The discussion about layoffs is a bit high level. Often there is no impact for a period of time. But at some point in the longer term the lack of actual work being done or being done shoddily ends up causing the company to be destroyed. Lay off half of the accounts receivable staff and eventually you’ll stop collecting income… Romney and Bain were good at this. Lay off folks, rack up debt, cash out, and then the company dies.

Love the comments on Ben Sasse. 100% accurate.

So I see AOC has tweeted against “usury” and actually used that name for it. Hmmmm, now who said this would be a good idea. LOL

What’s next in crazytown after the tranny craze?

Easy, pedos. They are already rebranding themselves as MAPs. Minor Attracted Persons.

I grew up in the 70s and swallowed the libertarian line that Reagan in the 80s had saved the economy from stagnation. If instead, this was just the beginning of the financialization/corporatization/homogenization of everything, then what should we have done differently back then to improve the economy? Obviously, there isn’t an easy answer and there are a lot of opinions, but do you have any recommendations re smart people discussing this?

Haven’t listened yet, but I am going to throw my hat in the ring anyway. What people crave these days, more than money or happiness, is social acceptance, “likes”, and accolades from their “peers”. Reality has nothing to do with any of that, so they shape these strange ideas and arguments into some sort of half-baked thing, and then proudly hold it up to receive the applause. GW Bush set the stage with half-truths, Obama showed how it was done, and now we get full-on crazy as some sort of mainstream thing. Reality will bust in one of these days,… Read more »

It seems to me that the best answer for why we’ve collectively lost our mind, and the ability to see things clearly, is moral failure on the part of ourselves (or at least our antecedents). This is a central theme in the writings of Dr Jones: the more one engages in a particular type of sin, the more they become blinded to the obvious sins and defects in others. Someone living a casual sex lifestyle has little to criticize homosexuals for, because all they know is transient rubbing of genitals with strangers. To me, a family man, it all seems… Read more »

Z, you mentioned that young guys seem dainty. I don’t dispute. I’m young and I feel the effeminizing influences within myself. What’s maddening is that it is against my will. And I don’t really know how to stop it. My father is a good, honest man, but not much in the way of a masculine role model. I weightlift, read voraciously, love history, heavily restrict my media consumption, and take every opportunity to rough it. But I feel like I’m fighting a battle I don’t know how to win. Meanwhile it seems like the entire purpose of corporate America is… Read more »

Great podcast as usual. Upon a time, being crazy got you eaten by a predator, or frozen to death, or drowned, or perhaps even led to starvation. Win-win because you likely didn’t get to reproduce first. We’ve passed the point where crazy no longer gets you dead, but in fact our modern society now rewards crazy and we live in a vicious cycle in which crazy in growing a warp speed. Sooner or later, the gravy train will get derailed by the mounting crazy, and then it’s Katy bar to door.

Re the point about how people/families didn’t move around as much a few decades ago: I’m 45, so have some memory of the older sensibilities. My parents were from Brooklyn / Long Island, and lived in CT when first married. When I was 8 we moved to NJ. Parents still live in NJ now. Most everyone I knew was similar. Either they grew up their whole life in the same state, and if they moved they didn’t move very far, or to a place with wildly different sensibilities. When in HS I had a good friend who was 2nd generation… Read more »

Women. Without the flooding of our public spaces and institutions by estrogen, our culture would not be half as crazy as it is. When it comes to life outside the domestic sphere or ancillary roles within male institutions, women are an invasive species. They have taken every male institution which has admitted them and turned them into Maoist daycare centers with 24/7 soap opera performances. Amendatio XIX delenda est.

Z-man, since you are discussing the “roots of madness”, here’s the latest from academia: https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/05/17/college-board-will-add-adversity-score-everyone-taking-sat?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=fc59b6bf61-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-fc59b6bf61-197501385&mc_cid=fc59b6bf61&mc_eid=7dee4d8f40 For those who have lives, let me summarize. Inside Higher Education is a blog read by recalcitrant academics. The article referenced above describes a new additional rating/scoring system add-on for the SAT’s. College admission scores have for years described the HBD differences between the races wrt college readiness and ability to do the required work. Try as hard as they might, the university educational “experts” have not been able to upgrade the scores of their minority applicants and the awarding of “extra points” based on… Read more »

Required reading on the subject of escalating insanity caused by leftist virtue-signaling purity spirals:

“Explaining the Cultural Revolution: signalling arms races as bad fiat currency”

https://spandrell.com/2015/02/19/explaining-the-cultural-revolution-signalling-arms-races-as-bad-fiat-currency/

A tour de force. I thought this was great. In on a plane and plan to listen to it all over again to see what I missed the first time.

You’ve nailed it here, Z man. A passionate and incisive podcast.

When you are eradicated from the internet in the next year or two, it will be due to your insights on the dark nature of modern capitalism. You see too clearly – you are Syme.

You touch on a question in the beginning that I hope you eventually address more thoroughly-is this current age of change really unprecedented? You do a great job of addressing why the modern age’s pathologies have unique modern etiologies, but every change in history will of course be unique and contingent upon its own set of contemporary circumstances. You describe the unique aspects and natural history of the modernity virus, but not “is it deadly?” or “how long have I got doc?” or “is it treatable?” As a younger person, the question of whether modernity is uniquely changing too fast… Read more »

good big brained episode

This may be the single most insightful podcast yet and I have heard them all.

Lay-offs… I’ve seen lots of them. They are generally pretty random. Senior Management pulls the trigger then waits a couple of months to see if other people are able to pick up the slack. If the work is still getting done, fine. If stuff isn’t getting done, or people are at the breaking point and actually get in their faces, they backtrack and start refilling some of those positions.