things I can for granted, like you know,
(17:01):
like polio vaccines. Oh boy, for now, but right right,
that's until RFK gets his way.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Anyway, It is interesting because I feel like nostalgia or
the rose colored glasses is a sickness that corrodes human's
ability to ever be happy because we always even it's
so funny, even in our own lives. Maybe you're different.
But I remember like my teenage years, and I think
of all the good parts, and I remember all the
(17:30):
fun I had in high school sports, and then when
I'm thinking about it, I don't think about the parts
of my life that were hellish, that were terrible, that
had me like deeply, deeply disturbed and distressed. There's just
something about human nature where it's like we remember the
good parts and we just kind of glaze over or
forget the darker parts, and then we're constantly left feeling
(17:52):
like things have gotten worse. There's so many times you
see people suggest that, like things are worse now, and
then if you look into any object in a certain
thing or certain area or certain and then if you
look into any objective factor statistic about it's just literally
not true. It's just all false nostalgia. Why are we
so so prone to that?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I don't know. I mean, I think part of it
is that a lot of times people are expressing nostalgia
for a time they never personally experienced. That I think
is definitely true with the sort of romanticism about the
nineteen fifties, and often too, that nostalgia is nostalgia for
what it was like to be very wealthy during those times.
I mean to the extreme, I think about people who
can you know, sort of fall into like, wow, wouldn't
(18:35):
it be great if I was like a fancy regency
lady or like a medieval night you know, at the
more extreme level, and it's like, well, those people were
really rich and they still died of pink eye. But
I think part of it too, is just like it
is easy to romanticize the times in your life in
which things are really simple, like when you were a
kid and you didn't have any responsibilities and they're you know,
(18:58):
your life was sort of doubt for you by other people,
And I think that can be attractive if you're at
a place in your life where you're so overwhelmed with
responsibility and you feel so much stress. I have no
romanticism for my teenage years. I went to a very
intense high school where like the time in my life
in which I worked hardest was when I was like seventy,
(19:20):
and so I'm like, like college was easy. I was like, oh,
this is fine. I don't have five hours of homework
I have to do after getting home from school at
seven o'clock. Awesome. But I think that for a lot
of people, it's like times that felt simpler.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, you make a really good point about being nostalgic
for things they never experienced, because it typically is a
younger crowd earn yearning for the nineteen fifties or sixties,
or they have a very interesting lens on it, Like
I personally wouldn't want to be a have been a
black housewife in the nineteen fifties, right, but if you
were maybe the affluent, white upper class. But even then
(19:58):
they were popping pills, they're really tranquilizing themselves, and their
husbands could legally sexually assault them and all sorts of
other things. So, but even then, you tend to think
about a certain slice of what life was like for
some people. Now, another thing you touched on in your
essay that I thought was really interesting was this question
(20:18):
of whether the kids are just lazy? And I think
it's it's complicated because some of the kids are definitely lazy,
but also older generations kind of say that about every
up and coming generation. And I don't think everything can
be put down to laziness. So I want to roll
this this clip of an infamous TikTok crash out that
(20:39):
you cited in your essay, that is Yeah, I'm gonna
make you watch it again. This woman is not content with,
I guess having to work, and she had a little
crash out and filmed it and I got millions and
millions of views. Let's take a look.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
There is no way you're going to tell me I'm
going to work my whole life I'm going to say
that behind a fucking death and work nine to five
each day of my life until retirement. There is no
way that is what life is about. I will not
be put in that fox. I'm sorry, you have real life.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
A little bit extra, oh little bogie.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I want to have fun, like I actually want to
have fun.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And I don't understand why this is the norm and
we're putting up with this. I know half of us
are not putting up with it, but I feel like
we're putting up with it too much.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
It's time to take a stand. I don't know how
we would take a stand. I'm so rad because I'm stressed.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
This is why I travel because I'm like, you know what,
I'm gonna work and then I'm gonna travel because why
the fuck would I lock myself into a job for
the rest of my life. I need to fucking see
the world, like I genuinely need to.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
See the world and experience life.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
And I'm young, and I'm lucky that I have that
privilege of not having too many responsibilities, not having any
little fucking rats running around, you know what I mean.
But like Jesus Christ, it's gonna make me cry. And
I love you all and if you're working, then you're struggling.
You're the fucking shit and you deserve love and like
and peace.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Bye. So I think the reason that video went so
viral is because of her unique presentation style and kind
of the crash out energy. You can't help but feel
a little bad for her.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I feel very bad for her. You don't put this
on the internet like this. This is what you do,
like on the phone with your mom when you're like
crying and freaking out or like a loved one.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I yeah, having that live in infamy is not ideal,
but the algorithms to incentivize that because these crash out
videos always go megaviral and you get tons of people
relating to it and saying, yes, me too.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Girl.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
What I found interesting about this though, was I'm not
saying it's great to work a nine to five your
whole life. Like I understand, it's a slog. It's tough.
I work very flexible hours, but I work long hours now.
But it's like, is it really the worst thing in
the world? Does it stop you from traveling, does it
stop you from having fun living life like and does
(22:56):
she realize that for almost all of human history, people
worked a lot more than a nine to five. They
worked a sun up to a sundown.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, this is why I think what a lot of
these young people are suffering from is not capitalism, it's workism.
And so I personally do not have a very rosy
view of work for work's sake, Like it's a thing
that human beings need to do, it's something that just
about every economic system requires us to do. But I
(23:26):
think that it's a really bad place to put the
center of meaning in your life because most jobs, even
most sort of college educated white collar jobs, are not
like particularly intrinsically interesting or meaningful like I, and I
think you would probably describe yourself as a way, I
have like a ninety nine percentile interesting and intrinsically meaningful job,
(23:48):
where like people who put our opinions out there on
the internet for money, But even so for me, like
I love that for a living I get to write
about this, but like what makes my life worth living fundamentally,
and what brings me the most satisfaction is like coming
home after work and getting to hang out with my
husband for the rest of the day, or like getting
(24:10):
to see my friends, getting to throw parties that it's
the stuff that happens outside of work, and with that
in mind, especially because like my husband, for example, he
likes his job, but it's he's not an opinion journalist.
He is like a pretty normal sort of code based job,
suffice to say, And like what what sort of makes
his job when it is more boring and less intrinsically
(24:31):
meaningful kind of worth it is knowing that he's working
to like build a life with me and to like
build a life for like the family we hope to
have one day. And so I think what has happened
is that and this is this is something that I
I do not blame the current generation for I think
for a lot of gen Zers and Millennials are parents.
(24:52):
And this this is born out in opinion pulling data.
Our parents emphasize to us that the most important thing
we could do is get a good job. We were
told by our parents and our teachers that the most
reliable way to live a fulfilling life, to be happy
is to have a good job, and that things like
a partner and family are secondary. And this is just
(25:13):
like the opposite of what is actually true. If I'm
getting the numbers rate, there is like this this big
social survey that found that being very satisfied in your
job gives you like a one hundred and forty five
percent increase in the chance that you're generally happy with
the rest of your life. Okay, that's a really big boost.
But being very satisfied in your marriage gives you like
a five hundred something percent increase in your likelihood of
(25:37):
being very satisfied with your life. So, in fact, it's
these rich social relationships that we have outside of work
that actually make life worth living. And so I think
what this young woman is expressing is probably or you know,
to assume a little bit that like, she doesn't have
much happening in her life outside of her job. And
so if you don't have these like rich social relationships
(25:58):
out of your job, and you were told just get
a good job, you'll be happy, and she got that
good job and she is not happy, it's easy to
be like, what the hell, Like I was told there
must be a big evil system that's causing me to
be unhappy because I did what I was told to do,
and I still feel like my life is bereaft of meaning.
(26:19):
And I think the problem here is what's to blame
is not like work as a concept. It's the lack
of social connections. And I think to a certain degree,
the way that our elders impressed upon us that we
needed to be careerists in order to be happy.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
That's a really interesting perspective because I think I've internalized
that idea right that like work is the key to
a meaningful life, and I don't think there's no truth
to it in that I think people who wake up
every day with some degree of excitement or interest about
the work that they do versus people who are just
filling a time card are generally going to be happier.
(26:57):
And that I always advise people to do. If you
have an option between two jobs or two career paths,
and one will make more money or have a more
like better benefit, but one will you genuinely will enjoy
more or find more meaningful, I always tell people go
with the meaningful thing, because this is how you'll be
spending a huge portion of your life. But I think
the reason, part of the reason that work I think
(27:20):
has dignity and has meaning for people is exactly what
you got at It's that you are providing for the
people that you love and hold dear and you are
building a life for your family, and if you don't
have that part, I can definitely understand why it would
just feel monotonous and pointless and like an endless rat race.
I do have to say, and I don't want to
(27:40):
play into the like entitled young people trope too much
a little bit, but there is a degree of entitlement
baked into all of this, this idea that well, like
I don't have to work, but the Amazon packages will
still get delivered, and the grocery store will somebody is
going to have to do all the work that makes
a society run. And so when you have these things,
(28:01):
I mean, there's an entire movement called like the anti
work movement, and it's kind of fringe, but it's also
I mean, not two people in a basement somewhere either,
and a lot of people at least sympathize with the
sentiment a little bit. I do think there's a degree
of individual entitlement that's wrapped up into these people who
feel comfortable getting up on a camera and saying I
(28:23):
shouldn't have to work. I don't want to work. I mean,
I see people on TikTok all the time, crowdfunding for
you know, asking people for money because they don't They
say they can't get a job, but the truth is
they just don't want to.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, I mean I do think that's where the utopianism
comes in. Like I think a lot of people who
say this just haven't thought it through. Not to bring
up the leftist commune tweet again, but like I think
it comes from and I think maybe it's more likely
to come from people who are in these sort of
white collar professions or who grew up who are sort
of like the dowardly mobile children of the upper middle class.
(28:59):
I think that's what striving a lot of this resentment
because like the jobs that they are doing, if one
if there was one less person doing that job, nothing
bad would happen, Like if if half of all opinion journalists,
like if half of all opinion journalism jobs disappeared, like
the world would still turn on its axis. And the
way that, like if half of all agricultural laborers disappeared,
(29:21):
it would cause huge problems. And I think if your
vision of what work is is based in like your parents,
having sort of a hard to describe job that requires
going to an office and sitting in front of a computer,
and like you having kind of a hard to describe
job that involves going to an office and sitting in
front of a computer. If that's what you think of
work as involving, I think it's a lot easier to
assume that if nobody worked, everything would be fine.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, that's an interesting point, And you make a lot
of interesting points in the essay that people can go
read on Reason dot com. I feel like, in this
current moment in American politics, left and right, I just
wish a lot more people read Reason dot com.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Oh, I would like that quite a lot as we Well, yeah,
I think we're in a world in which the left,
like the culture war is the only thing that really
divides the left and right, like we're getting into these
more populist economics and the only thing that really but
even then, like the sort of the rise of the
woke right right, Like they might the left and the
right culture war might disagree on the targets of the
culture warring, but it's all of it's all the same thing.
(30:20):
It's all just like viral videos of whatever, like Identity
Villain behaving badly. You know, it's just slop all the
way down. And I like to think that reason as
a beacon in the culture war storm.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Well, if people want to check it out, I'll link
to more of your work. Guys, let us know in
the comments what you think. If you have seen this
kind of anti capitalist sentiment all over the place, hit
that like buton, make sure subscribe if you aren't yet.
And Emma, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Thank you so much for having me
There is no way that you're going to tell me
I'm going to work my whole life. I'm going to
see behind a death and work nine to five each
day of my life until retirement.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
There is the long way. That is what life is about.
People in that bomb.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Emma, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
So you just did this great piece for Reason magazine
where you're a writer talking about the online hatred for capitalism,
which is one of the most pervasive things you'll see
on the Internet. Yet at the same time, I mean,
do people when they talk about capitalism online, do any
of them know what that word means?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I don't think they do. And that was the genesis
of this piece for me, is I cap seeing on
TikTok and Instagram reels and Twitter people complaining about problems
that are perhaps real problems, but sort of blaming capital
in ways that didn't make any sense, like it had
nothing to do with free markets. So this would be
(01:05):
things like capitalism is why you feel pressure to have
a prestigious job, Capitalism is why there are sexist beauty standards.
Capitalism is why your friends won't pick you up from
the airport. And I was like, Okay, something is happening here.
And I think for a lot of libertarian types, the
impulse is to say no, no, no, no, no, you
misunderstand what capitalism is. You know, crony capitalism is in capitalism,
(01:29):
consumerism is in capitalism. And I don't think that that's
really attacking the source of the problem here, because it's
like they're not talking about capitalism. They're just using this
as an all purpose way to complain about modern American life,
and we need to pay attention to what it is
they're complaining about and respond to like the lack that
is being identified there.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, well, I actually so. I pulled a couple of
videos that you cited in your article, and I want
to play them here so people know, like just how
pervasive what you're describing actually is. Some of the things
they blame on capitalism are real doozies. Take a listen
to this.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Do feel horrible?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
That's capitalism, babe. Is your self worth based on who
you are or what you do?
Speaker 4 (02:09):
If it's what you do and the value you create,
that's internalized capitalism.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I thought I wanted to be polyamorous, but I really
wanted to deconstruct capitalism.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
I think it's okay to ask your friends who ride
to the airport. In the past, people used to rely
on their community, their network, their neighbors for small favors,
things like rides to the airport, things like a cup
of sugar, things like borrowing a dress for an event.
But now with late stage capitalism, those things all seem
like rude for us to ask, because we could just
do them ourselves.
Speaker 5 (02:35):
So, since you're new to LA, do you think late
stage capitalism has in any way negatively impacted your ability
to make community here. What I've noticed more than anything
is the way that I see people, Like we're going
out to dinner or we're getting coffee, I'm always.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Gonna run a check.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
It becomes challenging when it's like all I want to
do is just like sit.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Somewhere, not spend money.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
I just want to yap for like hours on end
where on the same. But then like I go to
a coffee shop and I don't buy, I'm like looking
around like I'm a criminal, right same, I feel like
a freak and like trying to make new friends.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
There's not as many like commonplaces to like meet friends, but.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
There's pace Exactly.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
I've seen a lot about that, about how people used
to have these third spaces, places outside of like working
home where people would just commune, like libraries sometimes even
religious spaces.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
So my favorite one is the last one at the
end there, because they're talking about the lack of third spaces,
which I think is to some extent a real phenomenon.
But they're talking about how there's there, we need places
to just go hang out where you don't have to
pay to get in, you don't have to buy something,
and they're having that whole conversation in a beautiful public park.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yes, that was the When I saw that, and I
think I wrote about the article. I was like, you're
literally in a public park. You are in a third
space right now. Uh yeah. I also love the therapy
Jeff one. I have a one sided beef with therapy Jeff,
who is the first guy the like do you feel horrible?
That's latest age capitalism baby. He is this like wildly
(03:58):
popular therapy and flu and served, But a lot of
his videos just seem designed to make people more lonely.
Like he's sort of famous for these videos that are like,
here's five questions you should have answered about your partner
within three months, and there are these like weird and
like very much about Like here are all the red
flags that just seem designed to make people like become
(04:20):
very neurotic about their relationships. So I spend too much
time looking at therapy making me angry.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
In particular, like in this video, which is the only
one I've seen from him, But it seems destructive in
a couple of ways. One, it seems like he's assigning
blame for pretty normal human emotions that are just to
some extent part of the human condition and what exists
in a socialist country as well. But then two, and
you touch on this in your piece. But when the
(04:48):
problems in your life, when your anxiety or your self
esteem issues, when they are because of a system, When
he's telling people it's because of capitalism that you feel
that way, well, an individual has no ability to change
the system of their society. So what you are essentially
telling people is that they are powerless and can't do
anything to improve their mental state, even though they very
(05:09):
much can.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah. I think that's what makes this attractive to a
lot of people is because fundamentally, you know, I think
we do have quite a lot of agency in this life.
And especially in our like big, beautiful, quite wealthy, free
market world. But having so much agency is really destabilizing,
and to a certain degree it means that like if
(05:33):
things are disappointing for you, if you feel kind of lonely,
if you feel sort of dissatisfied, there is, to one
degree or another that is somewhat due to your own choices.
And that's terrifying. It's really terrifying to admit that you've
messed up in some way. And I think the sort
of capitalism blame game allows people to say, this isn't
my fault. I had no control and there's nothing I
(05:55):
can do about it. Therefore I have no sort of
moral obligation. I'd imperative to try to change my circumstances.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective on it, because you
wouldn't think that people want to be helpless or want
to be powerless, but that actually is attractive. You look
at the way that Congress, for example, has like delegated
away most of their power, and the founders thought that
Congress would guard their power jealousy, jealously, but instead they've
given it away because they want the job but not
(06:25):
the pressure. And I think this is like a microcosm
of that. If people have agency, which they do to
improve your health. Right, obviously, there's so many things. Life
is never going to be perfectly fair, there's so many
things beyond your control. But people have tremendous degree of
agency when it comes to improving their mental health exercise, seeking, therapy, practicing, gratitude.
(06:46):
I mean, there are thousands and thousands of pages written
by experts much more qualified to me to talk about
things people can do to improve how they feel and
their self esteem and their anxiety and their depression meditation.
But no, if it's all just because of late stage capitalism, right,
the communist buzzword they love to cite, then you actually
can't do anything about it, which I guess to them
(07:08):
maybe relieves them of a burden and maybe to some
extent makes them feel better about their own failure to
launch or failure to succeed, because after all, it was
always all out of my hands because of late stage capitalism.
That enton like cue the terrible music.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I think there's also a real utopian element of this.
You know, a lot of the way these creators are
talking about capitalism, it comes off of us that they
think like work itself was created by capitalism, that you know,
needing to work for living. A lot of the videos
I cite are from people who are really really unhappy
(07:46):
with their jobs and are like, you know, I can't
believe I'm going to have to work for the rest
of my life. This is so terrifying, This is horrible,
And the implication is that if we didn't have capitalism,
you would sort of be able to sit around all
day making art, even though like in all human societies
throughout history, capitalist or not, people have had to work
to earn their keep, and the only people who could
(08:09):
accurately be described as being economically kind of comfortable and
not working are the ultra rich, which presumably, if you're
a leftist you don't think those people should exist, and
a really reminds me. I think what typifies the sort
of utopia and anti capitalist attitude is the now kind
of famous Twitter thread of like, what are y'all doing
(08:31):
on the leftist commune? I'm going to be brewing lattes
and teaching radical theory, and you know, all of the
people being like, I'm going to be keeping the library
and making art, and no one's like on the leftist commune,
I will be digging ditches and scrubbing latrines. And so
it's sort of this like fantasy that the only thing
keeping you from a life of endless leisure is the oppressive,
(08:53):
shadowy force of capitalism, when that's just could not be
further from the truth.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, it's actually the opposite of the truth in some ways,
because capitalism has led to massive prosperity and growth and
incomes and living standards over time. And if you look
at America today verse fifty years ago or one hundred
years ago, working conditions, working hours, they're lower, they're better,
They have improved as capitalism has expanded and grown the economy,
(09:19):
and people have more opportunities to climb the economic ladder.
The number of workplace deaths and injuries goes down and down.
The amount of hours and days that people get off
has gone up over time, and not all of that
is purely due to market forces, but a significant portion
of it is. And then also I feel like there's
a flattening of this worldview where everything is to blame
(09:43):
for capitalism, but there's so many other things going on
in society and in life, whether it's declining religiosity, whether
it's expanding technologies and social media's effect on people's mental
health and so many other things that it It really
makes you wonder if you're blaming everything on capitalism, are
(10:04):
you missing other things we should be talking about and addressing.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Oh yeah, totally. I mean my great grandparents worked their
entire lives at a in a paper mill, and I
am so glad that instead of having to work in
a paper mill, I get to tap on my laptop
for eight hours a day and publish the things I
write on Reason dot com and like that March progress
is I think, I think it is very it is underrated,
(10:33):
and yeah, the community element is huge, and I think
it goes back to that agency question, right, like declining religiosity.
There's nothing that's keeping you from finding a church or
a mosc or a synagog or any other you know,
religious organization and joining that and finding community. Like when
I first moved to DC, I had a couple of
friends from college that were living in the same city.
(10:55):
But how I found a friend group, How I actually
found like a community as I went to church. And
you know that requires when you're a little hungover getting
up and showing up somewhere at ten thirty on a Sunday,
and it's not the easiest thing in the world to do,
but there are really huge benefits. And I think what
we're seeing is a lot of people sort of choosing
(11:16):
the easier, lonelier path. And it's really depressing because I
was having this conversation so I'm also like a really
I'm an ideological party thrower. I love throwing parties. I
have big house parties, like literally on Saturday and that
party at my house. But I also have dinner parties.
And I've started doing these dinner parties where I sort
(11:36):
of give everyone an article or a topic of discussion
and then we discuss it over dinner. And something we
discussed was this Francis Pukiyama article and persuasion about how
liberalism needs community. And we start talking about community and like,
you know, the whole problem of people our age not
having any friends, not having community, not finding partners, not
even like having sex, and sort of a thing I
(11:59):
realized about my as I'm like, I think, I think
this is because we're opting out of it, Like I like,
why am I the only person I know who throws
house parties multiple times? A month, and I don't want
to be like it's because I'm better than everybody else,
but it's because I'm a ninety ninth percentile extrovert and
I like want to do it very much, but like
(12:19):
it's a choice. I didn't have to choose to do that.
And I think my life is very rich and I
have a lot of social connections and I have a
lot of friends in part because I actively choose community,
even when it means like waking up really early or
spending like hours of my Friday prepping batch cocktails.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, I mean it's still there. I definitely think it's
maybe less built into modern life than it used to be,
especially with people the rise of social media and people
being more digitally distant and bearing themselves in their screens more.
But it is very much still there and people can
go seek it out. But maybe it's easier, maybe it's
more comforting to just stay at home alone and be like, well,
(12:59):
the reason I don't how many friends is because of
late stage capitalism or something. The reason I'm anxious all
the time is because of that, not because I know,
eat Doritos and lay on the couch and just think
about the world. Falling to pieces all the time. But
it's interesting you talking to your piece as well, because
when we're talking about the Internet, we're talking about young people.
We're not exclusively, but we are largely talking about a
(13:20):
left leaning demographic of content creator and of audience member,
especially when we're talking about like late stage capitalism, that's
more of a term that a progressive young person would use.
But you've also noticed this kind of anti capitalist sentiment
or this yearning for pre industrial times almost on the right,
(13:42):
haven't you.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Oh yeah, this also happens on the right. I think
the stereotype is insteaded. It's like a TikToker complaining about
late stage capitalism. It's an anonymous account on x with
like a like a stone bust profile photo posting an
AI generated tradwife with like seventeen kids, with the caption
(14:04):
this is what they took from us. Uh So, I
think it's very very much all the right. There is
this idea that like, the reason their lives suck, the
reason why they don't have you know, tradwives that manage
to stay trim and with ginormous knockers, you know, five
kids in is because of feminism allowed women to like
work and get jobs and not need men and immigration.
(14:26):
That means that they can't, you know, toil in a
factory all day, even though it's it's not really clear
to me that any of these people actually want to
work in factories.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean there's some openings. I hear the Amazon
where hell that's actually.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Think what any think?
Speaker 5 (14:39):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
There are factory jobs in the United States. People just
don't want them because they suck. I don't.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah, and Trump is deporting a lot of I have
a good friend who works in an Amazon fulfillment center
and a lot of his colleagues are no longer with us.
So there are jobs hiring for twenty bucks an hour,
twenty five bucks an hour physical labor packing boxes, but
I don't see a lot of the ex anonymous accounts
lining up for those jobs. My favorite thing is when
(15:06):
they post the like commercials, the stylized art from magazines
from the nineteen fifties, with like the guy smoking the
pipe with the house and the two kids, the one
boy and the one daughter and the beautiful wife, and
they're like what life used to be like, And it's
insane that people actually on ironically use advertisements and drawings
(15:30):
to suggest what to reminisce about what life was Actually
life was rough in the fifties.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, it was not great. I was recently so both
of my grandparents on my dad's side were born in
the mid nineteen thirties, and I was talking to them recently,
and I asked them, like, you know, I want it
because I was like, you know, I want to really
really asked them deep questions about what life was like
in the forties and fifties, and like I learned that
(15:57):
my grandfather grew up in a house that didn't have
complete plumbing. His family didn't have a car, so they
had to walk everywhere, and like small ish town, sort
of exurban South Carolina, things were not great, you know,
they didn't and even on like sort of the soft
cultural side, like they didn't have pizza until the mid
nineteen fifties, and like when my grandparents first got married,
(16:18):
my grandfather was in the military. My grandmother was like, oh, yeah,
we were in like Panama City, Florida, living in with
like two kids in the world's tiniest apartment, and like
they didn't really give us enough money for food. So
and this is where the community park comes in. You know,
all the other like poor military couples in the building,
we'd like get together and put our little like hamburger together,
(16:39):
and I'm like, oh my god, life is so much
better now, and like, you know, they look back from
those memories and they sort of laugh and and you know,
but I am so grateful that, like at the same
age that my grandmother was, that she was like living
under these circumstances, I have far more material abundance. Not
to mention things I can for granted, like you know,
(17:01):
like polio vaccines. Oh boy, for now, but right right,
that's until RFK gets his way.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Anyway, It is interesting because I feel like nostalgia or
the rose colored glasses is a sickness that corrodes human's
ability to ever be happy because we always even it's
so funny, even in our own lives. Maybe you're different.
But I remember like my teenage years, and I think
of all the good parts, and I remember all the
(17:30):
fun I had in high school sports, and then when
I'm thinking about it, I don't think about the parts
of my life that were hellish, that were terrible, that
had me like deeply, deeply disturbed and distressed. There's just
something about human nature where it's like we remember the
good parts and we just kind of glaze over or
forget the darker parts, and then we're constantly left feeling
(17:52):
like things have gotten worse. There's so many times you
see people suggest that, like things are worse now, and
then if you look into any object in a certain
thing or certain area or certain and then if you
look into any objective factor statistic about it's just literally
not true. It's just all false nostalgia. Why are we
so so prone to that?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I don't know. I mean, I think part of it
is that a lot of times people are expressing nostalgia
for a time they never personally experienced. That I think
is definitely true with the sort of romanticism about the
nineteen fifties, and often too, that nostalgia is nostalgia for
what it was like to be very wealthy during those times.
I mean to the extreme, I think about people who
can you know, sort of fall into like, wow, wouldn't
(18:35):
it be great if I was like a fancy regency
lady or like a medieval night you know, at the
more extreme level, and it's like, well, those people were
really rich and they still died of pink eye. But
I think part of it too, is just like it
is easy to romanticize the times in your life in
which things are really simple, like when you were a
kid and you didn't have any responsibilities and they're you know,
(18:58):
your life was sort of doubt for you by other people,
And I think that can be attractive if you're at
a place in your life where you're so overwhelmed with
responsibility and you feel so much stress. I have no
romanticism for my teenage years. I went to a very
intense high school where like the time in my life
in which I worked hardest was when I was like seventy,
(19:20):
and so I'm like, like college was easy. I was like, oh,
this is fine. I don't have five hours of homework
I have to do after getting home from school at
seven o'clock. Awesome. But I think that for a lot
of people, it's like times that felt simpler.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, you make a really good point about being nostalgic
for things they never experienced, because it typically is a
younger crowd earn yearning for the nineteen fifties or sixties,
or they have a very interesting lens on it, Like
I personally wouldn't want to be a have been a
black housewife in the nineteen fifties, right, but if you
were maybe the affluent, white upper class. But even then
(19:58):
they were popping pills, they're really tranquilizing themselves, and their
husbands could legally sexually assault them and all sorts of
other things. So, but even then, you tend to think
about a certain slice of what life was like for
some people. Now, another thing you touched on in your
essay that I thought was really interesting was this question
(20:18):
of whether the kids are just lazy? And I think
it's it's complicated because some of the kids are definitely lazy,
but also older generations kind of say that about every
up and coming generation. And I don't think everything can
be put down to laziness. So I want to roll
this this clip of an infamous TikTok crash out that
(20:39):
you cited in your essay, that is Yeah, I'm gonna
make you watch it again. This woman is not content with,
I guess having to work, and she had a little
crash out and filmed it and I got millions and
millions of views. Let's take a look.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
There is no way you're going to tell me I'm
going to work my whole life I'm going to say
that behind a fucking death and work nine to five
each day of my life until retirement. There is no
way that is what life is about. I will not
be put in that fox. I'm sorry, you have real life.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
A little bit extra, oh little bogie.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I want to have fun, like I actually want to
have fun.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And I don't understand why this is the norm and
we're putting up with this. I know half of us
are not putting up with it, but I feel like
we're putting up with it too much.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
It's time to take a stand. I don't know how
we would take a stand. I'm so rad because I'm stressed.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
This is why I travel because I'm like, you know what,
I'm gonna work and then I'm gonna travel because why
the fuck would I lock myself into a job for
the rest of my life. I need to fucking see
the world, like I genuinely need to.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
See the world and experience life.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
And I'm young, and I'm lucky that I have that
privilege of not having too many responsibilities, not having any
little fucking rats running around, you know what I mean.
But like Jesus Christ, it's gonna make me cry. And
I love you all and if you're working, then you're struggling.
You're the fucking shit and you deserve love and like
and peace.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Bye. So I think the reason that video went so
viral is because of her unique presentation style and kind
of the crash out energy. You can't help but feel
a little bad for her.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I feel very bad for her. You don't put this
on the internet like this. This is what you do,
like on the phone with your mom when you're like
crying and freaking out or like a loved one.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I yeah, having that live in infamy is not ideal,
but the algorithms to incentivize that because these crash out
videos always go megaviral and you get tons of people
relating to it and saying, yes, me too.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Girl.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
What I found interesting about this though, was I'm not
saying it's great to work a nine to five your
whole life. Like I understand, it's a slog. It's tough.
I work very flexible hours, but I work long hours now.
But it's like, is it really the worst thing in
the world? Does it stop you from traveling, does it
stop you from having fun living life like and does
(22:56):
she realize that for almost all of human history, people
worked a lot more than a nine to five. They
worked a sun up to a sundown.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, this is why I think what a lot of
these young people are suffering from is not capitalism, it's workism.
And so I personally do not have a very rosy
view of work for work's sake, Like it's a thing
that human beings need to do, it's something that just
about every economic system requires us to do. But I
(23:26):
think that it's a really bad place to put the
center of meaning in your life because most jobs, even
most sort of college educated white collar jobs, are not
like particularly intrinsically interesting or meaningful like I, and I
think you would probably describe yourself as a way, I
have like a ninety nine percentile interesting and intrinsically meaningful job,
(23:48):
where like people who put our opinions out there on
the internet for money, But even so for me, like
I love that for a living I get to write
about this, but like what makes my life worth living fundamentally,
and what brings me the most satisfaction is like coming
home after work and getting to hang out with my
husband for the rest of the day, or like getting
(24:10):
to see my friends, getting to throw parties that it's
the stuff that happens outside of work, and with that
in mind, especially because like my husband, for example, he
likes his job, but it's he's not an opinion journalist.
He is like a pretty normal sort of code based job,
suffice to say, And like what what sort of makes
his job when it is more boring and less intrinsically
(24:31):
meaningful kind of worth it is knowing that he's working
to like build a life with me and to like
build a life for like the family we hope to
have one day. And so I think what has happened
is that and this is this is something that I
I do not blame the current generation for I think
for a lot of gen Zers and Millennials are parents.
(24:52):
And this this is born out in opinion pulling data.
Our parents emphasize to us that the most important thing
we could do is get a good job. We were
told by our parents and our teachers that the most
reliable way to live a fulfilling life, to be happy
is to have a good job, and that things like
a partner and family are secondary. And this is just
(25:13):
like the opposite of what is actually true. If I'm
getting the numbers rate, there is like this this big
social survey that found that being very satisfied in your
job gives you like a one hundred and forty five
percent increase in the chance that you're generally happy with
the rest of your life. Okay, that's a really big boost.
But being very satisfied in your marriage gives you like
a five hundred something percent increase in your likelihood of
(25:37):
being very satisfied with your life. So, in fact, it's
these rich social relationships that we have outside of work
that actually make life worth living. And so I think
what this young woman is expressing is probably or you know,
to assume a little bit that like, she doesn't have
much happening in her life outside of her job. And
so if you don't have these like rich social relationships
(25:58):
out of your job, and you were told just get
a good job, you'll be happy, and she got that
good job and she is not happy, it's easy to
be like, what the hell, Like I was told there
must be a big evil system that's causing me to
be unhappy because I did what I was told to do,
and I still feel like my life is bereaft of meaning.
(26:19):
And I think the problem here is what's to blame
is not like work as a concept. It's the lack
of social connections. And I think to a certain degree,
the way that our elders impressed upon us that we
needed to be careerists in order to be happy.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
That's a really interesting perspective because I think I've internalized
that idea right that like work is the key to
a meaningful life, and I don't think there's no truth
to it in that I think people who wake up
every day with some degree of excitement or interest about
the work that they do versus people who are just
filling a time card are generally going to be happier.
(26:57):
And that I always advise people to do. If you
have an option between two jobs or two career paths,
and one will make more money or have a more
like better benefit, but one will you genuinely will enjoy
more or find more meaningful, I always tell people go
with the meaningful thing, because this is how you'll be
spending a huge portion of your life. But I think
the reason, part of the reason that work I think
(27:20):
has dignity and has meaning for people is exactly what
you got at It's that you are providing for the
people that you love and hold dear and you are
building a life for your family, and if you don't
have that part, I can definitely understand why it would
just feel monotonous and pointless and like an endless rat race.
I do have to say, and I don't want to
(27:40):
play into the like entitled young people trope too much
a little bit, but there is a degree of entitlement
baked into all of this, this idea that well, like
I don't have to work, but the Amazon packages will
still get delivered, and the grocery store will somebody is
going to have to do all the work that makes
a society run. And so when you have these things,
(28:01):
I mean, there's an entire movement called like the anti
work movement, and it's kind of fringe, but it's also
I mean, not two people in a basement somewhere either,
and a lot of people at least sympathize with the
sentiment a little bit. I do think there's a degree
of individual entitlement that's wrapped up into these people who
feel comfortable getting up on a camera and saying I
(28:23):
shouldn't have to work. I don't want to work. I mean,
I see people on TikTok all the time, crowdfunding for
you know, asking people for money because they don't They
say they can't get a job, but the truth is
they just don't want to.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, I mean I do think that's where the utopianism
comes in. Like I think a lot of people who
say this just haven't thought it through. Not to bring
up the leftist commune tweet again, but like I think
it comes from and I think maybe it's more likely
to come from people who are in these sort of
white collar professions or who grew up who are sort
of like the dowardly mobile children of the upper middle class.
(28:59):
I think that's what striving a lot of this resentment
because like the jobs that they are doing, if one
if there was one less person doing that job, nothing
bad would happen, Like if if half of all opinion journalists,
like if half of all opinion journalism jobs disappeared, like
the world would still turn on its axis. And the
way that, like if half of all agricultural laborers disappeared,
(29:21):
it would cause huge problems. And I think if your
vision of what work is is based in like your parents,
having sort of a hard to describe job that requires
going to an office and sitting in front of a computer,
and like you having kind of a hard to describe
job that involves going to an office and sitting in
front of a computer. If that's what you think of
work as involving, I think it's a lot easier to
assume that if nobody worked, everything would be fine.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, that's an interesting point, And you make a lot
of interesting points in the essay that people can go
read on Reason dot com. I feel like, in this
current moment in American politics, left and right, I just
wish a lot more people read Reason dot com.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Oh, I would like that quite a lot as we Well, yeah,
I think we're in a world in which the left,
like the culture war is the only thing that really
divides the left and right, like we're getting into these
more populist economics and the only thing that really but
even then, like the sort of the rise of the
woke right right, Like they might the left and the
right culture war might disagree on the targets of the
culture warring, but it's all of it's all the same thing.
(30:20):
It's all just like viral videos of whatever, like Identity
Villain behaving badly. You know, it's just slop all the
way down. And I like to think that reason as
a beacon in the culture war storm.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Well, if people want to check it out, I'll link
to more of your work. Guys, let us know in
the comments what you think. If you have seen this
kind of anti capitalist sentiment all over the place, hit
that like buton, make sure subscribe if you aren't yet.
And Emma, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Thank you so much for having me
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com