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Following the Texeira leak, I have a question which I do not see covered at all in any of the press. Has been there any investigation started into the security structure failures that led to these leaks? It is obvious that it is a systemic failure - a glorified janitor shouldn't have an access to top secret documents, and most of these documents didn't have much business to be on National Guard airbase anyway, they don't have anything to do with whatever Air Force is supposed to be dealing with. Somebody is responsible for the security on Otis Air National Guard Base - and that somebody screwed up big time. Do we know about anybody being places on leave, suspended, demoted, whatever it is? What is the usual procedure in the Army when something like this happens? How much consequences could be expected to people responsible for preventing such things from happening?
This might be my particular version of doomerism, clichéd shaking my head at the youth these days, etc., but I think we're going to see more of this sort of stuff as boomers retire/die.
America in particular is going to be pretty screwed as it discovers how much of the system depended on people being mostly good faith and competent.
And you think those people...are the boomers? That boomers are, on average, more prosocial than Gen-Xers? More competent?
Do you think the Silents said the same thing as they watched their kids grow into the workforce?
I'm sympathetic to the vast loss of institutional knowledge lost as our old wizards retire. I've watched it happen. I've also seen it happen with middle-aged engineers flirting with burnout or managers folding under pressures on the company. Modern professionals are every bit as capable as their counterparts were at the same age.
I think there's more to say about the good faith part of the equation.
For all their faults, boomers believed in the system because it benefited them tremendously.
What sort of rube would hold any loyalty to it now as a young man?
You could say their belief in the system has benefitted them tremendously. How does boomer wisdom go? "If you're not against the system at 20, you have no heart; if you're against the system at 30, you have no head." They weren't born loyal, they recognized that a cascade of defection would not end well, then got paid. What alternative is there? Utopia? Your pals Xi and Putin?
Besides, there's not that many young men, and they can count on their inheritance for the buy-in.
Critically, they got paid enough to sleepwalk into home ownership and supporting a family on one income and low effort.
How many zoomers can say that?
Abstract notions that there's no better system throretically concievable as being able to replace the status quo might be enough of an argument to discourage me from grabbing my AK and joining the armed revolution, but it's not really enough to convince me that I should become a go-getting boomer and strive 110% every day at my wagie job that has a radically worse effort/reward ratio than it did for my grandfather.
Societal buy-in requires some better incentives than "If you don't work unpaid overtime, China will win!"
It's simple, really. Either your parents owned a house in New York/London/Munich, in which case you're going to be rich without having to work at all, or you can easily get a house (+ some amenities they never even dreamed of) elsewhere where they did, like they did: by working a 9 to 5.
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