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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You’re still focusing on buying off the angry faction of the Trump Nation. These are all fine ideas for avoiding widespread homelessness and more opioid deaths. But opioid deaths aren’t really the problem. Our decreasing life expectancy among hopeless males isn’t the problem. Those are actually examples of a “social market economy” winnowing out the losers.

That’s harsh, but factual.

The real problem is the unemployable who aren’t dying any time soon. What do we do with them? I like UBI. But in that regard, I’m also buying them off.

The problem is they want meaning and dignity and many of them are not the brightest bulbs. I suggest trades, but I’m being unfair to tradespeople. A lot of these people can’t and won’t learn trades.

We’re being asked to find a way to give dignity and respect to a lot of people who haven’t seriously earned it. It strikes me a tad indulgent to narcissists. That’s why I think offering them their own little communities, detached from the rest, might work.

It’s a bizarre solution, but it’s a bizarre situation.

I'm not thinking about Trump voters. I'm thinking about my grandfather, who grew up on a farm in a Wyoming town that no longer exists, who never went to a day of college, and who made a life for himself and his children by learning a trade. He once told me that the only two institutions that had ever done anything for him were the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Democratic Party, although there were probably a few more (BPOE, e.g.). He's the kind of voter that Geoghehan piece speaks to. If a political party isn't going to help people like him, what good is it?