THE IDIOCRACY PROJECT
WE'RE BEING SLOW-BOILED IN A CAULDRON OF DUMBNESS
In the future, our buildings will be held together with giant ratchet straps
You know something’s wrong. We all know it. Depending on the level of your regular interaction with The Real World, the realization may range between deep down in your gut below your level of consciuosness to a constant buzzing of daily annoyance and frustration.
Unless you are living in some sorta bubble, or you are very new to adulthood, you can feel that the level of efficiency that America used to run at is…gone.
Everything is getting stupider, less reliable, and way more expensive. And exceptional customer service has become nearly extinct. But please be sure to tip everyone a minimum of 20% for every retail transaction!
I remember the days when dealing with a government entity -didn’t matter which - was like taking a ride on the short bus. Now many private businesses have downsized their customer service to fit into a short bus.
IDIOCRACY
The 2006 cult classic sci-fi/comedy Idiocracy served up an absurd rendition of what it would look like if humanity devolved 500 years into the future, primarily due to the fact that low-iq humans reproduce at a much higher rate, and scientists spent all their time inventing new erectile dysfunction cures, because it pays more. The movie is outlandish & offensive, sure, but hilarious nonetheless. And more and more, our world in many ways is beginning to resemble the absolute retardedness that drives this movie. The plot is simple: A man of thoroughly average intelligence, looks & abilities (and a prostitute thrown in purely for comedy) volunteers for a military experiment in which he gets “frozen” & put into a time capsule for what is supposed to be 50 years but ends up being 500 years. Upon emerging into this distant future, he soon discovers that everyone & everything has gotten so stupid that he is now the literal smartest man on earth. Every scene in the movie demonstrates a future humanity completely incurious and unthinking about the shoddy world they occupy, where nothing works as it should, and literally everything (including the Vice President of the USA) is sponsored by giant food brands like Brawndo (“It’s got electrolytes!”) which has replaced water for everything except toilets. They are all Zombies seeking temporary pleasure and debased entertainment.
My thesis for this article mills around this absurdist parody, while I attempt to identify some key factors on what is happening to our world at an alarming rate.
INCREMENTAL DEGRADATION
Charles Hugh Smith has been writing on this phenomenon for awhile —- here »»>
https://substack.com/@selfreliance?r=b7ypx&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=stories&shareImageVariant=light)
What I have been thinking of as “Idiocracy” he calls “Incremental Degradation”.
Another factor at play here, as I’m sure Charles would agree, is a business philosophy that has infected most sectors of the consumer goods industry: PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.
This practice by manufacturers is something most of us have experienced, increasingly, over the past 30 years.
“Consider the stunning decline in the quality of durable goods such as appliances, and global industry adopting a laughably valueless one-year warranty across the board. Appliances that routinely lasted 30 years before “Progress” took the reins now routinely fail in 3+ years.”- C.H.S.
I love the way Charles puts this into proper perspective for us. When manufacturers purposefully build products that will fail in a few short years (i.e. Planned Obsolescence), while offering “Extended Warranties” at a premium, they are effectively extorting their own customers.
“Welcome to the Mafia Economy”
This is an area where I possess some relevant expertise. I have been manufacturing, and selling directly to the consumer (no middleman) mattress sets for the past 32 years. I know for a fact that polyurethane foams, which are a major part of most American mattresses, are engineered by design to lose support 10X faster than they lose height. This is what we call SoftSpots. You can feel a definite sag in the bed, particularly in your mid-section, but when you get up, the foam flattens back out to create the illusion of normal wear. The kicker is that all mattress warranties only cover visual sag. So if you can’t see it, & measure it with a string and tape measure, then you have no warranty claim.
This is a diabolical design that nudges consumers into replacing their mattresses long before the expected 10-15 year lifespan. And these brands get away with it because it is impossible for the end-user to prove. Another factor is that big mattress brands are continually going through stages of Chapter 11, “reorganization’’, merging and selling out. In many cases, the CEO of Mega Mattress Corp has little to no experience in the business. Few if any actually care about making great products that last a long time.
For these greedy people who make the product decisions, operating their business is all about churning profits, and very little to do with satisfying their customers long term.
If you're business model is structured to frustrate your customer, your business sucks.
A.I. DEPENDENCE/COGNITIVE OFFLOADING
Even more than the loss of jobs and personal relationships, the hyper-acceleration of our daily usage of A.I. tools is, by many accounts, assured to make more and more humans rely less on their own abilities to think critically and problem-solve. Below are some articles that provide evidence of what is now being referred to as “Cognitive Offloading”
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-making-us-dumber-research-2026-7
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3824308/genai-can-make-us-dumber-even-while-boosting-efficiency.html
The common thread in these articles is that studies of the early adopters who have been using AI tools have experienced short term boosts in efficiency, but long term declines in critical thinking and problem solving. Short term ease birthing long term decline.
It will be interesting, and possibly heartbreaking, to watch our progeny grow into this new world of robot thinkers and doers. Will their brain muscles become flaccid, as every decision is made for them, every task completed? Will they be too intimidated and confused with challenges that we easily solve today, as their permanently fused A.I assistant/best friend plans out their days, choosing what the algorithims predict is in their best interests, eliminating every mental obstacle that comes along to ease their anxieties? How soft and helpless will our grandchildren be?
IQ DILUTION
An uncomfortable, but necessary, component of discussions like this includes the reality that certain people groups in specific parts of the world have average IQ’S (Intelligence Quotient: a standardized numerical score designed to assess human reasoning and problem-solving abilities) in the sub-80 range. For perspective, the global average IQ is 100.
In our country, the Department of War requires new recruits to test at a minimum 83 IQ.
So what sense does it make to allow mass immigration of populations that are considered too dumb to even join our military?
Is there a strategy somewhere here?
Could there be a diabolical reason that our political leaders, and their Network handlers, wish to facilitate the dumbing down of America? Is it because they know that lower IQ voters are easier to bamboozle & control?
This fits into my brain, because it simply makes the most sense. New immigrants, particularly those who are whisked in here on a magic carpet by an NGO, are 1000X more likely to vote for and worship politicians who pave their way with generous stipends and wageslave jobs at the protein plant that was lucky enough to receive a $90 million TIF.
Now I’m sure that our more sensitive (liberal) - along with some good Christians like our friend Rick Merkouris - readers will be aghast at the idea of judging whole people groups in such a clinical manner. But friends, calm yourselves. I judge not the value of anyone on an individual basis. We are all made in the image of God. I merely ask you to consider the facts that lie before us, and interrogate within yourself the wisdom of this practice we have been subjected to. The thing is, I have actually been to Africa, Tanzania specifically. I loved the people that I met there, interacted with. I even formed a friendship with an enterprising young man that I worked with while there. For awhile I wrestled with the idea of helping him and his young family emigrate to the US out of compassion for his situation. Tanzania is a very poor country, with a long history of being run by a Socialist government, which has served to create a population of people entirely devoid of any entrepenurial impulse, and completely dependent on their government for all of their basic needs. For a few years I would send this young man gifts of money, from time to time. I even wrestled with the idea of trying to help him pickup up and move to America, you know, because that’s what image is the “thing to do”. But I ultimately decided against it. One question I could not get past was “Will this actually make this man happier?”
I don’t think so.
Here’s a question that should be asked about our neighbors to the East:
Has the addition of 100,000 Somalians (average IQ around 68) made Minnesota a better place to live for Americans? How?
This salient point from Sen Rand Paul is worth considering»>
SPARK IT UP!
Another factor in the Idiocracy Project that cannot be ignored is the acceleration of daily/near daily dependence on high-potency cannabis, nearly everywhere in America. Seemingly everyday, no matter what part of the country I happen to be in, someone will drive by spewing out what has become one of the most annoying smells of the modern world, usually accompanied by equally annoying really loud hip-hop noise, in the middle of what we used to call “the workday’’.
The propaganda behind the Legalization movement is that cannabis is “healthier/safer than alcohol”. This is a dubious claim, for many reasons. But leaving that aside, I ask you:
How often do you see people chugging beers while driving down the road?
Can’t these cannabis users wait till they get to their destination to toke up? What’s the deal?
Furthermore, based on my observations, it seems that many modern potheads aren’t waiting till 5 o’clock to tie one on, like most booze enjoyers. It’s wake-n-bake to start the day, first thing in the morning. And getting back to our thesis, does this make people more efficient workers, more keen on providing the best service to their employer & the customers they serve? Or does it add to the Incremental Degradation that we all know is happening.
Clearly it is the latter.
After all, modern cannabis is 30X more potent than the stuff some of us smoked back in the 70’s & 80’s. Comparing old weed to the unlimited cornucopia of what is manufactured today is like comparing 3.2 beer to Everclear.
Only time will tell what the long term effects that daily ingestion of today’s concoctions will have on the twenty-somethings that “need” it so badly that there are “dispensaries” on every block in many cities.
I remain pessimistic.
LONG COVID
While the Idiocracy Project has likely been under way for the past 20 years or so, we unquestionably experienced an acceleration during the covid mania era. At the onset in March 2020, large swathes of American workers immediately lapsed into what I think of as “Snow Day mode”. Up north here in the midwest we experience these events once or twice a season, large amounts of snow get dumped on us, forcing closure of schools and most government & private organizations. If you’re being honest, it feels pretty good to be able to play hooky, hide in your warm home & veg out on…whatever. For too many of us, covid became one long Snow Day of goofing off while publicly virtue signaling with a face diaper. Like many retailers, I saw an increase in consumer demand after the first few month’s of panic, and I nor my employees were about to turn our backs on the opportunity to do whatever it took to meet that demand. Staying at home doing Zoom calls and unsupervised “work” of questionable veracity wasn’t an option. I watched a few of my suppliers fall into that fearful malaise, then watched them go right out of business. Sad.
What became obvious was that the philosophy of taking care of the customer was now secondary to the obsessive self-delusion of “Safety” from ethereal threats of the PANDEMIC.
This more than anything has crippled what used to be a robust pursuit of genuinely good Customer Service.
Another bullseye Chris….albeit sad …..
Excellent Chris, yes the whole planned obsolescence design flaws, will, hopefully, be countered by true entrepreneurs that focus on Team Humanity. Thanks for being part of the solution!