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How the baby boomers destroyed everything

6 pointsby teslacarabout 8 years ago

1 comment

charles-salviaabout 8 years ago
I&#x27;m not a baby boomer, so I have no interest in defending them, but there&#x27;s something inherently tautological about this whole line of reasoning. The argument is basically &quot;everything sucks right now, so blame the largest voting bloc&#x2F;age-group&quot;. I mean, yeah, that line of reasoning is more or less valid in any moderately-functioning democracy. But it doesn&#x27;t really actually <i>explain</i> anything useful. I mean, it&#x27;s not like people born in the period after WW2 to the mid 60s are somehow genetically predisposed to be complete sociopaths.<p>I realize the article attempts to touch a bit on <i>why</i> the baby boomers may have been psychologically predisposed to be so irresponsible (raised on TV or something), but that seems pretty hand-wavy. The reality is it&#x27;s simply human nature to take the path of least resistance and put off solving hard problems in favor of easy short-term gains. And after WW2, America experienced unprecedented economic growth as a new emergent industrial superpower. But that kind of growth can&#x27;t last forever. The baby-boomers were just around at the right time to benefit from it, and their natural human short-sightedness pretty much guaranteed they wouldn&#x27;t prioritize making decisions that benefited future generations.