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Tyler gambled and lost. Countless young men went to Iraq. Very few of them died or were disfigured. Of those who returned, many benefited from a luxury welfare state most Americans could only dream of - mortgages at rock bottom rates guaranteed by the federal government, free premium medical care for life in a place the middle class often have to spend thousands per year on premiums and deductibles, free college tuition, a lifetime of freebies and benefits afforded to veterans in modern America even though most of them spent a few years on comfortable Iraqi and Afghan bases with Taco Bells and movie theaters. Those who stayed in the military got to (or get to) retire after as little as 20 years of active duty, which means they could be out by what - 40? - on a full pension, when most Americans have 25-30 years of hard work ahead of them.
It would be inhuman not to feel immense sympathy for Tyler. But most who chose to enlist for the GWOT got a good deal. Or at least a decent one. And they did choose.
I'm partial to that line of argumentation. That within a modern western society the standards of living are so high and what's being asked for sacrifice is generally so little that it's basically a no brainer to earnestly participate. I think most people recognize this and earnestly participate. But on the flipside you are still getting lumps. So what's the deal there?
The following explanation, that a society with such high standards of living carries with it a variety of easily accessible vices that can demoralize people into lumps, effectively contradicts the premise of the first argument; that the standard of living in western societies is 'high'. This is compounded by the short timespan you have to succeed. Fall to the vices or miss certain milestones and suddenly homeownership and a family are a real challenge to attain.
From the perspective of a rational lump, either the vices in society are so good that being a gambling goonsimping lump is just the maximally beneficial state of being and working to rise above such an existence or sacrifice anything for it is either contradictory or simply a waste. Or, society is filled with pitfalls and vices that are functionally psychological landmines that trap you and/or rape your brain and prevent you from attaining real happiness. In which case the standard of living in a western society for people susceptible to such things is low and not worth sacrificing for.
So either the lumps are playing out a winning strategy by being maximally individualistic and hedonistic to their preference, or the game is rigged, society is garbage and the lumps are correctly opting out of earnest participation and are instead doing the minimal amount of sacrifice possible.
Or the worst case scenario is correct. Society is working as intended, trying to mind rape you into being incapacitated or enslaved for incomprehensible reasons, no one is fighting against this and the only act of self determination left is to choose which slave socket you jack yourself into or how you are going to kill yourself.
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Of all these benefits you list, only the college tuition is financially meaningful. VA loans are often worse than regular loans (interest rates are typically <0.5% lower, but you also need to pay an additional $10k processing fee). The only "lifetime freebie" I'm aware of is free admittance into national parks... a $35 value once a year when the family goes camping.
VA is also a great benefit; it can save vets thousands per year, or even more than that if they develop health problems.
The veterans I've known have not had such great experiences with the VA.
VA pension struggles with the standard public healthcare thing where people who know the right combination of buttons to press/right case workers to use can quite easily get luxury communism for difficult to dispute conditions. People with actual conditions that don't slide neatly into the classification buckets and/or don't have a case worker with an interest in bolstering them can quite easily get fucked.
Whenever attempts are made at curtailing spending on the first bucket, there's sufficient of the second bucket to walk out and argue.
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IMO all those benefits were not known WHEN they went to Iraq. The everyone gets disability benefits was not a thing until a few years ago.
I think when many of them went they were serving their country and probably at negative expected value to themselves.
It’s probably tough for people to remember now but post 9/11 there were people willing to sacrifice their life for this country and it wasn’t just a grift. The leading brand was Pat Tillman. If the towers went down today I’m not sure who is showing up now.
Maybe it’s better today people care more about what’s in it for them. I don’t see many people today myself included rallying because someone bombed NYC now. I don’t view them as my people anymore. Why would I bleed for Mamdani who’s been here 10 minutes. When the Towers went down those were my people.
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I think it’s really necessary to look at the MoS when evaluating soldiers. I personally know guys in the military who would only face physical danger in a black swan scenario. I also know special forces soldiers who face double digit percent risks of death and/or disfigurement. I think we need to look more at MoS than just “is he a veteran” to determine both the danger the soldier was in and the esteem we should give his service.
Does the VA medical pension system even meaningfully look at what role the applicant had? Admittedly my views are probably overly colored by Caleb Hammer participants and Twitter rage bait but there did seem to be a lot of PTSD/Tinnitus/Sore Back/never left the country 100%ers
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With that you essentially concede the argument. If he just gambled and lost, you can't blame kids these days for running the numbers and deciding the game isn't worth playing.
He gambled and lost which men do all the time. How many young men get drawn into bodybuilding circles and end up turning into bloated, bald, acne-ridden losers who get heart attacks by their early 30s? Not a huge number, but then again, not a huge proportion of soldiers died in the GWOT.
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I think it's pretty explicit in the rest of his post that most people who make that gamble are big winners.
Kids aren't 'running the numbers', they're sitting on their phones waiting to be given stuff.
The starting point has to be considered, though. I lead a pretty comfortable life. Getting a billion dollar would still be life-changing - but I value my current life enough that I wouldn't play Russian roulette for a 5/6 chance at a billion. If you're already doing fine, how big a win does it have to be to justify taking even a small chance of ending up like Tyler? I don't think free college tuition cuts it.
True. These days the lifestyle value of money hits massive marginal diminishing returns quite quickly. Even those who are fortunate enough to secure enough money to secure a good life in perpetuity tend to hedonistic treadmill themselves to death
These statements are contradictory. If you can run the hedonistic treadmill high enough to exhaust arbitrarily high amounts of money, either running it higher is actually getting you significantly more (so returns aren't diminishing quickly), or there's something wrong with human nature such that we chase ever-smaller pleasures -- and human nature isn't new, so it's not a matter of "these days".
Those are separate issues. I believe the gap between the lifestyles of the middle class and the top echelons in Western society are closer than they essentially have been at any point since feudalism. Most billionaires spend just as much time as you do scrolling their phone, etcetera.
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