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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15153 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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Scott Alexander just released another "Much More than You Wanted to Know" article, this time on the Vibecession.

He goes through all of the traditional arguments in his standard exhaustive way: is it housing? no. is it wealth inequality? no. is it wages down? no. is it overall GDP down? maybe, but no.

Ultimately he makes the case that the economy is doing well, and the younger cohort is doing great. Many economic indicators do seem to show that in real terms, they are doing better than ever! Reading this article I was excited to see that he might get to what I consider the real problem, but alas, he concludes in a very lukewarm way with:

Because of decreasing application friction, any given opportunity requires more effort to achieve than in earlier generations. Although this can’t lower the average society-wide success level (because there are still the same set of people competing for the same opportunities, so by definition average success will be the same), it can inflict deadweight loss on contenders and a subjective sense of underachievement.

Because of concentration of jobs in high-priced metro areas, effective cost-of-living for people pursuing these jobs has increased even though real cost-of-living (ie for a given good in a given location) hasn’t. This effect is multiplied since it’s concentrated among exactly the sorts of elites most likely to set the tone of the national conversation (eg journalists).

Homeownership has become substantially more expensive since the pandemic (although the increase in rents is much less). This on its own can’t justify the entire vibecession, because most vibecessioneers are renters, and the house price change is relatively recent. But it may discourage people for whom homeownership was a big part of the American dream.

But even if these three factors are really making things worse, so what? Have previous generations never had three factors making things worse? Is our focus on the few things getting worse, instead of all the other things getting better or staying the same, itself downstream of negative media vibes?

I find this hard to believe, but am unable to find the smoking gun that definitively rules it out. I hope this post will serve as a starting point for further investigation: now that we’re all on the same page about which purported explanations don’t work, we can more fruitfully investigate alternatives.

I hope that eventually Scott comes around to the idea that economic indicators are a proxy for community, emotional and spiritual health! Ultimately the average person doesn't really care much about the economy or their wealth, instead they care about how easy their life is. How pleasant their interactions are. What the emotional tone is of the people they interact with the most.

Scott does briefly get into this talking about the 'negative media vibes,' but for some reason he doesn't dig in there more?

My take is that our culture and religious framework have been breaking down at an increasing speed for the last couple centuries, and the last few decades we have accelerated into freefall. It's complete chaos out there, the Meaning Crisis meaning that young people have zero clue what to do with their lives, no consistent role models to follow, and as we discussed in a post below, they basically are told that they're doing great even if by objective standards they are fucking things up terribly.

The younger cohort has lost connection to any greater framework of values that teaches them how to actually live in a positive and healthy way. Instead, they are awash in technological substitutes for intimacy, cheap hedonistic advertising, and an increasing propensity to fall back to vicious, tribal infighting based on characteristics like race, gender (or lack thereof), or economic status.

Overall the vibes are bleak not because of any material wealth issues, but because the spirit of the West is deeply, deeply sick.

The entire idea of "disposable" income is, to me, the biggest mismatch between Boomers and today. We all agree on the "necessary" expenditures; housing, food, basic clothing, and utilities. Then, we have the modern additions to utilities; internet and cell service. It is not even possible for me to even search for a job if I don't have one or both of these things. Yes, yes, economists will tell you that the relative value or marginal utility or whatever of a cell phone is so much better than land line service in the 1970s. But I'm paying for it because I have to.

Then, however, we have things like clothing, consumer electronics, restaurants, and "cheap" entertainment (subscriptions). These seem basic but stack up and stack up in recursive ways (like I mentioned above) that aren't captured in traditional methods of inflation. Are these truly optional goods that I am choosing to spend on?

"Well sorry, snowflake" Bruno the Boomer says, "Maybe in stead of watching your TikyToks and Netflixes, you should just read a book!"

And Bruno the Boomer is right in that specific circumstance. These are, purely speaking, "optional" purchases. But it leads to much trickier problem: What am I supposed to do with my time if the jump between "basic" living and comfortable spending is so high? Incentives matter. You can find many interesting graphs out there that show how, in some cities in the US and many countries in Europe, there exist harsh tax cliffs that _DIS_incentivize making more money. If I lose $10,000 in benefits after increasing my income by less than $10,000, I've given myself a pay cut by earning more (yes that sentence is valid).

This same logic applies to marginal consumption and disposable income. If I can pay for all of my basic necessities, but leveling up to dinner out once or twice a week, guilt free streaming service subscriptions, a new-ish but not top of the line car, and a couple home goods (big couch, whatever) necessitates another $15,000k in annual income (on which I will be taxed substantially) .... then why even bother? Cheap beer, free or pirated porn movies and YouTube clips can sustain my entertainment needs and living in a shitty apartment is .... what all of my friends do. People are being asked not to take the next step on a steep trail, but to leap across a valley of income for ... marginal benefit.

And I think this is the common cause behind things like quiet quitting, the massive rise in the permanently non-working (disabled and NEETs etc.), inceldom, and the various flavors of nomadic forever-festival going weirdos, permanent expats, and semi-grifter YouTubers. It's interesting that I posted a top level comment on Shagbark earlier this week. Being a semi-bum in 2025 does seem to have roughly the same life satisfaction of every group up to about the top 20% income. And this is because we've eliminated real poverty -- not having enough to eat, being so unstable in housing that death from exposure might actually be on the menu.

Was consumerism really so different in years past? YesChad.jpeg. People forget that real, true poverty did exist, at least in pockets of the US, well into the 1970s. In extremely infrastructure-isolated places, it persisted even longer. After WW2, the consumer economy actually functioned as a compounding system for people to get out of poverty. Buying an electric oven meant a household was saving meaningful time and effort. The ever increasing reliability of cars (while maintaining price relative to inflation) meant people could get to and from work with high confidence - and, therefore, earn more. A television meant actual awareness of the outside world and a source of information that could lead to better decision making. A telephone allowed for the creation and sustainment of social relationships and communities outside of face to face interaction, which also meant the ability to generate more business relationships (i.e. find new jobs, find local customers etc.).

Today, my new oven has fun little chimes when it pre-heats. It's also more energy efficient (so I am told). New trucks are less reliable because of fuel emission fuckery and mostly cost more because the seats are heated and my phone connects to the radio for some fucking reason. My TV has a resolution I can't comprehend, with unlimited semi-AI slop available for consumption. It stays off unless sports are on. And my telephone, which lives in my pocket, mostly harasses me with beeps and dings to remind me to interact with apps so that my data can be sold to hedge funds.

Consumerism, today, has inverted its relationship with consumers. Before, consumer level products really did make your life better. Today, consumer products are like carnival rides; it's fun for a while and only costs a few dollars. It doesn't improve my life.

The Vibecession, to me, is a reaction to some harsh nonlinearities that have developed over the past 40 years. Before, you might never get into the upper class, but you could see your life improve just a bit almost every year. Now, we're asking kids exiting college (which didn't teach them anything and saddled them with debt) to live like a monk for 10 - 15 years so that, on the other side, they can move into a home they still can't afford. In the interim, they can enjoy consumer products that help dull this drudgery, but don't act as compounders. Who in the hell would take this deal?

Scott notes that the second derivative of various economic indicators does highly correlate with the vibecession, but questions "can people really sense the second derivative of GDP over decades-long timescales"? I think you give a pretty strong argument that yes, people can easily notice this second derivative. All your examples about consumerism not leading to increased real economic power seem pretty second derivativy to me.

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