23 Comments
User's avatar
тна Return to thread
Tom Owens's avatar

This is a great point that strengthens the argument. So many hidden costs in a morally degenerating society...

Expand full comment
slumlord's avatar

The decay in social capital is far greater than the decay in economic potential. I would argue that the decay in social capital is responsible for the decay in earnings capability.

For example, previous generations used to worry about the burden of government debt on future generations, and this was a huge factor in policy debates. Today, there is no such debate. Concern for posterity has gone out the window in today's culture. I think it is more a metric of how little we care for the young and how much the living generations only care for themselves.

Seriously, History will judge the Boomer generation harshly.

Expand full comment
Tom Owens's avatar

One of my weird theories of everything is that fiat money is a prime underminer of public morality. Artificially low interest rates reward the immoral, whose behavior is mimetically syndicated to the rest of society:

https://tomowens.substack.com/p/book-review-the-price-of-time-by

Expand full comment