Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

Quite dry overall, and more an academic work. But the exploration of the different trends was genuinely interesting. The idea that those who invest in the S&P (etc) benefit from the destruction of people’s lives as it is this squeezing that causes growth, is one that had been on my mind before.

The proposal that meritocracy can harm less educated groups because it deprives them of smart people who would otherwise be forced to stay among them (at their own cost) is similar to the Patrick McKenzie thing of society getting increasingly efficient at concentrating the most able people in a small number of industries, leaving less able people to run everything else.