By Steve Sailer
07/27/2022
Many sectors of the Soviet economy tended to grow pretty robustly in the 1960s, but then in the 1970s things started to go wrong, often for obscure reasons, and by the 1980s clearly something was wrong.
The big problem of course was the communist system and its lack of incentives. But the difference in outcomes between the Soviet Union and the capitalist world hadnāt seemed all that huge in the 1960s. (My guess is that in the 1960s Soviet workers were still pretty scared from the Stalin Era, but also found their current Khrushchev Era bosses rather likable in that they werenāt as cruel as the old guys. But during the Brezhnev Era, workers lost their fear that theyād get sent to the Gulag and slacked off.)
As the world entered the āmalaiseā era of the 1970s (to use Jimmy Carterās term for his time), the Soviets seemed to get hit even harder by malaise.
A general impression Iāve had over the last 28 months is that many people have used COVID as an excuse to slack off, both in work and in personal standards (e.g., not bothering to buckle their safety belts or getting into brawls with other airline passengers). Much of wokeness involves denunciations of hard, painstaking work as an outmoded white male thing. Workers would rather play office politics over social media than, you know, work:
I hear that The New Yorker is finally making progress on diversity: they just fired a white person named Erin Somebody.
Oh ā¦ wait ā¦ uh, sorry about that, Erin.
But ā¦ you canāt make a diverse omelet without cracking some white eggs, so Iām sure you are OK with it.
Right? https://t.co/b2rYtdhjSu
ā Steve Sailer (@Steve_Sailer) July 26, 2022
These attitudes have spread even to video game design companies, like RockStar, maker of the lucrative Grand Theft Auto game that lets you pretend to be a gang member.
A reader points out a Daily Mail article from yesterday:
Zuckerberg fails to hide his irritation at worker who asked if extra āvacationā days will continue post-pandemic ā then doubles down by telling lazy staff āsome of you might just say this place isnāt for youā¦ and thatās ok with meā
Mark Zuckerberg was allegedly āvisibly frustratedā after being asked the question by one of Facebookās Chicago-based employees
He told the all-hands meeting on June 30 that there are a ābunch of peopleā at his company who āshouldnāt be hereā
Itās the latest of the [Silicon Valley] CEOās latest crack down on ālazyā staff after he provided a deluge of cushy benefits for employees during the coronavirus pandemic
In response, a Meta spokesperson said āAny company that wants to have a lasting impact must practice disciplined prioritization and work with a high level of intensity to reach goalsāBy CLAUDIA AORAHA, SENIOR REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 13:35 EDT, 26 July 2022 | UPDATED: 19:16 EDT, 26 July 2022
Itās hardly surprising that workers arenāt enthusiastic about reapplying their noses to the grindstone to make their billionaire bosses even richer.
The comments come after Zuckerberg fell out of the top ten list of the worldās richest billionaires in March due to his plummeting Meta stock. He currently ranks No. 17 on the list and has lost a marked $64.4 billion ā more than his current net worth of $61.1 billion.
Whatās interesting, though, are the various ways Wokeness is used to justify the New Laziness.
Will the tech billionaires figure out the connections between Wokeness and slacking off and cut back on Wokeness?