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The unfortunate aspects of Whole Food’s CEO John Mackey’s comments about youth being “lazy socialists” is that they are generally neither lazy nor socialists!
This is important for our After Capitalism journey. The lazy word is being tossed around a lot. The Great Resignation for sure has raised its profile. Google Trends shows a steady uptick in “lazy” as a search term in 2022. As people desperately search for answers to the Great Resignation, I’d guess laziness appears in the Top 5. Have we suddenly got lazy? Nah. I’ve suggested the trend toward people caring less about their jobs has been going on for years driven by several things, but chiefly values shifts. And the pandemic simply turbo-charged that trend. Lazy is an easy answer that’s really kinda silly. The other spot we see lazy popping up is when we talk about UBI or anything to do with the post-work future, aka the laziness lie. If we give people money, or if people don’t have to work, they will get lazy and do bad things. Early returns from UBI trials suggest the opposite. Will some people be lazy, sure, but it’s really a strawman.
The socialist word is also being tossed around a lot – in this case Google Trends shows the term was more popular during the election campaign. Do we really think youth are committed socialists just waiting to get their hands on the levers of power? C’mon. It’s almost embarrassing to have address this. We’ve seen the surveys of youth being opposed to capitalism. I totally believe that. But does that make them supporters of socialism? No. “If you had to choose between capitalism and socialism…“ so they say socialism. I bet most could not even define it! And I’m not blaming them. I am actually happy they are not socialists, because I think that concept – fairly or not – is a non-starter. They don’t know what they want, other than change. It’s on us to offer positive guiding alternative images. In a nutshell, that’s our work here with After Capitalism. – Andy Hines
[…] 20-80 is similar to the lazy socialists fear – people will just sit around and do nothing. It’s different in that it is not the obvious […]