Retirement

[K-Dog]

Fascinating.  A good deep dive.  Filled with facts which help to understand current American life.

Thought provoking.  Should people retire?  It is a complex question, so get your thoughts provoked.

Screen time has broken social bonds and connections, Without social connections there is no desire to work, or the desire to work is reduced to the extent that the result becomes permanent sloth.  I say this without proof.  I posit this as hypothesis for the reasons that follow.

Social connections engender mutual obligations.  When people are not socially connected they will lose desire to work. is my hypothesis.

I have watched more than the videos posted here to reach this conclusion.  Other things I learned is that there are 7 million men in America who are of sound mind and body who do not work.  The trend has grown steady at 0.01% a month since 1965.  Prior to 1965 young able bodied men of sound mind worked.  Society did not tolerate anything else.

What do young able bodied men of sound mind who do not work have in common? How do they spend their time? 

They are consumed by screens, they do not do housework, even though they rarely leave home.  They lack social obligations and do not understand their failure to contribute in society, forces others to work more than they should resulting in alienation in those who actually work, because they can't reduce their hours to find a good work life balance.

There absolutely should be a good work-life balance.  For most people this is less work, but zero work is social isolation and parasitic on others who experience greater allienation.  Telling people who can't differentiate between reality and fantasy any of this is a waste of time.  The isolated will remain unemployed.  They imagine they are in paradise, lost in their own world of screens and imagined superiority.  They do not understand that paradise is more than shadows on their cave wall.

This social problem like all others will continue to grow at 0.01% a year.  Checking out on permanent vacation before you even ever had a full time job will continue to be a thing until the problem grows big enough that it is on everyones' radar.  Currently this is a slow epidemic and not yet on the radar.  Consequences to others and society at large are not yet seen.  They will be.

The permanent vacation phenomena results from social breakdown (I hypothesize).  A linear straight line growth from 1965 to the present seven million value.  Growth which ignores economic cycles and a phenomena that even ignored COVID as it marched along at 0.01%.  How could this linear growth happen?  I suggest social bond breakdown, social thesis becomes social antithesis in an internal contradiction.