Coming apart
A critique of the white American class structure argues that the paths of social mobility that once advanced the nation are now serving to further isolate an elite upper class while enforcing a growing and resentful white underclass.
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2013–2026years
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- I enjoy content that adds curious new information and different views to topics full of cliches, while still being relatively respectable or well researched.
Coming Apart - this book described the coming separation of the US into two “classes” long before it was widely talked about. Today most talk about it as a political divide. This book tackles it as a divide between knowledge workers and the rest. A controversial take that adds much needed food for thought to the conversation. If you’ve lived poor and you’ve also lived in a place like Palo Alto, you’ll be astounded by how readily you can point and say, “that’s me”. Lots of fascinating statistics.
Bowling Alone - a great book about the collapse of US social life. Dense, lots of statistics, but a clear picture is laid out of increasing isolation and alienation. Read it alongside something like Consumer’s Republic to understand how so much of this stems from the selfishness and individuality encouraged by consumerism in post-war America.
Triumph of the City - an excellent take that can be used as food for thought when people are talking about how dirty cities are. In truth, the author argues, they are our greenest “invention” ever. Lots of good evidence. Imagine collecting the trash if every human lived on their own acre of land. The sewage, the energy usage. Cities are incredibly efficient and clean.
The Man Who Solved The Market - everyone interested in finance needs to read this and it’s precursor More Money Than God. The Bogleheads and their index fund ilk are often correct when they say “money managers all lose to an index after fees”. Beating the market is nigh on impossible for all but a few. Most of those few work at Renaissance Technologies. Their Medallion Fund has made 36% after fees every single year since 1989. The fund does its best in market crash years. Closed to outside investors. A story of mathematicians essentially building models that can predict the future reliably. Utterly fascinating, the most successful money printer ever built. As a bonus, we learn that Jim Simons originally controlled this printer and spent the money helping US math teachers. He then ceded control to Robert Mercer, who used the printer’s output to fund Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, Trump, etc.
The Snowball - a biography of Warren Buffet that tells an incredible story. The story is one of total obsession. Of a human who literally started from a few dollars, learned about some principles like compounding at age 6, and applied the exact same principles every day for the rest of his life with very little deviation. The craziest part of this story is how every 10 years, he’s surrounded by people saying “times have changed, you’re missing out”. Then those people get blown up by whatever black swan, and Warren’s snowball just grows and grows. He didn’t become a billionaire till he was in his 50’s but the snowball is still growing and he’s one of the richest people alive.
- This makes me think about the book 'Coming Apart' [0] which was an eye opening read which predicts all of this. As a tech/media person in a democratic costal city, there is a whole other America that, it turns out, I know very little about.
- If this kind of stuff interests you, check out "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray (yes that one)
- Interesting book to read on the topic is Charles Murray's Coming Apart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book)
Very much like this article, Murray focuses only on US, however, this is a global trend. A person born in Koškovce, Slovakia will move to Košice for high school, to Bratislava to attend college, they'll find their first job in Prague, second one in London and after a short while they'll arrive at San Francisco.
It wouldn't take a big stretch of imagination to write a dystopian Sci-Fi about a future where members of Mensa live in extremely liberal city states in Bay Area while the dumb are gradually pushed out to failing hellholes with mad dictators in control.
- Charles murray has a whole book abiut this stuff (Coming Apart) and its lit
- There's another thing going on in parallel, namely, physical separation of elites from the rest. You may not agree with Charles Murray's political worldview, but the first part of Coming Apart has a nice analysis of how elites in the US aggregate in specific neighborhoods.
But the problem is much wider IMO. Consider Russia. I read that 7% of its population is living abroad. In other words, the most agile and the most able are not in the country anymore. I imagine that Putin considers this to be a good thing: All possible dissenters just pack up and leave. What's not to like?
