The Hacker Generation
Read this piece published by The Roaring Economist below or at https://theroaringeconomist.io/collections/the-hacker-generation
Take away someone’s ability to walk, and they will look for an elevator. Take away someone’s ability to swim, and they will get on a boat. Take away someone’s right to drive, and they will sneak onto an airplane.
Two years out of college, with my quarter-life anniversary creeping around the corner, I thought I’d take a second to look over my shoulder—and also ahead of me—to try and understand if I’ve made any progress.
By progress, I guess I mean the sort of right steps you’re expected to take when moving through the fog of young adulthood into actual adulthood. And it is a fog—a thick one, now more than ever.
Where are the markers? How do you even begin to gauge something like that? Where does dependency end and independence start? Here’s a rough timeline I thought I’d sketch out:
First, you start by paying for your wants—you buy your video games, your own tickets to the movies, and the cool sneakers you like.
Then, maybe right around the tail end of high school, you start paying for your own gas.
Through college, you get a job, and the help from Mom and Dad gradually shifts to them just signing off on student loans.
After college, the big boy pants go on—you start paying your own rent, your own food, then, hopefully, your own insurance and phone bill. Finally, you get your own Netflix and Amazon accounts.
A Little About Me
As I mentioned, I am 24 years old. I live in Los Angeles, and I rent an apartment in a relatively safe neighborhood with one roommate. I pay about $1,600 in rent each month.
My day job pays me the city-required minimum wage of $20 an hour.
I work close to 40 hours a week, and outside of that, I make supplemental income as a writer, with each article paying $250. I’ll write roughly three articles a month.
My biggest expense, other than rent, is food, which runs me about $1k a month.
My external expenses are all related to curating and investing in personal film projects as future investments—let’s say close to $450 a month on average.
I drive to work, so I have to fill up my tank 2-3 times a month, which costs a total of around $200.
My leisure activities are pretty limited to going to the movies—I have an AMC Stubs account for $25, and my other subscriptions add up to a total of around $75.
Without any uncertainty, I make about $3,500 a month and spend around $3,000. But as we know, life is full of uncertainty—car troubles, rent increases, healthcare, injuries, illnesses—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The Dilemma
Am I doing something wrong? I mean, shouldn’t I be looking for a partner, saving up to put up a mortgage, and paying for my own Hulu account? Was following a certain dream or putting an emphasis on a riskier career path worth it?
But then I looked to my left and right and saw my fellow comrades—my fellow Hannah Montanaites (not sure if that’s a word)—in the same boat. That’s when I realized maybe there’s something bigger going on
Scott Galloway
I listened to Professor Scott Galloway’s TED Talk on the war on the young, and he actualized this issue better than Dick Cheney closeted his homosexuality—if you’re asking if this is true, I have made my point.
According to Prof. G:
“Today’s 25-year-olds make less than their parents and grandparents did at the same age, yet they carry student debt loads unimaginable to earlier generations. Neither the minimum nor median wage has kept pace with inflation or productivity gains, while housing costs have outpaced them. The statistics on children’s and young adults’ well-being are staggering.”
Boom, there it is—finally, an opportunity to take part in the victimhood train. Choo motherfucking choo.
In sum, the issue derives from a systemic shift that has left our generation in a precarious position, navigating a world where the traditional markers of success are increasingly out of reach. It’s not just about personal choices or failing to "adult" correctly; it’s about an economy and society that have fundamentally changed the rules of the game. The expectations set for us—to buy a home, start a family, and build a stable career—are based on a world that no longer exists in the same form.
Instead of living the American dream we were promised we could, we’re left to grapple with a reality that often feels stacked against us. The weight of student loans, the rising cost of living, and stagnant wages are just surface issues. Beneath it all is the realization that the systems designed to help us succeed are the same ones that now seem to be holding us back.
But rather than simply accepting defeat or riding the “victimhood train,” it’s time to recognize this as a call to action. A chance to redefine what success means for our generation, to find new ways to navigate the fog, and to carve out a path that works for us in this new landscape. The challenges are real, but so is our ability to adapt, push back, and create the future we want—not just the one we’ve been handed.
Listening to TED Talks like this one, or reading articles like these, and following intellectuals who discuss the sociopolitical, geopolitical, and economic influences that warp our world is the first step in finding a solution. Because as Prof. G once said:
“Fixing the problem first means identifying it. “
You can’t tighten the screw if you don’t know which one is loose.
Time to Hop Off the Train
Ok, we had our fun pointing our fingers at someone else, but I don’t know about you—my finger is tired. It’s time to take a look at ourselves.
Yes, there are a bunch of dinosaurs making decisions to inevitably help the remaining years for other dinosaurs, which leaves us having to deal with the crappy and prolonged after-effects on our and our kids’ futures.
But it’s not like we’re doing anything about it. I mean, for crying out loud, two months ago, nearly 70% of our demographic disagreed with both presidential candidates—who are either in or approaching their octogenarian years. Yet we, the people whose lives their decisions will affect the longest, do nothing about it.
Why should we though? We’re just comfortable enough not to care. We have our Hailey Bieber smoothies from Erewhon, and the entire series of The Crown is on Netflix. That will never change, so why risk it…
That’s our problem—we’re just comfortable enough to be just ok enough with whatever tectonic shifts happen around us.
Young people have always been history’s catalyst. A group of passionate young adults that stick together is unstoppable in every front—culture, politics, and even war.
I’ll take on anyone in Congress with an eye patch and one arm tied behind my back, bring it on.
Here are some examples of young people changing the world so you know I'm not speaking out of my fart box…
The May Fourth Movement (1919): In 1919, students in China kicked off the May Fourth Movement to protest their government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, which handed over former German territories in China to Japan. What started as a protest turned into a major cultural and political push for modernization and anti-imperialism, laying the groundwork for Chinese nationalism and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. This movement played a key role in China’s path to revolution and modernization.
The Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion (1968): The Prague Spring in 1968 was all about young intellectuals and students in Czechoslovakia trying to push for democratic reforms and create "socialism with a human face." It was a hopeful time of political liberalization, but it got crushed when Soviet-led troops invaded in August. Even though it didn’t succeed then, the Prague Spring became a symbol of resistance and inspired future uprisings, eventually leading to the fall of communism in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution.
The Soweto Uprising (1976): In 1976, students in South Africa had enough of the apartheid government's decision to make Afrikaans the language of education. The Soweto Uprising began as a peaceful protest but turned deadly when police opened fire, killing hundreds. This tragic event was a major turning point in the fight against apartheid, putting the brutality of the regime on the world stage and fueling the global anti-apartheid movement, which eventually led to the dismantling of apartheid in the early ‘90s.
Now, I’m not saying go out there and risk your life (though it would be cool), but what’s stopping us? Why have we gotten so, so... lazy?
We’re anxious, okay!
I mean, we know this, you know this—there was a whole book written about our generation and how anxious we are.
Our lives, unlike any in human history, have reached an unprecedented level of complexity with the introduction of social media. They no longer revolve around simple routines, responsibilities, and just, you know, life. But now, life doesn’t just exist in reality—it also exists in the digital world, and some would even say more so in the latter. When you barrage your life’s narrative with eight different storylines, it’s no wonder you burn out and want to check out of the game altogether.
This leads to a profound lack of purpose and meaning—people lose hope. What used to be a tunnel where you could see miles ahead has turned into a cave where you can’t even see three feet in front of you.
Unlike Generation Alpha, AKA iPad kids, our unwillingness to talk or have a conversation with our Uber driver doesn’t stem from social anxiety, rather, a lack of care.
The mentality is: “What’s the point?” … “Why even try if I’m going to lose?”
These aren’t easy questions to answer. As we enter our mid-20s, there’s this urge, this cloud approaching—we feel it in our stomach: it’s time to grow up. Yet we’re gnawing at the end of a pencil, trying to carve out a path to what was once fundamental in Western reality
Bingo! That's it.
The Elevator
With the cost-benefit relationship of getting a traditional college degree turning into more of a cost, and the relationship between the average American salary and the average price of a home coming from something out of a Dr. Seuss book, our generation has turned away from the “average” and leaned into the unconventional when it comes to making our bones.
We are the influencer generation, the TikTok diaspora. Why scathe through a 9-5 job when you can go viral? I mean, look at the "hawk tuah" girl—she’s being interviewed and on podcasts more than the two current presidential candidates.
The point is, they took away our ability to swim, so we’re making a speedboat out of what got us stuck on this island in the first place (social media). It’s not just the influencers who have paved a niche for themselves in this new market—we have social media managers, marketing agencies, PR professionals, journalists, health coaches, mental health advocates, professors, philosophers, and even skateboarding dogs, all finding ways to make money and carve out their own reputations using this new medium.
To that, I say hawk tuah!
So, let’s not give up yet, yeah? The world is ours for the taking, but it’s just not the same world. I know it’s difficult and anxiety-inducing, but imagine the story. If boomers can sell us tall tales on how “back in their day, they didn’t have it so easy,” then we can sell our grandchildren stories on how we domesticated an army of killer robots while still living in our parents’ basement.