You touch on a subject that hits home for me. I am a white male, Gen X, and I got my work ethic from boomer parents and Greatest Gen grandparents. These people worked HARD, and I learned that this is really the only way to achieve the success one desires.
I came from nothing, and I treated my job as my most precious asset. I was grateful. I was in corporate America as a late 20-something in the early aughts, with several years of operations management experience. I had missed something like 2 days of work in 5 years.
Even then (2001ish) this particular company was very focused on what we now know as DEI, and they made it no secret that they were promoting women, and men will just have to figure it out. It was part of the management team's "development plan" and accepted that you pushed and promoted the minority classes of people while white males would get what is leftover or have to work exceedingly hard to get a promotion. My third month there I worked 24 days straight, 12 hrs a day to deal with the Q4 rush in sales (we were a fulfillment center). I was a salaried manager.
I had saved the company over $2 million in overtime costs that Q4 (through a major facilitywide innovation), and they gave me a small bonus in a closed-door meeting. $1000. They didn't want it publicized, because it would make my peer's jealous and "rock the boat." They said that they wanted more of that, because I went against groupthink and was fairly pushy about getting things done that were not popular. But I always engaged everyone politely. This is what they brought me in to do.
2 years later, I was in the same job, working 630am to 5pm every day, and in December again I had to work every day of the month up and through Christmas Eve. I was then passed up for a promotion for someone who fit the DEI "goals." I had nothing against her, and we worked fine together, but this person had a smaller department, and worked less hours. But she was what they wanted. I accepted it for what it is. I only know what was going on behind the scenes because my boss admitted to me that even though I got the highest evaluations on my performance review for two years straight (compared to peers), they could not "promote another white male at this time." Yeah, I made it to one of those "5% performers" clubs, where they were going to fast track you to higher levels of management.
I left and became a business owner. Although it is a different kind of stress, I have never looked back, and I will never allow other people to dictate my future and wellbeing based on an ideology again. I am still bitter about that experience today, and for everyone who thinks DEI in corporate America is a 10-yr old invention, I point to my experience. This has been happening for a long time, since around 2000. And, by the way, that company went from a Fortune 500 company to basically bankrupt, about 10 years after I left.
Sorry about the long response, but Mr. Carter's post resonated with me, because I've experienced it.
The truth is that more white males are going to be working in independent situations, trading, and other entrepreneurial destinies. Corporate America will be the realm of "stay in your lane" people who are taught to conform more than disrupt.
Please don’t be bitter. Many bad situations have silver linings. If it weren’t for the corporate BS you had to endure, you might still be in the corporate world and not be a successful independent business owner. That’s the favor they did for you. The past is the past.
My corporate experience was similar, but since I was towards the end of my career, I plotted my exit for a few years, and when the time was right, told them to lay me off. If I had not been treated poorly I’d probably still be sitting at my desk, afraid to leave because I was making great money, but constantly stressed out.
Instead, I was the one that won by walking away. I left Chicago and landed in a beautiful location in NC with great weather, a wonderful quality of life, and good people. Everyday I wake up and look at mountains. So the corporation with their BS policies and small minded people did me a huge favor, and I got the silver lining.
From a completely different arc, I had a similar-feeling experience a bit older than you. Long story short, I was hired to do professional technical work, I did professional technical work, they wanted unprofessional unethical sloppy work, I fought for two years to make them live up to their own stated standards, they reorganized my whole department so they could lay me off without firing me. (I found out it was coming and alerted my team so everyone had a soft landing except me.) Somewhere in there my mom died.
I was _*so angry*_, for years. It was a white hot and I still believe righteous anger, yet in the longer run it was the best thing that ever happened to me. My Christianity was transformed; thus, my life. In a mundane job sense, although I've had plenty of other ups and downs since then, digging out and discarding the roots of that anger would never have happened if they hadn't pushed me over the brink of what looked -and felt- like huge failure at the time. I don't view that as a silver lining but instead the whole thing as a blessing. I embrace the crucible that burned away some dross. Worldly mountaintops are fun to celebrate but real gold awaits in the valleys.
I'm a bit older than you and can confirm that what you describe has been a recognizable feature of the academic landscape/market since the 1980s, when I was in grad school.
My particular area of expertise was in the field of architecture and by the mid-1980s it was absolutely explicit that departments around the country intended to balance out the faculties because architecture tended to skew well over 90% male. It wasn't male dominated, it simply attracted more men than women due to the nature of the work required — both to acquire the degree and to get the certification.
And universities had absolutely zero hesitation in stating up front that they planned to hire more females, period. The institutional (systemic?) bias was so patent by 1989 — the year I received my doctorate — and the discrimination so insulting that I had no qualms about leaving as soon as it was feasible to do so. Mind you, this was maybe a decade and a half before your epiphany, therefore approximately half a generation ahead of your time line. If you have ever listened to Scott Adams' podcast (the proudly self-cancelled creator of Dilbert), he talks about the empirical fact that anti-male bigotry has been built into corporate America for almost half a century, and that he claims it is the leitmotif of his own career.
It is important to bear in mind that American university curricula were being laced with Marcuse and his Frankfurt School epigones in the 1960s. This was decades after they were received here by the State Department to help with the war effort and ten years after Ike made them all welcome at Columbia before he ran for President in '52.
If you have the inclination, I would encourage you to tackle 'Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left' by the late Roger Scuton (https://a.co/d/0cUnnwKw) where you will find a thoroughgoing archeology of the subversion of reason in the academy and it's ripples in the worlds of finance, law, politics, and the professions at large.
In short, this poison has been in the body politic since *my grandparents* were in their prime. Getting rid of it at this point is like extracting the eggs from a baked cake. Good luck.
By my era in the early 1980s, Structuralism, Semiotics, and Deconstruction had become the shiny new import in the Humanities, and it was less "lacing" than it was gavage -- force-feeding dangerous ideological nonsense as if it were "knowledge" or science. I detected the logical nonsense, but I am ashamed to think that I was naively swept up in some of the initial enthusiasm.
Diseased thinking and inhumane behavior are the natural outputs of posthuman "critical theory." Sadly, the requisite lesson of the study of history is epistemological humility; today's faculty and students know only their righteous assertions, ludicrous fallacies, idiotic incantations, and word magic.
I do not envy them the lesson they will be forced to learn. But I will enjoy the show.
Excellent point about the impact of school choice that I’ve not thought of. The kids who were home schooled or attended great charter schools are going to have an independent streak and will be the next generation of doers. They are going to see firsthand how those in their generation did not prosper because of the government run schools. They are going to know that Big Government is the problem. Watch the kids in this John Stossel video. Do you think they are going to settle for mediocrity in their work lives after what they already accomplished academically? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lN8urWXJuYw
agree a lot. But think you left out the trades. When Mike Rowe was doing Dirty Jobs he interviewed people who made a lot of money doing "trade" work. One guy owned a company that rented "Honey Buckets". He also emptied them and cleaned them himself as well as the people who worked for him You can learn to code without going to any type of school. Learning to operate a construction crane or build a bridge? Not so much. People who stay in corporations will basically phone it in. Take the abuse for the paycheck then leave or take an early out or retire. People who won't will go elsewhere or do else things. Probably run side hustles while at work. Doers will find something to do.
A big problem will be that you can't own a lot of stuff now. If you are an auto mechanic you have to have software and a lot of that is "leased" on a yearly basis, with costs going up every year. That will be another problem coming down the road.
There will be people that go into the trades, but that's not AI etc. Those jobs are necesssary and cash flow businesses, not scalable change the world software businesses
Not sure what you mean by scaleable. Also not sure AI isn't overhyped. Time will tell I guess. Supposedly Musk is using robots trained with AI to help build his Teslas. Maybe AI combined with robots can operate construction cranes??? At the end of the day you need product, a house, a car, a TV, clothes, shoes, a physical thing. It's getting from the idea to the actually physical thing that's the hard step.
The US Navy's new cruisers are a three years behind schedule. Why? High turnover rate, hard to find skilled workers, other problems. Learning to code isn't going to change that.
I agree, the trades are super important and squeezed - we could use a LOT of makers and doers gravitating in these directions. One thing they are doing around here is going back to using apprentices. All of the local trades we use are family owned, have old gray-haired guys, and on nearly every call bring along a young, often ethnic or foreign, helper who is learning the ropes (and often taking a course or several at community college or tech school). We always talk to them and they are uniformly polite, attentive, happy for the opportunity.
Another thing around here (we don't have a gigantic welfare state, so far) is that the Hispanics are everywhere helping each other. A common trajectory is a young man starting as a yard guy, becoming a captain, getting his own truck or starting a shop. Or construction or any other trade you'd like to mention. We had some fellas who were high school teachers and other white collar jobs back home, who did amazing masonry work rebuilding a 300-year-old stone chimney, with really humbling thoughtfulness & attention to detail. They tend to go to evangelical churches. Other early steps are getting a car and participating in, shall we say, community self-defense. Once established financially, it's time to marry. We can always tell when Hispanics have taken over a shabby neighborhood or trailer park: the trash goes away, flowers are planted, and they start building decks and whatnot.
On the software problem, I loathe SAAS, and am not sure it has a forever horizon. For now it's bad, you're right, for small business and trades, and also consumers. We can run our farm on relatively ancient equipment only because we have (and are increasing) skills to fix them. We have seen increasing small manufacturing of small parts for these engines, some of which have become cheap instead of nearly impossible to find.
I find AI completely uninteresting, to be honest. Things in the real world, on the other hand, are only going to keep getting more interesting. Can J. Random Whitecollar be a coder in his high-rise if the rest of us aren't growing food, fixing toilets, balancing the electric grid, etc., etc.? Doubt it.
It's the difference between steaming and owning the DVD. Except more serious. If you buy a tractor but have to update the software to run it\fix it every year at an increase in cost, who really owns it? Probably not really you. Ditto anything in a similar vein
Not a farmer or a trades person but know those who are. It's not a one-off complaint. Unfortunately not well known outside the people who have to deal with it. I think it will get worse. Heard from an auto mechanic that he has to have two code readers and the software has to be uploaded every year, and the cost increases for that software every year. They have to pass that on to the customers. Customers complain, they try to to explain but most think it's just their greed. I need a chip for my car. Last year $1K but may or may not have been needed and months to get here. I waited. This year, getting it is not a problem but now it's $2+K Ouch.
Great post, thank you! I agree with everything! Silicon Valley, despite it's CA potential headwinds, keeps pounding it out, decade after decade. Go Vegas!
Two things make me disagree about the cities you named, easing access to energy and the old axiom of the cheapest way to move anything is by water. The Great Lakes and the entire Mississippi River system become of interest again (look where the most of hard metal mines are in the US, as an example). You go right past one on Rte 61 up to Grand Marais. Where did 3M get its start? Two Harbors.
Going to get very interesting if they uncork the regs and let 3-d print really cut loose.
Particularly if 3-D print gets to go local, then all that ore need to be floated to all those old Great Lakes ports, where industry transport infrastructure still remains (rail) to the ports. A lot of it still is sitting there.
You are, as always right on point. Living in Boston now for 5 years, and under the shadow of NYC in Joisey for 25 more, I see your points. One question I have is what about Miami? I see a lot of companies moving there, not just in financial services, but many tech. But as also an Ex-Chicagoan, I see your point about what used to be the best large city in the country, now run by the Teacher's union...
I also had Miami come to mind, but one very important factor to consider is a ridiculously high crime rate.
Despite Florida seemingly being a location with many more benefits than disadvantages, it's going to come down to location and how Miami handles the ridiculous crime rate is imperative to its future growth and ability to continue to draw important business and technology down there, despite their tremendous successes they've experienced recently, particularly with crypto and Kenny Griffin, among others.
Couple thoughts. The roadblock for white male promotion, i.e., the predecessor of DEI started 40 years ago, when non-white, non-male hiring and promotion became vogue. Call it the effects or after-effects of Affirmative Action--what the Brits called positive discrimination was operative (what we've called reverse discrimination).
The large publicly traded company I worked for in corporate finance, after earning an MBA, went through a "soul searching," adding a Hispanic and a black woman to the board of directors (likely necessary for multiple reasons), while "retiring" two long-term white directors.
Thereafter, all hiring and promotion, in professional functions were effectively quota driven--essentially by the fear and sting of be accused of racial and sex discrimination (gender was not yet a term in use). The hiring or promotion of a white male needed to be accompanied by a non-white or a female. I was hired in tandem with a woman (my age, newly minted MBA). I left after five years as upward mobility was effectively blocked.
My career since has been entirely (one brief exception) in small independent and entrepreneurial enterprises, Wall St. related. Hard to believe as most think of Wall St. as the big banks, but there's a huge sub-culture of independent operations who swim below the radar.
Not everyone is cut out for the entrepreneurial life, just as not everyone is cut out for survival in a bureaucracy.
Jeff - a somewhat contrary opinion. I believe you are right that the doers are going to find new places to congregate. But Silicon Valley is weighed down by the rest of CA and the current megatechs (Apple, Google, Facebook among others). And New York - I hope you are kidding. New York is a dead city walking. It just isn't quite as obvious as Chicago. I also think you miss a lot of prospects in the Southeast - Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill, upstate South Carolina (think Greenville and Spartanburg). and the Space Coast in Florida to name a few. The other prospect for makers is radical decentralization. Starlink makes it possible to have a high speed internet connection anywhere in this country and it is only going to get better as the constellation expands and Starship starts launching batches of satellites of the full V2 configuration. Also note that Starlink is already offering a business service with significantly more bandwidth than the residential service. This is going to offer adventurous doers the opportunity to set up shop anywhere they can organize critical mass. The future could be very interesting but there is going to be some unpleasantness with the disruptions.
I would disagree about the inertia of both Silicon Valley and NYC. Friends in the VC community tell me NYC is the place to be right now. The southeast is an interesting place, but it's also a HIGHLY conforming place. Name the great engineering school in the southeast (I can point to several near Dallas).
Great engineering schools in the Southeast - Clemson (as noted below by Ataraxis), Georgia Tech, NC State (birthplace of Cree and its materials offspring Wolfspeed), and VA Tech. All of whom have reputations in industry of producing outstanding working engineers.
The next generation of doers is going to look for quality of life at a tolerable dollar cost. Not seeing that in NYC or Silicon Valley. Both to me appear on the cusp of decline, with ever increasing costs (fiscal and other) being imposed by state and local governments. And the cost of energy in those places is on an upward spiral that is accelerating - again thanks to state government policies. I'm pretty sure AI server farms aren't going to run on windmills and solar panels.
And as to the South being a 'highly conforming' place, I think you have some blinders on. It was true 50 years ago, and somewhat true 25 years ago. It is not true now.
I will give you GT. The South is changing from what it was for sure. I am a big fan. However, a lot of people have told me Dallas is the spot because of the local culture. That long history is hard to change (see Chicago).
Today, if a kid said to you, "I want to be a billionaire", what cities in the US would you send them to? For me, I'd say NYC or Silicon Valley. It's not always about the shitty govt, but about the other things that propel you.
It’s Clemson. Clemson has partnered with and taken advantage of BMW having their largest plant in the world in Spartanburg SC. BMW has already invested billions in SC and continues to invest more. Check out this Clemson Automotive Engineering campus. It’s really impressive. https://cuicar.com/campus/
Further, BMW’s suppliers have all set up shop in the area. There’s even a few suppliers in NC just over the SC border where I live. Also, Michelin’s North American headquarters are in Greenville.
While Clemson is focusing on automotive engineering, there are other local tech successes like aviation. Lockheed Martin moved their F-16 assembly line to Greenville in 2019. For perspective , Greenville has the same population as Evanston, and we all know they’re building nothing there. https://sc-tac.com/services/aerospace-and-aviation/
Honda Jet has its headquarters in Greensboro NC, and Boom Supersonic is building their factory there, too. The Research Triangle area in Raleigh, already a hub for medical technology, is also becoming a hub for Japanese companies in various industries. The Japanese Prime Minister recently visited NC State where there’s a Japan Center that promotes partnerships in academia and business with Japan.
So as you can see, the South East is establishing itself as an area friendly to high tech companies. Admittedly it’s not what most people think of when they think of the South. None of these companies could open up if there was not a skilled workforce available, but there obviously is. NC’s corporate tax is also scheduled to go to zero in 2030, so more good things will happen here.
NC offered incentives to Vinfast, the Vietnamese EV manufacturer, to build a multi billion dollar plant, but that’s going nowhere. Vinfast does not have a good reputation these days. But maybe NC could attract a major EV company in the future, as NC has made it known that they’re open for business.
Agree 100%. I think the NC politicians are slowly realizing this. They’re somewhat fiscally responsible and do many things right, especially tax policy, but it’s just a pork barrel policy they have not yet stopped. To their credit, many tax incentives they offered to companies were rescinded and never granted when companies did not do what they said they would do. But it needs to stop.
EVs are a dead end without a completely rebuilt grid, though, as far as I've been reading. Subsidies are/were all that's keeping them afloat. Look at the used EV market -- I just read recently they went from a $246 (pos or neg, I don't recall) difference against gas cars in February (or something like that) to a $2,460 (neg) difference in May. Ah, this isn't what I read before but looks like a different article on the same report:
There are two and only two absolute certainties in life:
1) it changes
2) it ends
Now, a thought did occur that there will be a slim minority of students hired from Ivies, who I have deservedly much maligned, who chose to go there for a particular area of study which they deemed better than other universities for that field of study, but they will be unusual personalities and much different than the majority of their former student body.
The currently established powers that be attempting to keep things status quo in cities like Chicago and Boston and New York lack vision and will go to their graves suffering from denial of reality as it relates to the changing landscapes.
Not only does Dallas have those things which you mentioned, it also has a very important and valuable attribute - a firmly entrenched power structure that has been more focused on, and continues to be focused on, results being more important than bs rhetoric. Even at the expense of offending the old boys network, they realize that cash is King and reality is King, and sometimes doing what is best for the greater good of the community that is not best for the most profit, is necessary for intermediate and long-term gain, even if it comes at the expense of short-term gain. The difference between them and big city Democrats up north is the big city Democrats pay lip service with their deceitful rhetoric to a similar credo, but do not follow through because they know if they do it will cost them their careers.
It will be a beautiful thing to see and I hope I'm alive long enough to witness it.
Agree with lots. There are way too many bullshit corporate jobs. A major issue is what to do with smart people who are not entrepreneurs and/or just risk averse. And AI is going to make the issue larger. A couple disagreements: more school choice is overrated. Most people already have it. The wealthy go private. The middle class move towns. Most polls show most people like their public schools. Private isn't a panacea. Most private non-parochial schools in Chicago lean pretty left, even if sometimes benignly. And Texas has some headwinds due to its abortion extremism. Companies have an impediment to recruiting smart young women with choices into the state. I know of more than 1 person who has avoided the state due to the issue.
You touch on a subject that hits home for me. I am a white male, Gen X, and I got my work ethic from boomer parents and Greatest Gen grandparents. These people worked HARD, and I learned that this is really the only way to achieve the success one desires.
I came from nothing, and I treated my job as my most precious asset. I was grateful. I was in corporate America as a late 20-something in the early aughts, with several years of operations management experience. I had missed something like 2 days of work in 5 years.
Even then (2001ish) this particular company was very focused on what we now know as DEI, and they made it no secret that they were promoting women, and men will just have to figure it out. It was part of the management team's "development plan" and accepted that you pushed and promoted the minority classes of people while white males would get what is leftover or have to work exceedingly hard to get a promotion. My third month there I worked 24 days straight, 12 hrs a day to deal with the Q4 rush in sales (we were a fulfillment center). I was a salaried manager.
I had saved the company over $2 million in overtime costs that Q4 (through a major facilitywide innovation), and they gave me a small bonus in a closed-door meeting. $1000. They didn't want it publicized, because it would make my peer's jealous and "rock the boat." They said that they wanted more of that, because I went against groupthink and was fairly pushy about getting things done that were not popular. But I always engaged everyone politely. This is what they brought me in to do.
2 years later, I was in the same job, working 630am to 5pm every day, and in December again I had to work every day of the month up and through Christmas Eve. I was then passed up for a promotion for someone who fit the DEI "goals." I had nothing against her, and we worked fine together, but this person had a smaller department, and worked less hours. But she was what they wanted. I accepted it for what it is. I only know what was going on behind the scenes because my boss admitted to me that even though I got the highest evaluations on my performance review for two years straight (compared to peers), they could not "promote another white male at this time." Yeah, I made it to one of those "5% performers" clubs, where they were going to fast track you to higher levels of management.
I left and became a business owner. Although it is a different kind of stress, I have never looked back, and I will never allow other people to dictate my future and wellbeing based on an ideology again. I am still bitter about that experience today, and for everyone who thinks DEI in corporate America is a 10-yr old invention, I point to my experience. This has been happening for a long time, since around 2000. And, by the way, that company went from a Fortune 500 company to basically bankrupt, about 10 years after I left.
Sorry about the long response, but Mr. Carter's post resonated with me, because I've experienced it.
The truth is that more white males are going to be working in independent situations, trading, and other entrepreneurial destinies. Corporate America will be the realm of "stay in your lane" people who are taught to conform more than disrupt.
They couldn't pay me enough to go back.
Please don’t be bitter. Many bad situations have silver linings. If it weren’t for the corporate BS you had to endure, you might still be in the corporate world and not be a successful independent business owner. That’s the favor they did for you. The past is the past.
My corporate experience was similar, but since I was towards the end of my career, I plotted my exit for a few years, and when the time was right, told them to lay me off. If I had not been treated poorly I’d probably still be sitting at my desk, afraid to leave because I was making great money, but constantly stressed out.
Instead, I was the one that won by walking away. I left Chicago and landed in a beautiful location in NC with great weather, a wonderful quality of life, and good people. Everyday I wake up and look at mountains. So the corporation with their BS policies and small minded people did me a huge favor, and I got the silver lining.
From a completely different arc, I had a similar-feeling experience a bit older than you. Long story short, I was hired to do professional technical work, I did professional technical work, they wanted unprofessional unethical sloppy work, I fought for two years to make them live up to their own stated standards, they reorganized my whole department so they could lay me off without firing me. (I found out it was coming and alerted my team so everyone had a soft landing except me.) Somewhere in there my mom died.
I was _*so angry*_, for years. It was a white hot and I still believe righteous anger, yet in the longer run it was the best thing that ever happened to me. My Christianity was transformed; thus, my life. In a mundane job sense, although I've had plenty of other ups and downs since then, digging out and discarding the roots of that anger would never have happened if they hadn't pushed me over the brink of what looked -and felt- like huge failure at the time. I don't view that as a silver lining but instead the whole thing as a blessing. I embrace the crucible that burned away some dross. Worldly mountaintops are fun to celebrate but real gold awaits in the valleys.
I'm a bit older than you and can confirm that what you describe has been a recognizable feature of the academic landscape/market since the 1980s, when I was in grad school.
My particular area of expertise was in the field of architecture and by the mid-1980s it was absolutely explicit that departments around the country intended to balance out the faculties because architecture tended to skew well over 90% male. It wasn't male dominated, it simply attracted more men than women due to the nature of the work required — both to acquire the degree and to get the certification.
And universities had absolutely zero hesitation in stating up front that they planned to hire more females, period. The institutional (systemic?) bias was so patent by 1989 — the year I received my doctorate — and the discrimination so insulting that I had no qualms about leaving as soon as it was feasible to do so. Mind you, this was maybe a decade and a half before your epiphany, therefore approximately half a generation ahead of your time line. If you have ever listened to Scott Adams' podcast (the proudly self-cancelled creator of Dilbert), he talks about the empirical fact that anti-male bigotry has been built into corporate America for almost half a century, and that he claims it is the leitmotif of his own career.
It is important to bear in mind that American university curricula were being laced with Marcuse and his Frankfurt School epigones in the 1960s. This was decades after they were received here by the State Department to help with the war effort and ten years after Ike made them all welcome at Columbia before he ran for President in '52.
If you have the inclination, I would encourage you to tackle 'Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left' by the late Roger Scuton (https://a.co/d/0cUnnwKw) where you will find a thoroughgoing archeology of the subversion of reason in the academy and it's ripples in the worlds of finance, law, politics, and the professions at large.
In short, this poison has been in the body politic since *my grandparents* were in their prime. Getting rid of it at this point is like extracting the eggs from a baked cake. Good luck.
By my era in the early 1980s, Structuralism, Semiotics, and Deconstruction had become the shiny new import in the Humanities, and it was less "lacing" than it was gavage -- force-feeding dangerous ideological nonsense as if it were "knowledge" or science. I detected the logical nonsense, but I am ashamed to think that I was naively swept up in some of the initial enthusiasm.
Diseased thinking and inhumane behavior are the natural outputs of posthuman "critical theory." Sadly, the requisite lesson of the study of history is epistemological humility; today's faculty and students know only their righteous assertions, ludicrous fallacies, idiotic incantations, and word magic.
I do not envy them the lesson they will be forced to learn. But I will enjoy the show.
Excellent point about the impact of school choice that I’ve not thought of. The kids who were home schooled or attended great charter schools are going to have an independent streak and will be the next generation of doers. They are going to see firsthand how those in their generation did not prosper because of the government run schools. They are going to know that Big Government is the problem. Watch the kids in this John Stossel video. Do you think they are going to settle for mediocrity in their work lives after what they already accomplished academically? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lN8urWXJuYw
Just came back from Dallas tower cranes everywhere still lots of open space, good roads, lakes and lots of very bright people
agree a lot. But think you left out the trades. When Mike Rowe was doing Dirty Jobs he interviewed people who made a lot of money doing "trade" work. One guy owned a company that rented "Honey Buckets". He also emptied them and cleaned them himself as well as the people who worked for him You can learn to code without going to any type of school. Learning to operate a construction crane or build a bridge? Not so much. People who stay in corporations will basically phone it in. Take the abuse for the paycheck then leave or take an early out or retire. People who won't will go elsewhere or do else things. Probably run side hustles while at work. Doers will find something to do.
A big problem will be that you can't own a lot of stuff now. If you are an auto mechanic you have to have software and a lot of that is "leased" on a yearly basis, with costs going up every year. That will be another problem coming down the road.
There will be people that go into the trades, but that's not AI etc. Those jobs are necesssary and cash flow businesses, not scalable change the world software businesses
Not sure what you mean by scaleable. Also not sure AI isn't overhyped. Time will tell I guess. Supposedly Musk is using robots trained with AI to help build his Teslas. Maybe AI combined with robots can operate construction cranes??? At the end of the day you need product, a house, a car, a TV, clothes, shoes, a physical thing. It's getting from the idea to the actually physical thing that's the hard step.
The US Navy's new cruisers are a three years behind schedule. Why? High turnover rate, hard to find skilled workers, other problems. Learning to code isn't going to change that.
I agree, the trades are super important and squeezed - we could use a LOT of makers and doers gravitating in these directions. One thing they are doing around here is going back to using apprentices. All of the local trades we use are family owned, have old gray-haired guys, and on nearly every call bring along a young, often ethnic or foreign, helper who is learning the ropes (and often taking a course or several at community college or tech school). We always talk to them and they are uniformly polite, attentive, happy for the opportunity.
Another thing around here (we don't have a gigantic welfare state, so far) is that the Hispanics are everywhere helping each other. A common trajectory is a young man starting as a yard guy, becoming a captain, getting his own truck or starting a shop. Or construction or any other trade you'd like to mention. We had some fellas who were high school teachers and other white collar jobs back home, who did amazing masonry work rebuilding a 300-year-old stone chimney, with really humbling thoughtfulness & attention to detail. They tend to go to evangelical churches. Other early steps are getting a car and participating in, shall we say, community self-defense. Once established financially, it's time to marry. We can always tell when Hispanics have taken over a shabby neighborhood or trailer park: the trash goes away, flowers are planted, and they start building decks and whatnot.
On the software problem, I loathe SAAS, and am not sure it has a forever horizon. For now it's bad, you're right, for small business and trades, and also consumers. We can run our farm on relatively ancient equipment only because we have (and are increasing) skills to fix them. We have seen increasing small manufacturing of small parts for these engines, some of which have become cheap instead of nearly impossible to find.
I find AI completely uninteresting, to be honest. Things in the real world, on the other hand, are only going to keep getting more interesting. Can J. Random Whitecollar be a coder in his high-rise if the rest of us aren't growing food, fixing toilets, balancing the electric grid, etc., etc.? Doubt it.
It's the difference between steaming and owning the DVD. Except more serious. If you buy a tractor but have to update the software to run it\fix it every year at an increase in cost, who really owns it? Probably not really you. Ditto anything in a similar vein
On the nose. I could go on and on ;)
Not a farmer or a trades person but know those who are. It's not a one-off complaint. Unfortunately not well known outside the people who have to deal with it. I think it will get worse. Heard from an auto mechanic that he has to have two code readers and the software has to be uploaded every year, and the cost increases for that software every year. They have to pass that on to the customers. Customers complain, they try to to explain but most think it's just their greed. I need a chip for my car. Last year $1K but may or may not have been needed and months to get here. I waited. This year, getting it is not a problem but now it's $2+K Ouch.
Great post, thank you! I agree with everything! Silicon Valley, despite it's CA potential headwinds, keeps pounding it out, decade after decade. Go Vegas!
Two things make me disagree about the cities you named, easing access to energy and the old axiom of the cheapest way to move anything is by water. The Great Lakes and the entire Mississippi River system become of interest again (look where the most of hard metal mines are in the US, as an example). You go right past one on Rte 61 up to Grand Marais. Where did 3M get its start? Two Harbors.
Going to get very interesting if they uncork the regs and let 3-d print really cut loose.
Hard metal is important. AI/Quantum won't need it but will utilize it.
Particularly if 3-D print gets to go local, then all that ore need to be floated to all those old Great Lakes ports, where industry transport infrastructure still remains (rail) to the ports. A lot of it still is sitting there.
Thoughts about Nashville vs Dallas?
Dallas is so much bigger. Ironically, Nashville is becoming a center for conservative thought. My friend Roger Simon and others moved there.
You are, as always right on point. Living in Boston now for 5 years, and under the shadow of NYC in Joisey for 25 more, I see your points. One question I have is what about Miami? I see a lot of companies moving there, not just in financial services, but many tech. But as also an Ex-Chicagoan, I see your point about what used to be the best large city in the country, now run by the Teacher's union...
I also had Miami come to mind, but one very important factor to consider is a ridiculously high crime rate.
Despite Florida seemingly being a location with many more benefits than disadvantages, it's going to come down to location and how Miami handles the ridiculous crime rate is imperative to its future growth and ability to continue to draw important business and technology down there, despite their tremendous successes they've experienced recently, particularly with crypto and Kenny Griffin, among others.
Couple thoughts. The roadblock for white male promotion, i.e., the predecessor of DEI started 40 years ago, when non-white, non-male hiring and promotion became vogue. Call it the effects or after-effects of Affirmative Action--what the Brits called positive discrimination was operative (what we've called reverse discrimination).
The large publicly traded company I worked for in corporate finance, after earning an MBA, went through a "soul searching," adding a Hispanic and a black woman to the board of directors (likely necessary for multiple reasons), while "retiring" two long-term white directors.
Thereafter, all hiring and promotion, in professional functions were effectively quota driven--essentially by the fear and sting of be accused of racial and sex discrimination (gender was not yet a term in use). The hiring or promotion of a white male needed to be accompanied by a non-white or a female. I was hired in tandem with a woman (my age, newly minted MBA). I left after five years as upward mobility was effectively blocked.
My career since has been entirely (one brief exception) in small independent and entrepreneurial enterprises, Wall St. related. Hard to believe as most think of Wall St. as the big banks, but there's a huge sub-culture of independent operations who swim below the radar.
Not everyone is cut out for the entrepreneurial life, just as not everyone is cut out for survival in a bureaucracy.
Jeff - a somewhat contrary opinion. I believe you are right that the doers are going to find new places to congregate. But Silicon Valley is weighed down by the rest of CA and the current megatechs (Apple, Google, Facebook among others). And New York - I hope you are kidding. New York is a dead city walking. It just isn't quite as obvious as Chicago. I also think you miss a lot of prospects in the Southeast - Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill, upstate South Carolina (think Greenville and Spartanburg). and the Space Coast in Florida to name a few. The other prospect for makers is radical decentralization. Starlink makes it possible to have a high speed internet connection anywhere in this country and it is only going to get better as the constellation expands and Starship starts launching batches of satellites of the full V2 configuration. Also note that Starlink is already offering a business service with significantly more bandwidth than the residential service. This is going to offer adventurous doers the opportunity to set up shop anywhere they can organize critical mass. The future could be very interesting but there is going to be some unpleasantness with the disruptions.
I would disagree about the inertia of both Silicon Valley and NYC. Friends in the VC community tell me NYC is the place to be right now. The southeast is an interesting place, but it's also a HIGHLY conforming place. Name the great engineering school in the southeast (I can point to several near Dallas).
Great engineering schools in the Southeast - Clemson (as noted below by Ataraxis), Georgia Tech, NC State (birthplace of Cree and its materials offspring Wolfspeed), and VA Tech. All of whom have reputations in industry of producing outstanding working engineers.
The next generation of doers is going to look for quality of life at a tolerable dollar cost. Not seeing that in NYC or Silicon Valley. Both to me appear on the cusp of decline, with ever increasing costs (fiscal and other) being imposed by state and local governments. And the cost of energy in those places is on an upward spiral that is accelerating - again thanks to state government policies. I'm pretty sure AI server farms aren't going to run on windmills and solar panels.
And as to the South being a 'highly conforming' place, I think you have some blinders on. It was true 50 years ago, and somewhat true 25 years ago. It is not true now.
I will give you GT. The South is changing from what it was for sure. I am a big fan. However, a lot of people have told me Dallas is the spot because of the local culture. That long history is hard to change (see Chicago).
Today, if a kid said to you, "I want to be a billionaire", what cities in the US would you send them to? For me, I'd say NYC or Silicon Valley. It's not always about the shitty govt, but about the other things that propel you.
It’s Clemson. Clemson has partnered with and taken advantage of BMW having their largest plant in the world in Spartanburg SC. BMW has already invested billions in SC and continues to invest more. Check out this Clemson Automotive Engineering campus. It’s really impressive. https://cuicar.com/campus/
Further, BMW’s suppliers have all set up shop in the area. There’s even a few suppliers in NC just over the SC border where I live. Also, Michelin’s North American headquarters are in Greenville.
While Clemson is focusing on automotive engineering, there are other local tech successes like aviation. Lockheed Martin moved their F-16 assembly line to Greenville in 2019. For perspective , Greenville has the same population as Evanston, and we all know they’re building nothing there. https://sc-tac.com/services/aerospace-and-aviation/
Pratt and Whitney has a new jet engine plant in Asheville where they build engines for the F-35. https://www.prattwhitney.com/en/newsroom/news/2022/11/16/pw-world-class-north-carolina-turbine-airfoil-production-facility-nears-operational-capability.
Honda Jet has its headquarters in Greensboro NC, and Boom Supersonic is building their factory there, too. The Research Triangle area in Raleigh, already a hub for medical technology, is also becoming a hub for Japanese companies in various industries. The Japanese Prime Minister recently visited NC State where there’s a Japan Center that promotes partnerships in academia and business with Japan.
So as you can see, the South East is establishing itself as an area friendly to high tech companies. Admittedly it’s not what most people think of when they think of the South. None of these companies could open up if there was not a skilled workforce available, but there obviously is. NC’s corporate tax is also scheduled to go to zero in 2030, so more good things will happen here.
Could Tesla happen there? Cool that Boom is there.
NC offered incentives to Vinfast, the Vietnamese EV manufacturer, to build a multi billion dollar plant, but that’s going nowhere. Vinfast does not have a good reputation these days. But maybe NC could attract a major EV company in the future, as NC has made it known that they’re open for business.
BMW’s next multi billion dollar investment in SC is going to be for EVs. Here is one of the main keys to BMW success in SC, rail access to Atlantic ports for exports. The ports listed are not what you first think of when you think of East Coast ports. https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/usa/article/detail/T0368614EN_US/eight-years-in-a-row:-bmw-manufacturing-is-largest-automotive-exporter-in-the-united-states
Govt incentives are worthless. See Silicon Valley and NYC.
Agree 100%. I think the NC politicians are slowly realizing this. They’re somewhat fiscally responsible and do many things right, especially tax policy, but it’s just a pork barrel policy they have not yet stopped. To their credit, many tax incentives they offered to companies were rescinded and never granted when companies did not do what they said they would do. But it needs to stop.
EVs are a dead end without a completely rebuilt grid, though, as far as I've been reading. Subsidies are/were all that's keeping them afloat. Look at the used EV market -- I just read recently they went from a $246 (pos or neg, I don't recall) difference against gas cars in February (or something like that) to a $2,460 (neg) difference in May. Ah, this isn't what I read before but looks like a different article on the same report:
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1143483_used-ev-prices-have-plummeted-now-stand-below-ice-prices
Outstanding synopsis of what's happening in the Southeast these days.
One of your best articles, spot on 100% accurate.
There are two and only two absolute certainties in life:
1) it changes
2) it ends
Now, a thought did occur that there will be a slim minority of students hired from Ivies, who I have deservedly much maligned, who chose to go there for a particular area of study which they deemed better than other universities for that field of study, but they will be unusual personalities and much different than the majority of their former student body.
The currently established powers that be attempting to keep things status quo in cities like Chicago and Boston and New York lack vision and will go to their graves suffering from denial of reality as it relates to the changing landscapes.
Not only does Dallas have those things which you mentioned, it also has a very important and valuable attribute - a firmly entrenched power structure that has been more focused on, and continues to be focused on, results being more important than bs rhetoric. Even at the expense of offending the old boys network, they realize that cash is King and reality is King, and sometimes doing what is best for the greater good of the community that is not best for the most profit, is necessary for intermediate and long-term gain, even if it comes at the expense of short-term gain. The difference between them and big city Democrats up north is the big city Democrats pay lip service with their deceitful rhetoric to a similar credo, but do not follow through because they know if they do it will cost them their careers.
It will be a beautiful thing to see and I hope I'm alive long enough to witness it.
You mentioned quantum computing...I'd think that would be one example o a field where college, and probably grad school, is still necessary.
Agree with lots. There are way too many bullshit corporate jobs. A major issue is what to do with smart people who are not entrepreneurs and/or just risk averse. And AI is going to make the issue larger. A couple disagreements: more school choice is overrated. Most people already have it. The wealthy go private. The middle class move towns. Most polls show most people like their public schools. Private isn't a panacea. Most private non-parochial schools in Chicago lean pretty left, even if sometimes benignly. And Texas has some headwinds due to its abortion extremism. Companies have an impediment to recruiting smart young women with choices into the state. I know of more than 1 person who has avoided the state due to the issue.