August 1, 2024

We have often heard of epochs in the past that seemed to be characterised as “Happy” or “Depressed”- as it was a somehow monolithic phenomenon across the world- no matter if you lived in India or Scandinavia. Now, thanks to the twin engine of Post world war II peacefulness, and technological progress, underpinned by the profit motive, what I realise is that the past 5 decades have created a sizeable community of people who have so much wealth that they live above a certain red-line wherein most if not all external and internal events whether geo – political, economical or indeed environmental fail to impact them adversely. They commentate and narrate about these events with a lot of charm and effulgence- propping them to further capitalise on their already safe standing. Think of podcasters, you tubers, neo-journalists and so on. The class of people that we refer to as Middle Class, on the other hand,  has been permanently sent to a state of disrepair from where there appears no recovery. Nobody cares about this lot, anywhere in the world anymore. In the relatively socialist states this maybe somewhat better, but overall it is all blending in because the world is, to use a cliché, as flat as Central Indiana. Everyone sees how everyone else lives, our lives have never been more public thanks to social media, and this creates rather unified aspirations across time and space. And no matter the crisis, the people above this red line have a way around it but not the middle class. That is not surprising per se. What is surprising that it seems to me that the opportunities for the middle class to somehow cross the rubicon to go over to the other side are technically no longer available. There are a number of reasons for this, and several more distinguished commentators have weighed in on this already. I have heard and read about it and also thought through this on my own and what I can distil from that exercise is the following.

One of the reasons for upward mobility of a middle class, particularly in India was the ability of large swathes of Indians to do work that required some analytical ability and attention to detail. To simplify, let us just talk about “coding”. The original tech revolution had a demand that far outstripped supply and rather than coming up with both slow and fast ways to increase supply, the industry suddenly decided to become nation-agnostic and hoarded talent from wherever. And India, given its sheer size and the focus on school, not to mention English language ability was able to capitalise on this gold rush. That has created an upliftment that is underestimated. This is what has led to an improvement in Brand Equity internationally that has never happened before. For example, our sporting prowess has certainly done us no favours in this regard. The brand equity created in tech has also rolled into other industries because pretty soon the corporate world realised that there is a fabric within Indian professionals that is far more fundamental than simply the ability to do some math and analytical reasoning. It went and touched on more foggy ideals like emotional intelligence, and a demeanour that is not prone to hostility of any sort. Indians are by no means perfect- for example, I would not score them high on intellectual probity. But the good thing there is that neither can you score any other group particularly high on that account.

Now, computers can do all the high-end heavy lifting of yore. You will still need some even higher-end people- but not nearly as many. And in the meantime, the supply lines locally have improved so there is no need to look elsewhere. (Granted the supply lines are going to be mostly filled by Asian-origin locals, but this lot is already privileged so this is not a case of upliftment). This is the lack of excess demand headwind.

Additionally, we have politics. And by politics I want to create a broad brush and cover both geo-politics and identity politics. The net of both is that there is a fear that somehow the lot that used to rule the world for centuries, basically the white lot, is going lose out to the others (basically non-white people). And no guesses for the fear ofcourse. What they fear, I feel, is not that they will starve to death. There is enough to go around for that not to be the case. What they really fear is retribution from the other lot. For the sins of their forefathers with respect to colonialism, slavery and all other types of marginalisation. This will further create barriers to entry for the outsiders. Following the last tech revolution ( internet), the new world order has already redistributed power beyond a tipping point. And so while immigration was not a concern 30 to 40 years ago, it is a huge concern now. However, one ocould argue that there is less need for immigration for upliftment as owing the rapid development outside of the white world, non-white people should be able to uplift themselves wihout stepping into the white world.

And this perhaps is the unkinder cut. Upliftment in one’s own nation is signifcantly more difficult because the competion is considerably more immense- because the demand destruction problem is still very much present. Furthermore, intellectual probity or probity in general ( as I have described before) is not a strength of deprived nation states- therefore the best and deserving do not always make it.

But far more fundamentally, upliftment seems to come from succesful entrepreneurship or succesful skill monetisation. The first is a concentration exercise, it does not dsitribute wealth and it is low probability event to begin with. The second is a huge pain point. The skills that could be monetised are now not needed. Even if they were, not all of humanity is able to provide it. There is a natural distribution of IQ and ability that only lets a select few even pursue these- no matter what they are.

There is an argument that one can uplift oneself even without hard skills. By playing the markets for example. This is increasingly unlikely- almost a final nail in the coffin and I will write about it separately.