{"id":28774,"date":"2023-08-01T22:00:17","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T02:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckms.ca\/?p=28774"},"modified":"2023-08-01T22:00:19","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T02:00:19","slug":"the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/?p=28774","title":{"rendered":"The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/everythingIsFine.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"306\" height=\"149\" \/><span style=\"font-size: inherit;\">A few months ago, while dining at Veggie Grill (one of the new breed of Chipotle-class fast-casual restaurants), a phrase popped unbidden into my head: premium mediocre. The food, I opined to my wi\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ribbonfarm.com\/2017\/08\/17\/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial\/\">The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>long read, but worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;At a more macro-sociological level, as my opening graphic illustrates,\u00a0<em>premium mediocre<\/em>\u00a0is a kind of modern proto middle class, born of a vanishing old middle class, and attempting to fake it while waiting for a replacement to appear under their feet while they tread water. It is a class sandwiched between the crypotobourgeoisie above and the API below.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;dumb-luck&#8221; would have been me buying a few hundred or even thousands of bitcoin when I read initial white-paper (which I &#8216;didn&#8217;t fully understand), but a few hundred$ spent then would make me very rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;The name is synecdoche; the cryptobourgeoisie includes anyone who\u2019s made it through any kind of mostly-dumb-luck Internet get-rich-quick scheme anytime in the last couple of decades.<br>About the only path to wealth-building available to the average premium mediocre young person in the developed world today, absent any special technical skills or entrepreneurial bent, is cryptocurrencies.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;The traditional wealth-building strategy in the US, home ownership, has turned into a mix of a mug\u2019s game and unassailable NIMBY rentierism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The public markets are no longer reliable wealth builders, while the private markets exclude almost everybody who isn\u2019t already wealthy.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;And below? There lies the terrifying structural boundary of our times \u2014 the API. Today,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/anthonykosner\/2015\/02\/04\/google-cabs-and-uber-bots-will-challenge-jobs-below-the-api\/\">you\u2019re either above the API or below the API<\/a>\u00a0(the phrase \u201cbelow the API\u201d appears to have been\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/rein.pk\/replacing-middle-management-with-apis\">coined by Peter Reinhardt in 2015<\/a>). You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do. To crash\u00a0<em>through\u00a0<\/em>the API, and into what I previously termed the Jeffersonian middle class, is to go from being predator to prey in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ribbonfarm.com\/2013\/04\/03\/the-locust-economy\/\">the locust economy.<\/a>&#8220;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, while dining at Veggie Grill (one of the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282],"tags":[140,29],"class_list":["post-28774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-paul","tag-social","wpcat-282-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28774"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28777,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28774\/revisions\/28777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}