Dispatches from a Mercenary in the War on Normal People

I am a mercenary in the war on normal people.

I want to leave you at the end of this with four main points:

1. I don’t know everything or all the fixes to all the problems (nor do you)

2. My experiences and observations can still be valuable to you (so can yours to me)

3. We cannot allow 1.) to stop us from taking action based on 2.) and what we believe to be right. We can always edit and improve, but:

4. We MUST act now.

Text like this are excerpts from The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang

I am writing from inside the tech bubble to let you know we are coming for your jobs.

I took a trip recently to Manhattan. I’d never been to New York City before. I ordered three copies of Andrew Yang’s The War on Normal People. I wore my Veterans for Yang T Shirt and #MATH hat. I taped up my luggage with messages for Yang. I talked to everyone I could about Yang and passed out Yangbucks. I re-read the book myself.

Rich ready to talk to everyone on the trip!

The whole theme of the trip seems to have been “Andrew Yang is right.”

I spoke with a professor on the plane who is studying UBI and its impact on social equity outcomes. His knowledge of Yang was “What’s he doing with that giveaway he announced at the debate?”

Thats what the professor knew, for now. Even people studying these fields need to learn more about Yang. - and we need to help them

The first-gen small business owning, previous-Trumper Cabbie asked “Isn’t he Korean?”

The Bartender said, “oh yeah my friend is like really into him…”

I recently met a pair of old friends for drinks In Manhattan. One is an executive who works at a software company in New York. They replace call center workers with Artificial Intelligence software. I asked her whether she believed her work would result in job losses. She responded matter of factly, “We are getting better and better at things that will make large numbers of workers extraneous. And we will succeed. There needs to be a dramatic reskilling of the workforce, but that’s not going to be practical for a lot of people. Its impossible to avoid a lost generation of workers.” Her confidence in this assessment was total. The conversation then shifted to more pleasant topics.

I was in town to help ease the churn in automating people out of work. Specifically I was teaching HR people to be Product Managers for the software we were writing and deploying to replace the manual and inefficient work we do for the 350k+ IBMers worldwide. As the market changes and we automate away the need for certain skills, we need to be ready to re-skill and retrain 10s of ks of people and move them around internally.

I’m also both an ardent capitalist and completely certain at our system needs to change in order to continue our way of life

After the courses were over I met a couple of old Marine buddies at a pizza shop in Greenwich Village. They both work in Manhattan, one at a major bank in securities and one as a senior engineer for a software platform for organizing election campaign volunteers and events. Both work in Manhattan but neither lives there. One lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter, the other in Queens. They take the trains in and out every day.

All three of us had faced very real challenges in Afghanistan. We had seen bad things. Worked hard to try to make things better. Questioned whether we were making them worse. The three of us made it out with minimal physical injuries, unlike some of our brothers. Probably with minimal psychic and mental injuries also, though there was definitely some of that, and some of our brothers had that a lot worse too. We were all receiving some kind of unconditional basic income in disability payments. Our medical coverage offered by the VA due to our service.

As officers, we all already had undergraduate degrees, and our transitions into the civilian world were more effective than some of our fellow veterans. We all pursued graduate degrees and landed jobs at recognizable big companies for big salaries. But we’re all paying down large debt loads and trying to provide for families. We all made choices to take on commutes and some level of stress to provide a chosen quality of life to our families and we worried about their futures. We debated about who would pick up the check and promised to get the next one but none of us could really afford to rent more than a one-bedroom in Manhattan.

Meanwhile in Manhattan and Silicon Valley and Washington DC, my friends and I will be busier than ever fighting to stay current and climb within our own hyper-competiittve environments. We will read articles with concern about the future and think about how to redirect our children to more fertile professions and livelihoods. We will occasionally reflect on the fates of others and shake our heads, determined to be among the winners in whatever the new economy brings

The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we are collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they’re complaining or suffering because they’re losers.

Afterward, one left to ride the train out to another borough with his wife. The other and I stood on a street corner debating a little. He’s not fully ready to support Yang and we were discussing ideas.

A man walked up and asked us for money, the fourth or fifth of the night. But this one was more aggressive than others. We tried to tell him no. He talked over us insistently and angrily. I didn’t catch many of his words. I told him again “I’m sorry, I have nothing for you.”

“Then I’ll just go kill myself…sorry for my suicide… sorry to my family!” He spat as we walked away.

We were debating the efficacy of a Freedom Dividend- a payment to the man we were discussing, I held that it would enable him and maybe his family to move from Manhattan to another community. One where 1k a month could really allow a person to minimally survive while looking for work with less fear. My friend granted the problem but debated the solution. He couldn’t yet be convinced that a Freedom Dividend would be the pressure dressing for America's bleeding that I think it will be.

The man came back - this time holding something metallic to his throat. “I swear I will do it!… I will kill myself right here right now.” He told us insistently.

“I’m sorry, I have nothing for you - I told him again.” He stomped off shouting something else again, My friend calmly ready for conflict, irately cautious said “can you keep an eye out for that guy over my shoulder? Some guy... a little unhinged…with a knife behind me…”

I had thought I had only seen a key. Either way….

On our deployments, we sometimes joked about being mercenaries. Though we had sworn to support and defend the constitution of our nation none of us really felt our actions in Afghanistan bore on that oath any longer. We all had our reasons for continuing. Some for love of our brothers until we got back, some because we had to legally til we were allowed out, some for the money straight up. Mercenaries in one way or another.

Now in this war on normal people, things felt familiar again, none of us seem to truly believe in what we were doing. Probably no one intends to be in the war on normal people automating away the need for other's labor. But they pay us well to do it, and its how we put food on the table, pay down our debt owed to various big banks, pay for our homes. It’s hard to see any way out. So we’re good mercenaries, maybe reluctant, but effective.

So there we were, a small group of Marines who had seen some shit. Who now worked in fields automating away the labor of normal people in one way or another. Well paid but levered up in debt. Unable to afford to live in Manhattan but working there. Sharing our concerns for the world our daughters will grow up in. Tensing at the possibility of needing to fight someone begging for money more aggressively than normal. Knowing we can’t enable him, or others like him one by one with personal handouts. Split over whether we can vote for someone who can help raise us all out of poverty in one fell swoop. None really comfortable or truly hopeful for the future.

I need you to see what I see….

…..

We are more than the numbers on our paychecks - and we are going to have to prove it very quickly.

So there you have it. I'm tired of being a mercenary in the war on normal people. I want to fight for normal people. I want you to join me in this fight.

I want to leave you at the end of this with four main points:

1. I don’t know everything or all the fixes to all the problems (nor do you) — But I sure can see the things Andrew sees

2. My experiences and observations can still be valuable to you (so can yours to me) — it's unlikely for others to experience exactly what I have - or what you have.. raise awareness!

3. We cannot allow 1.) to stop us from taking action based on 2.) and what we believe to be right. We can always edit and improve, but:

4. We MUST act now. — Please do what you can - if you’re not convinced learn more - Youtube Andrew Yang - if you are convinced, then join us, donate, volunteer!