Back of the envelope calculations put the cost of car ownership around $7,000 per year. I'd have to earn an extra $10,000 before tax to cover that. That pays for a lot of "overpriced Apple products" that we millenials are constantly blamed for overspending on. And my electronics are a business expense.
I can't see the use case for a car. I live in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of montreal. Everything I need is literally a five minute walk away in any direction. A bike gets me downtown about as fast as a car does in summer, the metro can often cross town faster, and taxis are a minute's call away. You can pay for a lot of taxis with the money saved not buying a car.
Meanwhile, if I had had the cost of running a car, I would have gone bankrupt on several occasions while bootstrapping my business. For no tangible benefit. Now that I've got financial stability, I still can't see why I would want one. If I car to drive myself, there are communauto stations all around me (Montreal equivalent of Zipcar).
If I moved to the suburbs, things would be different, but I have no intent of moving to the suburbs.
"Back of the envelope calculations put the cost of car ownership around $7,000 per year."
You could buy a ten-year-old used car every year, plus insurance, for $2,000 or less [1] (assuming insurance is mostly the same as in the US). When it breaks down, buy a new one and sell the old one for parts or junk.
Owning a car provides courses of action you wouldn't consider without it. There's an extra level of planning involved if you have to try to find a car first, or take a train or airplane; if you have a car, the first step to any medium-length trip is to jump in the car, rather than to try to work out the logistics of how you'd get there.
>> I can't see the use case for a car. I live in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of montreal. Everything I need is literally a five minute walk away in any direction. A bike gets me downtown about as fast as a car does in summer, the metro can often cross town faster, and taxis are a minute's call away. You can pay for a lot of taxis with the money saved not buying a car.
You have to love the media: "The boomers voted themselves healthcare on their kids backs, made their kids go into crushing debt for education, put basic housing out of reach for them and look to be financing their retirement via them. How come those darn kids aren't buying cars?"
I think they answered their question halfway through.
Total student debt in the US is currently about $1,134,752,535,374.00 and increasing at a rate of about $2,853.88 per second.
The article title is linkbait -- any generation that spends that amount of money isn't "cheap" (I think the word "exploited" is probably more appropriate).
I'm not sure which letter applies to me, but I'm still under 30. Whenever I think about a car, I think about where I'd park it (either on the street and risk nature damage, or fork some extra cash every month for a parking spot), the cost of gas (more cash), the nightmare that is driving in the city center, finding a place to park it (usually, involving even more cash), maintenance (cash) and the cost to the environment. And what would I get for that? Reducing my commute 15 minutes, and being designated driver at the weekends. Small, electric cars would solve some of those problems, but car makers insist we don't want them.
I really think they are asking the wrong question - instead of "why aren't 'millenials' buying cars?", they should ask "why would millenials buy a car on the first place?".
I'm a Millenial and I enjoy owning a car, but I definitely don't care about it as an indicator of social status the way older generations did.
I would much rather own a self-driving pod with a comfortable couch where I could work or relax without thinking about driving. Or even enjoying the view! Driving is fun, but for day-to-day stuff, I'd much rather get online as soon as possible to get my work done.
I tend to think of time in a car as time wasted, unless I just happen to be in the mood to drive.
Speaking as a member of Generation X, having a computer and getting on the Internet early made ownership of a car far less interesting. I did have a motorcycle for a while and occasionally I find myself thinking about a car, but it's an awful lot of money for something I don't really enjoy using.
You said it. It just isn't enjoyable to own a car anymore. With all the added crap on-top there is no reason for my simplicity craving brain (even if it isn't true, we simplify to a point of making the process of simplifying complex) to desire the perceived complexities and costs of owning a new car.
That being said, I do own one. It's not new (10 years old now), it's 'cheap' to run (4-cylinder), and is purely for utility (4x4 for snow) as I live in a rural community. Even then, I take the bus between communities to commute to work.
At least regarding homes, their prices have skyrocketed beyond inflation in many heavily populated urban areas. This is of course because of the increasing populations in major cities and the limited land available near the city center. It's an extra powerful factor that drives housing prices up on top of inflation.
Housing has become a major, major expense in many cities, so much so that getting into a nice neighborhood in a good location often requires two considerable incomes. This is true even in less popular cities like Houston. For instance, this is the neighborhood west of the university I attended: http://search.har.com/engine/doSearch.cfm?ZIP_CODE=77005&CLA.... I remember driving through that neighborhood when I first started college; I had no idea these were million dollar homes of the elite.
Regarding cars, I own one, but I don't enjoy driving in traffic, and traffic is far, far worse today than it was in the 70s or 80s. Commutes are worse than they've ever been. I'd love to go for a drive along a winding country road, but I don't much care to fight traffic on a congested highway with construction and accidents impeding any sort of sane traffic flow. I actually just rent an apartment near the office I work in and walk to work. Driving for me is mainly to visit friends and get groceries.
I had the option of getting my dad's old car for free, recently. It works fine, looks nice and is about 9 years old, but I decided not take it (so he's giving it to his troubled sister).
I live in a suburb of NYC (Floral Park) where it might be useful sometimes, but its just not worth it just considering the cost of monthly insurance. I take the bus/subway everywhere and can take many taxis a month before a car makes more sense.
“We just think nobody truly understands them yet.”
I don't think that's true. I think that auto manufacturers don't want to accept that millennials don't associate cars with freedom, independence, maturity, and sex in the same way that cars were viewed by previous generations.
At most they're a way to get from point A to B for most millennials, at worst (if you're a car maker) they're viewed as dirty machines that the world would be better without.
I'm a Gen X'er and I totally think this way. I'm not sure how many X/Y'ers pay attention but I know some of us also lay a lot of blame on the car markers for shaping our cities into the car focused messes they are today.
One possible explanation for why Gen Y and younger aren't interested in buying cars is that the smartphone has replaced what the car once was: The primary tool for social interaction & experiencing the world.
It's an intriguing idea and there's probably something to it, but what kind of shitty journalism is this?
> Needless to say, the Great Recession is responsible for some of the decline.
Yep, but somehow that's a boring assumption that doesn't gel with the authors' thinking so they just brush it aside completely.
> First, gas prices more than doubled, which made car-sharing alluring.
Because the cost of a car-share is somehow independent of gas prices? Really? (Gas prices may make people less likely to drive everywhere, making a car less of a useful purchase, making car-sharing more alluring – I'll grant them that.)
Then it continues with three examples of the "sharing economy", because obviously three examples is enough to declare a trend.
Our government not only doesn't care about us, it schemes to make things worse.
This is the main issue for me, I think about it a lot as it seems to me that we're starting to see the beggining a major change in how people view and respond to government.
For me, the main (only?) problem with democracy is that it requires citizens to pay attention and get involved. Voting is the bare minimum. Taxpayers have to be the watchdog over public spending (it's their money), monitor the ethical behaviour of elected officials and, ideally, be involved in their favorite party to keep political careerism low and avoid electing corrupt/for sale candidates.
Banks can only get as big as regulators allow them to. So it's people that need to force the regulator into action on their behalf, instead of just complaining about getting screwed over by a bank rescue due to incompetence or criminal behaviou.
Whining won't help, only serious participation can save us from an increasingly shitty life imposed by low IQ and/or unethical politicians.
Such faith in the democratic process, when all the evidence points to a corrupt dysfunctional system.
Occupy Wall Street did a bit more than your minimum of voting. what happened as a result? Nothing.
Obama promised big changes including closing of Guantanamo. Has that happened?
I wonder if the slower car sales have anything to do with the quality of the cars? Modern cars are a triumph of engineering and marketing over fun. Over damped throttles, layers upon layers of "safety" computer systems , auto gearboxes to cheat the emissions tests , wide tyres and a lack of feel and fun.
Here are some scattered observations and opinions as somebody in this generation. I'm basically just dumping gut feelings here--don't expect a lot of well-written explanations.
There is not a lot worth buying that is long-lasting. Most everything feels mass-produced and cheap, and the things that aren't are pretty obviously marketed at people trying to buck that trend. I don't want to pay 10x more for something without getting that increase in quality, and the fact is that I won't get it.
There is no reason to trust the banks. They're a bunch of fucking crooks, and the smaller the bank (or credit union) the less room they have to be crooks.
Credit rating is bogeyman. Ever since I was old enough to spend money I was told to worry about my credit rating, and to take out credit cards, and do all that other stuff. These messages occurred at about the same time we saw everyone getting hammered over credit-card debt, and heard the Republicans chest-beating over sound fiscal policy. It's plainly obvious that you aren't expected to actually be fiscally sound--otherwise why would they keep flooding you with credit invitations?
Cars are expensive and limited in utility. Insurance rates are high despite companies never actually helping you when you need it, gas is expensive as hell and is clearly being gamed in the commodities market, and commuting is bullshit as white-collar work becomes either redundant or distributed.
Our parents set our city planning up for failure. I live in the fourth-largest and sprawliest metropolitan area in North America (Houston). Every decent improvement is blocked by some greedy Boomer sonovabitch whose business or view would be mildly inconvenienced by the impact of construction. We have food deserts, and suburbs actively designed to discourage walking.
Our government doesn't care about us. Nobody in my generation believes that Social Security or Mediwhatever will still be around to support us in our old age. Nobody believes that our vote matters, that the politicians sitting in office will kowtow to anybody who won't pay for a fucking dinner or make a fucking donation.
Our government not only doesn't care about us, it schemes to make things worse. Because the Boomers and Generation X are still considered important, their views and more importantly fears are turned into policy. This gives us the TSA, crazy FDA regs, patent trolling, and all sorts of barriers to progress.
Our companies don't care about us. Congratulations, we're all contract workers now. Pensions? Hah. Healthcare? Cheapest we can justify. Vacation? Go fuck yourself you needy snowflake. No loyalty, nada, and they expect that they can reach you on the phone or email at all times.
We don't believe in advertising. We've had so much marketed to us for so long so pervasively that we genuinely do not respond to advertising. It's a developed blind spot, and with the social tools we have available we see no need to be advertised to--we know what we want, and can just search for it.
We don't believe in the police. Police are pretty obviously not policing neighborhoods and aren't on the beat--they're chaotic actors who get involved and always always always make things worse. The news is filled with stories of DAs fucking over little guys, of state troopers harassing innocent drivers to raise a buck, of SWAT teams kicking in homes and shooting dogs.
We don't believe in the news. It's become easier than ever to find different coverage on the same stories, and to spot patterns in news-speak. Every talking head sounds the same, and the news is always obviously slanted to one side or the other. There is no journalistic integrity anymore, there is nothing in the mainstream news we can trust.
We believe in each other. The sheer amount of fakeness delivered through ads and bullshit mass media has made us very interested in "real" things, in hanging out with our friends, in starting families. It's not that we're self-centered--it's that so much of the rest of the world is presented through some exploitative nostalgia that we hold it suspect.
>Our parents set our city planning up for failure.
The primary reason for anti-walkability is to keep "riff-raff" out of the nice suburbs. The white flight from the cities in the 60s and 70s was a huge event in American urban planning and those whites who wound up in the suburbs don't want any of that inner-city stuff they got away from downtown from mucking up their suburb. It's horrible but it's the truth. It's one of those awful little secrets of the polite suburbs, like why people get divorced, that everybody knows about but nobody wants to talk about.
They don't always make things worse, as I discovered when a random guy pounded on my door in the middle of the night and threatened to kill me: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/guy-pounds-on-my-do... . Cops are also caught in a nasty place because of drug laws, which leads me to my next point.
Nobody believes that our vote matters, that the politicians sitting in office will kowtow to anybody...
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you don't vote because you don't believe your vote matters, and others do, then their vote matters and politicians will pander to them, not you. Old people vote en mass; that's a major reason we've having fiscal problems related to Medicare and why those are going to worsen as time goes on. Don't like it? Vote! Convince others to vote. Every election is a potential revolution, which is why we have them.
I voted today, albeit for a mayoral candidate who, according to the polls, is supposed to lose. I've never voted for the two major political parties in presidential elections.
WRT voting more generally, see Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter.
Congratulations. You've worked up a pretty good set of bullet points for why our generation is full of firey nonstop rock-shattering MOTHER-GODDAMN-FUCKING RAGE when it comes to most every institution we lay eyes on.
EDIT: This comment is very low-content; please stop upvoting it out of plain agreement.
Same age bracket, same sentiment in my peer group.
Even in Alberta where health-care and other social nets exist, and un-(or under)-employment is rare, much is the same.
We've seen ads for cars and suits and fertilizer for so long that we're immune to any of it. Our parents lived in such a radically different time in terms of the economy, technology, societal norms, that we can't relate to each other, even though we'd like to.
We "young folk" share a collective skepticism, so we advertise products and services to each other when we find something that works or makes sense to us. We don't care about crashing markets and fiscal cliffs because we don't have years of retirement savings.
We don't buy newspapers or watch the evening news; News is received through twitter, facebook, or real conversations, if and when there is any news.
It's not that we don't want to pay for things. We just don't want what you're selling, or the format it comes in, or the commitments that come with it.
I share a lot of the sentiment here, but I also think our generation is conditioned from a decade of hearing about all the newsworthy corner cases.
As an example: cops don't always make it worse, 95+% of the time they are helpful and create better outcomes for society. That said, all we've heard for the last ten years are the news stories that you mentioned - so we think of them as a negative force.
I think this same problem applies, in some capacity, to all the institutions listed here. That said, every single one of these institutions needs a massive overhaul to be a functioning member of the future (except cops, I really think you're wrong on that, they may need new priorities from the government -- but their organizational structure and methods seem to work pretty well).
I'm 30. I still have faith in mainstream journalism, but not that what comes out of the 24-hour news cycle. That's rubbish.
However, there is still a corps of journalists that risk their lives (war-torn area coverage) and their careers (govt threatening arrest) to get the news out. They also happen to belong to some major news outlets.
I have faith in their abilities to sort out what can be printed and what cannot. They are able to find nuance in reporting both major and minor world events that the average citizen of the world cannot. These individuals are consummate professionals whose fidelity to ethical journalism is vibrant and strong. It would be mistake to count them out.
I raise this contention because of the noticeable rise of alternative news sources. Some of us disenchanted with mainstream news flock to these news outlets, that, while being exclusively online, do not have a large editorial presence. It's much easier for self-styled journalists to publish articles that reach into questionable territory, sometimes raising allegations against individuals, corporations or governments that may in the end not be true. Without an editorial board, we all lose.
Anyway. Every news source has a "slant". Some more so than others and I firmly believe that the "others" have it in spades. But that's just me.
There is not a lot worth buying that is long-lasting. Agreed. The economy went from making perennial goods to making consumable-like goods with planned obsolescence. Although it's more convenient to have subscriber-like clients than it is to have one-time buyers, in the end it's worse than having close to no clients at all. Cars and houses can be made long-lasting.
There is no reason to trust the banks. Yet, a lot of millennials fell for housing bubble and I bet they'll fall for other ones just as likely. In this regard there isn't some kind of inherited wisdom developed in our generation, unfortunately.
Credit rating is bogeyman. That's just American specific phenomenon, regardless how much resemblance carries globally the traits of millennial generation.
Cars are expensive and limited in utility. Cars always have been appreciated more in U.S., otherwise the utilitarian attitude toward cars was also shared by older generations outside America.
Our parents set our city planning up for failure. Yeah, the planning that would "actively discourage walking" is a trait that I've usually noticed in low demographic density areas, like Australia or Iceland. Other than touristic walking tracks, there aren't actually pedestrian access to get around much outside the city centers. That's therefore not so much because our parents' planning as it is a reflection of local population's habits.
Our government doesn't care about us. I am not sure if this is a trait not shared by previous generations in their prime. I hear that times were perceived rough in their days too, although it may be for different reasons. Older generations blame the government for not catering their needs enough as well.
Our government not only doesn't care about us, it schemes to make things worse. That's how a corrupted system feels like, and it doesn't take to be in a given generation for that.
Our companies don't care about us. I would say "yes, this may be something new", but I suspect that in the '30s, in America's Great Depression with the economy achieving overproduction and unemployment hitting high rates, the people felt the same. But, if we're about to compare our generation with only the last two before, then it may be true - nowadays it's worse.
We don't believe in advertising. That's tough. I don't think there ever existed an attitude for some commercial product like I've seen to be for Apple products, at least back a few years ago. Apple products may have brought some innovation, but so did other products that didn't enjoyed that much hype around them. What set apart Apple products was their commercial promotion. That, was like no other! And it caught, it caught big!
We don't believe in the police. You only notice that if you are in some disadvantaged social category, and it have been like this since the societies themselves. The novelty in this is that in America of our time the disadvantaged social category is becoming dominant.
We don't believe in the news. It's not so much as the older generations were more gullible as it is that the traditional news channels were often the only news they had. Access to some alternative media channels or the peer-to-peer sharing of information (news included) was very limited, unlike today. It's not a generation trait, it is being empowered by technological advancement.
We believe in each other. I am not sure about that. It's true that "the sheer amount of fakeness" made us more reticent to the known actors like traditional media, traditional advertising, and to traditional political play, but the stakes are high and the public belief is a high-sought currency. Influential bloggers, the ones that have an influence to trade are courted by whoever is interested, we all know that! Need to say more?
That's because most everything that you use other people want to use as well. Companies will manufacture them en mass. That's why they're cheap. That's a good thing.
Perhaps you should solder your next keyboard yourself?
I have a pair of logitech speakers that I bought 8 years ago (mass produced, of course) that sound great. And they were pretty cheap at the time.
What point are you making? Perhaps do some research before you buy a product.
> There is no reason to trust the banks.
Yes, you should read the contracts that you sign.
Beyond this, what do you mean? Trust the banks with what?
> Credit rating is bogeyman.
Try getting a large loan for a business or for a home or a car with poor credit.
You can get credit cards easily because the risk is lower (it's relatively small amounts of capital at risk and it's for a shorter term than a 30 year mortgage) and the reward is higher for the credit lending agent.
> Cars are expensive and limited in utility.
Agreed.
> Our parents set our city planning up for failure.
Yes, according to what you would deem a success in city planning at this moment in time.
> Our government doesn't care about us.
Social Security and Medicare/aid were never meant to be retirement plans.
I also don't know what this means beyond the healthcare/SS aspect? The government is people. They maintain the roads and infrastructure, don't they?
It's not perfect, but then again, if you're on HN you most likely live a life better than 99% of people in the world.
> Our companies don't care about us.
Sure, why would they? Social welfare is a role for the government to fill.
> Congratulations, we're all contract workers now.
Sounds good to me.
> We don't believe in advertising.
Sure, most commercials and billboards are pretty stupid, but define advertising. Advertising encompasses a lot of things that you probably find ok.
How do you hear about the products and services that you're searching for? From friends? How did they hear about it?
> We don't believe in the police.
Perhaps because the stories where the police do their job professionally don't get reported?
> We don't believe in the news.
You shouldn't absolutely believe in any news mainstream or not. The idea, however, that you are being actively lied to by journalists is just absurd. Journalists mainstream or not have biases and agendas.
Critical thinking is required to form a legitimate opinion regardless if the media is mainstream or not.
I really don't get the derision of mainstream media. It has a role, just as blogs and independent media does.
> We believe in each other
Agreed. But I hardly think this is unique to our generation. Rather, this is a human trait.
Your whole rant comes off as entitled. You haven't really said anything of value. Just hackneyed sentiments that you can see any day on reddit or on Facebook.
[+] [-] graeme|12 years ago|reply
I can't see the use case for a car. I live in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of montreal. Everything I need is literally a five minute walk away in any direction. A bike gets me downtown about as fast as a car does in summer, the metro can often cross town faster, and taxis are a minute's call away. You can pay for a lot of taxis with the money saved not buying a car.
Meanwhile, if I had had the cost of running a car, I would have gone bankrupt on several occasions while bootstrapping my business. For no tangible benefit. Now that I've got financial stability, I still can't see why I would want one. If I car to drive myself, there are communauto stations all around me (Montreal equivalent of Zipcar).
If I moved to the suburbs, things would be different, but I have no intent of moving to the suburbs.
[+] [-] randallsquared|12 years ago|reply
You could buy a ten-year-old used car every year, plus insurance, for $2,000 or less [1] (assuming insurance is mostly the same as in the US). When it breaks down, buy a new one and sell the old one for parts or junk.
Owning a car provides courses of action you wouldn't consider without it. There's an extra level of planning involved if you have to try to find a car first, or take a train or airplane; if you have a car, the first step to any medium-length trip is to jump in the car, rather than to try to work out the logistics of how you'd get there.
[1] http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/search/cta?query=&zoomToPos...
[+] [-] im_a_lawyer|12 years ago|reply
Congrats you're in the top 0.01% of US/Canada.
[+] [-] carsongross|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fintler|12 years ago|reply
I think they answered their question halfway through. Total student debt in the US is currently about $1,134,752,535,374.00 and increasing at a rate of about $2,853.88 per second.
The article title is linkbait -- any generation that spends that amount of money isn't "cheap" (I think the word "exploited" is probably more appropriate).
[+] [-] probably_wrong|12 years ago|reply
I really think they are asking the wrong question - instead of "why aren't 'millenials' buying cars?", they should ask "why would millenials buy a car on the first place?".
[+] [-] bitops|12 years ago|reply
I would much rather own a self-driving pod with a comfortable couch where I could work or relax without thinking about driving. Or even enjoying the view! Driving is fun, but for day-to-day stuff, I'd much rather get online as soon as possible to get my work done.
I tend to think of time in a car as time wasted, unless I just happen to be in the mood to drive.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|12 years ago|reply
this statement makes me recoil. If I need anything, it is to be online less, and driving enforces that, if only for a little while.
[+] [-] makerops|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angersock|12 years ago|reply
Remember, being efficient pretty much negates the opportunity for someone to make a buck off of you.
[+] [-] westicle|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xemoka|12 years ago|reply
That being said, I do own one. It's not new (10 years old now), it's 'cheap' to run (4-cylinder), and is purely for utility (4x4 for snow) as I live in a rural community. Even then, I take the bus between communities to commute to work.
[+] [-] nilkn|12 years ago|reply
Housing has become a major, major expense in many cities, so much so that getting into a nice neighborhood in a good location often requires two considerable incomes. This is true even in less popular cities like Houston. For instance, this is the neighborhood west of the university I attended: http://search.har.com/engine/doSearch.cfm?ZIP_CODE=77005&CLA.... I remember driving through that neighborhood when I first started college; I had no idea these were million dollar homes of the elite.
Regarding cars, I own one, but I don't enjoy driving in traffic, and traffic is far, far worse today than it was in the 70s or 80s. Commutes are worse than they've ever been. I'd love to go for a drive along a winding country road, but I don't much care to fight traffic on a congested highway with construction and accidents impeding any sort of sane traffic flow. I actually just rent an apartment near the office I work in and walk to work. Driving for me is mainly to visit friends and get groceries.
[+] [-] cm2012|12 years ago|reply
I live in a suburb of NYC (Floral Park) where it might be useful sometimes, but its just not worth it just considering the cost of monthly insurance. I take the bus/subway everywhere and can take many taxis a month before a car makes more sense.
[+] [-] sbierwagen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cenhyperion|12 years ago|reply
I don't think that's true. I think that auto manufacturers don't want to accept that millennials don't associate cars with freedom, independence, maturity, and sex in the same way that cars were viewed by previous generations.
At most they're a way to get from point A to B for most millennials, at worst (if you're a car maker) they're viewed as dirty machines that the world would be better without.
[+] [-] grecy|12 years ago|reply
>I don't think that's true.
What they actually meant to say was:
"We just think nobody has figured out to convince them to buy crap they don't need like they did their parents. We're working on it, hard."
[+] [-] sliverstorm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattstreet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamb_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stdbrouw|12 years ago|reply
> Needless to say, the Great Recession is responsible for some of the decline.
Yep, but somehow that's a boring assumption that doesn't gel with the authors' thinking so they just brush it aside completely.
> First, gas prices more than doubled, which made car-sharing alluring.
Because the cost of a car-share is somehow independent of gas prices? Really? (Gas prices may make people less likely to drive everywhere, making a car less of a useful purchase, making car-sharing more alluring – I'll grant them that.)
Then it continues with three examples of the "sharing economy", because obviously three examples is enough to declare a trend.
Sigh...
[+] [-] tokenadult|12 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421897
[+] [-] jmngomes|12 years ago|reply
This is the main issue for me, I think about it a lot as it seems to me that we're starting to see the beggining a major change in how people view and respond to government.
For me, the main (only?) problem with democracy is that it requires citizens to pay attention and get involved. Voting is the bare minimum. Taxpayers have to be the watchdog over public spending (it's their money), monitor the ethical behaviour of elected officials and, ideally, be involved in their favorite party to keep political careerism low and avoid electing corrupt/for sale candidates.
Banks can only get as big as regulators allow them to. So it's people that need to force the regulator into action on their behalf, instead of just complaining about getting screwed over by a bank rescue due to incompetence or criminal behaviou.
Whining won't help, only serious participation can save us from an increasingly shitty life imposed by low IQ and/or unethical politicians.
[+] [-] collyw|12 years ago|reply
Occupy Wall Street did a bit more than your minimum of voting. what happened as a result? Nothing. Obama promised big changes including closing of Guantanamo. Has that happened?
Voting validates the corrupt system.
[+] [-] mlangdon|12 years ago|reply
http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-to-wri...
Had he forgotten about co-writing this trenderrific, millenials-as-failed-commodity dreck last year?
[+] [-] thedrbrian|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrowizicist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angersock|12 years ago|reply
There is not a lot worth buying that is long-lasting. Most everything feels mass-produced and cheap, and the things that aren't are pretty obviously marketed at people trying to buck that trend. I don't want to pay 10x more for something without getting that increase in quality, and the fact is that I won't get it.
There is no reason to trust the banks. They're a bunch of fucking crooks, and the smaller the bank (or credit union) the less room they have to be crooks.
Credit rating is bogeyman. Ever since I was old enough to spend money I was told to worry about my credit rating, and to take out credit cards, and do all that other stuff. These messages occurred at about the same time we saw everyone getting hammered over credit-card debt, and heard the Republicans chest-beating over sound fiscal policy. It's plainly obvious that you aren't expected to actually be fiscally sound--otherwise why would they keep flooding you with credit invitations?
Cars are expensive and limited in utility. Insurance rates are high despite companies never actually helping you when you need it, gas is expensive as hell and is clearly being gamed in the commodities market, and commuting is bullshit as white-collar work becomes either redundant or distributed.
Our parents set our city planning up for failure. I live in the fourth-largest and sprawliest metropolitan area in North America (Houston). Every decent improvement is blocked by some greedy Boomer sonovabitch whose business or view would be mildly inconvenienced by the impact of construction. We have food deserts, and suburbs actively designed to discourage walking.
Our government doesn't care about us. Nobody in my generation believes that Social Security or Mediwhatever will still be around to support us in our old age. Nobody believes that our vote matters, that the politicians sitting in office will kowtow to anybody who won't pay for a fucking dinner or make a fucking donation.
Our government not only doesn't care about us, it schemes to make things worse. Because the Boomers and Generation X are still considered important, their views and more importantly fears are turned into policy. This gives us the TSA, crazy FDA regs, patent trolling, and all sorts of barriers to progress.
Our companies don't care about us. Congratulations, we're all contract workers now. Pensions? Hah. Healthcare? Cheapest we can justify. Vacation? Go fuck yourself you needy snowflake. No loyalty, nada, and they expect that they can reach you on the phone or email at all times.
We don't believe in advertising. We've had so much marketed to us for so long so pervasively that we genuinely do not respond to advertising. It's a developed blind spot, and with the social tools we have available we see no need to be advertised to--we know what we want, and can just search for it.
We don't believe in the police. Police are pretty obviously not policing neighborhoods and aren't on the beat--they're chaotic actors who get involved and always always always make things worse. The news is filled with stories of DAs fucking over little guys, of state troopers harassing innocent drivers to raise a buck, of SWAT teams kicking in homes and shooting dogs.
We don't believe in the news. It's become easier than ever to find different coverage on the same stories, and to spot patterns in news-speak. Every talking head sounds the same, and the news is always obviously slanted to one side or the other. There is no journalistic integrity anymore, there is nothing in the mainstream news we can trust.
We believe in each other. The sheer amount of fakeness delivered through ads and bullshit mass media has made us very interested in "real" things, in hanging out with our friends, in starting families. It's not that we're self-centered--it's that so much of the rest of the world is presented through some exploitative nostalgia that we hold it suspect.
[+] [-] narrator|12 years ago|reply
The primary reason for anti-walkability is to keep "riff-raff" out of the nice suburbs. The white flight from the cities in the 60s and 70s was a huge event in American urban planning and those whites who wound up in the suburbs don't want any of that inner-city stuff they got away from downtown from mucking up their suburb. It's horrible but it's the truth. It's one of those awful little secrets of the polite suburbs, like why people get divorced, that everybody knows about but nobody wants to talk about.
[+] [-] jseliger|12 years ago|reply
Police... always always always make things worse
They don't always make things worse, as I discovered when a random guy pounded on my door in the middle of the night and threatened to kill me: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/guy-pounds-on-my-do... . Cops are also caught in a nasty place because of drug laws, which leads me to my next point.
Nobody believes that our vote matters, that the politicians sitting in office will kowtow to anybody...
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you don't vote because you don't believe your vote matters, and others do, then their vote matters and politicians will pander to them, not you. Old people vote en mass; that's a major reason we've having fiscal problems related to Medicare and why those are going to worsen as time goes on. Don't like it? Vote! Convince others to vote. Every election is a potential revolution, which is why we have them.
I voted today, albeit for a mayoral candidate who, according to the polls, is supposed to lose. I've never voted for the two major political parties in presidential elections.
WRT voting more generally, see Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter.
[+] [-] bradleyjg|12 years ago|reply
If these feelings are widespread amongst Gen Y, that actually makes me optimistic for the future. Thanks for writing it up.
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|12 years ago|reply
EDIT: This comment is very low-content; please stop upvoting it out of plain agreement.
[+] [-] loganu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exit|12 years ago|reply
the only part you lost me on. everyone i know considers the world far too precarious to start a family.
[+] [-] tylerhwillis|12 years ago|reply
As an example: cops don't always make it worse, 95+% of the time they are helpful and create better outcomes for society. That said, all we've heard for the last ten years are the news stories that you mentioned - so we think of them as a negative force.
I think this same problem applies, in some capacity, to all the institutions listed here. That said, every single one of these institutions needs a massive overhaul to be a functioning member of the future (except cops, I really think you're wrong on that, they may need new priorities from the government -- but their organizational structure and methods seem to work pretty well).
[+] [-] fierycatnet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wismer|12 years ago|reply
I'm 30. I still have faith in mainstream journalism, but not that what comes out of the 24-hour news cycle. That's rubbish.
However, there is still a corps of journalists that risk their lives (war-torn area coverage) and their careers (govt threatening arrest) to get the news out. They also happen to belong to some major news outlets.
I have faith in their abilities to sort out what can be printed and what cannot. They are able to find nuance in reporting both major and minor world events that the average citizen of the world cannot. These individuals are consummate professionals whose fidelity to ethical journalism is vibrant and strong. It would be mistake to count them out.
I raise this contention because of the noticeable rise of alternative news sources. Some of us disenchanted with mainstream news flock to these news outlets, that, while being exclusively online, do not have a large editorial presence. It's much easier for self-styled journalists to publish articles that reach into questionable territory, sometimes raising allegations against individuals, corporations or governments that may in the end not be true. Without an editorial board, we all lose.
Anyway. Every news source has a "slant". Some more so than others and I firmly believe that the "others" have it in spades. But that's just me.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] guerrilla|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardfontana|12 years ago|reply
Looking just at the US, Wikipedia[1] says that the fourth largest metropolitan area is DC/Baltimore. Not sure about the sprawliest.
Houston proper is the fourth largest city by population,[2] although that distinction really ought to belong to Brooklyn.[3]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_of_...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
[3]http://www.brooklynpaper.com/assets/photos/33/41/33_41_welco... (cue "Welcome Back" by John Sebastian)
[+] [-] aparticulate|12 years ago|reply
Count the number of highly-ranked stories on Hacker News that want you to buy and/or finance their products.
[+] [-] grej|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadassFractal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arthur5005|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userulluipeste|12 years ago|reply
There is no reason to trust the banks. Yet, a lot of millennials fell for housing bubble and I bet they'll fall for other ones just as likely. In this regard there isn't some kind of inherited wisdom developed in our generation, unfortunately.
Credit rating is bogeyman. That's just American specific phenomenon, regardless how much resemblance carries globally the traits of millennial generation.
Cars are expensive and limited in utility. Cars always have been appreciated more in U.S., otherwise the utilitarian attitude toward cars was also shared by older generations outside America.
Our parents set our city planning up for failure. Yeah, the planning that would "actively discourage walking" is a trait that I've usually noticed in low demographic density areas, like Australia or Iceland. Other than touristic walking tracks, there aren't actually pedestrian access to get around much outside the city centers. That's therefore not so much because our parents' planning as it is a reflection of local population's habits.
Our government doesn't care about us. I am not sure if this is a trait not shared by previous generations in their prime. I hear that times were perceived rough in their days too, although it may be for different reasons. Older generations blame the government for not catering their needs enough as well.
Our government not only doesn't care about us, it schemes to make things worse. That's how a corrupted system feels like, and it doesn't take to be in a given generation for that.
Our companies don't care about us. I would say "yes, this may be something new", but I suspect that in the '30s, in America's Great Depression with the economy achieving overproduction and unemployment hitting high rates, the people felt the same. But, if we're about to compare our generation with only the last two before, then it may be true - nowadays it's worse.
We don't believe in advertising. That's tough. I don't think there ever existed an attitude for some commercial product like I've seen to be for Apple products, at least back a few years ago. Apple products may have brought some innovation, but so did other products that didn't enjoyed that much hype around them. What set apart Apple products was their commercial promotion. That, was like no other! And it caught, it caught big!
We don't believe in the police. You only notice that if you are in some disadvantaged social category, and it have been like this since the societies themselves. The novelty in this is that in America of our time the disadvantaged social category is becoming dominant.
We don't believe in the news. It's not so much as the older generations were more gullible as it is that the traditional news channels were often the only news they had. Access to some alternative media channels or the peer-to-peer sharing of information (news included) was very limited, unlike today. It's not a generation trait, it is being empowered by technological advancement.
We believe in each other. I am not sure about that. It's true that "the sheer amount of fakeness" made us more reticent to the known actors like traditional media, traditional advertising, and to traditional political play, but the stakes are high and the public belief is a high-sought currency. Influential bloggers, the ones that have an influence to trade are courted by whoever is interested, we all know that! Need to say more?
[+] [-] mkramlich|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnpoliticsthr12|12 years ago|reply
That's because most everything that you use other people want to use as well. Companies will manufacture them en mass. That's why they're cheap. That's a good thing.
Perhaps you should solder your next keyboard yourself?
I have a pair of logitech speakers that I bought 8 years ago (mass produced, of course) that sound great. And they were pretty cheap at the time.
What point are you making? Perhaps do some research before you buy a product.
> There is no reason to trust the banks.
Yes, you should read the contracts that you sign.
Beyond this, what do you mean? Trust the banks with what?
> Credit rating is bogeyman.
Try getting a large loan for a business or for a home or a car with poor credit.
You can get credit cards easily because the risk is lower (it's relatively small amounts of capital at risk and it's for a shorter term than a 30 year mortgage) and the reward is higher for the credit lending agent.
> Cars are expensive and limited in utility.
Agreed.
> Our parents set our city planning up for failure.
Yes, according to what you would deem a success in city planning at this moment in time.
> Our government doesn't care about us.
Social Security and Medicare/aid were never meant to be retirement plans.
I also don't know what this means beyond the healthcare/SS aspect? The government is people. They maintain the roads and infrastructure, don't they?
It's not perfect, but then again, if you're on HN you most likely live a life better than 99% of people in the world.
> Our companies don't care about us.
Sure, why would they? Social welfare is a role for the government to fill.
> Congratulations, we're all contract workers now.
Sounds good to me.
> We don't believe in advertising.
Sure, most commercials and billboards are pretty stupid, but define advertising. Advertising encompasses a lot of things that you probably find ok.
How do you hear about the products and services that you're searching for? From friends? How did they hear about it?
> We don't believe in the police.
Perhaps because the stories where the police do their job professionally don't get reported?
> We don't believe in the news.
You shouldn't absolutely believe in any news mainstream or not. The idea, however, that you are being actively lied to by journalists is just absurd. Journalists mainstream or not have biases and agendas.
Critical thinking is required to form a legitimate opinion regardless if the media is mainstream or not.
I really don't get the derision of mainstream media. It has a role, just as blogs and independent media does.
> We believe in each other
Agreed. But I hardly think this is unique to our generation. Rather, this is a human trait.
Your whole rant comes off as entitled. You haven't really said anything of value. Just hackneyed sentiments that you can see any day on reddit or on Facebook.