More Crows

Criminal drug laws aren't stopping the opioid epidemic, and they prevent us from asking the real question: why is it that so many people prefer an opioid stupor to being productively engaged in our society?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Note the overlap between the suicide maps and the opioid overdose maps:

https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

People are killing themselves. Heroin and fentanyl are just tools.

What's happening in those red areas of the country? Economic collapse and social alienation.

If people want to check out and slowly (or quickly) kill themselves making drugs illegal won't stop them. They'll get them anyway or they will find other methods.

As far as mushrooms go: they are not particularly addictive. There is not and never has been a 'shroom epidemic. I highly doubt there ever will be. They can be a little bit dangerous, especially if you have latent psychological problems. They're not some kind of panacea either. But they're not really that bad and they're definitely not worth putting people in jail over.

The fear that we have of mind altering substances is totally irrational, especially when placed next to the lack of fear or stigma that we have for so many other more dangerous things. If you drop acid or 'shrooms you're a demonic criminal even though the worse you'll get is a bad trip and maybe some psychological disturbance, but if you kill yourself cave diving or rock climbing you're a hero.

Would I want my kids…

What makes you think it's a bubble? Just because something is unpleasant, or even outright evil doesn't make it a bubble.

Perhaps at some point an equilibrium is reached where these institutions extract exactly as much as the degree is worth, minus the little bit left that will incentivize people to take the deal. After all, the 'value' of these degrees has only gone up. Overproduced malthusian elitehood[0] has to be better than starving with the unnecessariat[1], maybe[2].

We are after all already at the near-apocalyptic scenario. Economically disenfranchised liberal arts graduates are roaming the earth and using the only skills they have to extract resources from the environment. In practice this amounts to a sort of Trust Me I'm Lying dystopia of manufacturing outrage with one hand and selling solutions on the other.

For calibration, many students in the UK have turned to literal prostitution[3].

[0]: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/jonathan-kay-on-the-tyranny-of-twitter-how-mob-censure-is-changing-the-intellectual-landscape

[1]: https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

[2]: https://berthamasonsattic.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/i-applied-to-200-jobs-and-all-i-got-was-this-moderate-severe-depression/?src=longreads

[3]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/students-sex-work-prostitution-webcam-university-tuition-fees-education-a8614186.html

"we need everybody to work"

Getting past this fiction is only the beginning. Many, many people find meaning in their lives through performing a task that others deem necessary. When nobody is necessary, the economy decouples from the people. We actually have examples of societies that operate like this right now: Eritrea [0] for one. The government of that country has decided it has no real use for most of its people. It makes business deals with foreign resource extraction companies directly. Many people live in abject poverty while the government enriches itself and does little/nothing to help them.

Assuming we do reach a state where we no longer sustain the fiction that we need people to work, the question becomes "How do the unnecessariat [1] justify their own existance to those who control capital?"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea

[1] https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

Pretty much this.

"Utopians on the coasts occasionally feel obliged to dream up some scheme whereby the unnecessariat become useful again, but its crap and nobody ever holds them to it. If you even think about it for a minute, it becomes obvious: what if Sanders (or your political savior of choice) had won? Would that fix the Ohio river valley? Would it bring back Youngstown Sheet and Tube, or something comparable that could pay off a mortgage? Would it end the drug game in Appalachia, New England, and the Great Plains? Would it call back the economic viability of small farms in Illinois, of ranching in Oklahoma and Kansas? Would it make a hardware store viable again in Iowa, or a bookstore in Nevada? Who even bothers to pretend anymore?"

https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

I think this was already the case. This piece is from 2016: https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/

> Here’s the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as “Young Gods” believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy, and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don’t worry, the recession’s over and everything’s better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!