Comment by lazide

There is a saying in wealth management - ‘the first generation builds it, the second generation preserves it, the third generation smokes it’.

It’s hard to not see that playing out in a large sense society wise right now, if we assume the first generation was the post WW2 folks, and the wealth was the post-WW2 economic benefits from the US not being bombed into the Stone Age like most of the rest of the world - and if anything, being the only major economy still standing.

Where exactly you draw the lines generationally is of course up for debate. But we’re starting to have to relearn a lot of hard lessons now that the post WW2 (and depression) generations understood as basic table stakes.

And it’s not because people today are ‘weaker’ per-se. Rather, they’ve lived a (relatively) comfortable life. That generally leads to not having to learn the hard lessons (or being so miserable) that they do the hard things required to build that society. And there is no free lunch. And it was never ideal, then, or now, and will never be ideal in the future either.

But it can be better if we put in the work and take the risk.