Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
It seems unfair that the earnest polymath Elon Musk should go broke in the electric car business while Kylie Jenner becomes a billionaire at age 20 hawking lip gloss on Snapchat, but that’s how the American Dream rolls these late days of empire. Perhaps the lesson here, for all you MBA wannabes, is that Mr. Musk could switch his production facilities from cars to lip gloss. Of course, to successfully market his new line of cosmetics on social media, Elon might have to consider sexual “reassignment” surgery — unless he could persuade American men via Facebook and Twitter, that lip enhancement boosts male self-esteem almost as much as the purchase of a Ford F-450 pickup truck at a laughable fraction of the cost.
Which raises an interesting question: if President Donald Trump’s most winning personal feature is that magnificent golden hair-do, why doesn’t he (or his family) get out of the pain-in-the-ass hotel business, with all its construction and maintenance issues and dirty sheets, and just put out shampoo? He is obviously adept at Twitter marketing and surely scores high in global brand recognition.
Which raises any number of other major questions about the proper functioning of the US economy. For instance, millions of Americans, especially of Kylie J’s gen, are wasting their lives working dead-end minimum wage jobs manning (personing?) the nation’s fry-o-lator stations when they could start billion dollar cosmetic companies. After all, if you really want to be successful in this land of success stories, don’t you have to first look and feel successful? Perhaps that’s all you really need… forget all those pain-in-the-ass products with their vexing assembly-line, packing, and shipping problems. Just get America feeling great about itself, starting with the most important person in the room: YOU!
Only two things stand in the way: tattoos and blubber. At the rate our fellow citizens are adorning themselves with inky autobiographies, ever fewer will want to cover up their personal messaging with icky makeup. And the remorseless increase in body size implies a concomitant increase in available epidermal sites for said personal messaging — so maybe the tattoo industry ought to be the basis of the next American economy, not electric cars and journeys to Mars, or even lip gloss. Just think of all those empty brick-and-mortar retail spaces out there begging to become Ink Spots! I may be wrong about this, but I haven’t heard of any tattoo billionaires…yet. Who will dare to be first? (Yet another Kardashian?)
With oldest sibling Kim Kardashian-West considering a run for the White House in 2024 the nation can finally cast aside the bygone business model of a pain-in-the-ass manufacturing altogether and concentrate on the more important matters of personal grooming, branding, networking, and leveraging the unfulfilled wishes of the countless under-tattooed into an economy once again on-the-move! Imagine the effect that a President Kim K-W will have on the by-then ancient monster-of-the-east, Vladimir Putin, in their first summit meeting. We’ll have no more election trouble from those meddlesome Kremlin thugs. Maybe the pair will ride horses shirtless together in an amazing display of glasnost and international cooperation.
Don’t despair, readers, fellow Americans, and whoever else might be looking at this in the NSA back office. Hope and change are finally in the wind for real. Two hundred years of swinging pickaxes in the coal mines, sweating on the assembly line, and toiling on the loading dock are coming to an end. The singularity is almost at hand — and surprisingly not the one that Ray Kurzweil ordered. Who needs orgasmic polymorphic super-intelligence in all the parallel universes beyond the end of time when you can reach for brand supremacy here in this best of all possible worlds. Kylie J., you go girl!
JK conveniently ignores the fact that it was HIS generation that corporatized america into it’s current Fascist state, increased incarceration rates to levels that make even the old USSR blush, and ushered in the likes of Bush Jr., Clinton, and Obama. We can sit here and bash the Millennials, but from my vantage point I don’t blame ’em one bit for rejecting that version of the good ol’ USA. The only thing worse than the Boomer (Me) generation, is my own the X-er (Useless) generation. With those two setting the example, it’s no wonder the Millenials turned out as they have, how could they not.
Gilnut, I think you are a bit too harsh on the Boomers and X-ers. I think all the generations have to take responsibility for how fucked up the USA has become.
And Millenials certainly don’t get a pass. When a whole generation goes into life-long debt to get college degrees in useless fields, they are as much of a problem as any other generation. Stupidity is not an excuse.
Funny, I know a lot of millennials who didn’t do that, and who work hard at responsible jobs…They weren’t even born when the 1965 Immigration Act was (((passed))), nor did they invent the wonders of outsourcing American industry, or of stripmining existing companies for profit, like Mittens did….
TIP, just compare how the US has changed from the mid 80’s, when the Boomer generation took the reigns of leadership, to today. I could be much “harsher” without trying too hard. What have the Boomers left behind? I’ll let you answer that yourself, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll understand my animosity towards both generations.
Do people get tax credits for buying lip gloss from Chloe Kardashian? If not, I prefer her to Musk.
Musk manufactures and sells bad vehicles (which get a Federal tax credit) to people at a large loss, and borrows billions to finance his Ponzi scheme…I prefer any honest business to Musk’s.
I wish like hell that we have one hell of a trade war. I’m talking about the kind that escalates to where NO MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS from China or the rest of them are imported anymore. It will be a wonderful day to hear the people bitching and carping about empty shelves, big box stores going belly up, and they can’t get any parts for that piece of shit S50,000 full size V6 four door pickup truck with the 4 foot bed. These fuckers are the ones who eschewed American made products for the cheap Chinese shit, and it would be delightful to witness the fallout over this.
Amen on that. And I will even go one further. If the fat, tattooed masses did not have access to everything they want, all the time, and for the cheapest prices, they may actually have to LEARN HOW TO DO STUFF. You know, necessity is the mother of invention. If life was not so easy, some of these useless eaters might actually be forced to wake up, and figure out that the world is not about THEM.
“Only two things stand in the way: tattoos and blubber.” Damn it Jim, you actually made me laugh. Don’t let it happen again.
To be fair the young lady was both smart enough to judge the business climate and demands of the consumer and shrewd enough to keep 100% control of both the funding and ownership of the business while the erstwhile genius Musk has made the lion’s share of his money through wealth transfers from the American taxpayer to fund a business that sells products they can’t afford.
He may not like the truth, but you can’t deny it.
JHK is starting to sound a little frazzled around the edges these days.
Kunstler’s commentary is more about the state of American culture in that it allows a worthless skank (Kylie Jenner) to make a fortune selling a trivial product like lip gloss.
Kunstler is about the only writer I have read who comments on the modern tattoo fad. It is especially depressing how many otherwise attractive young females are sporting at least one of these abominations.
And, attractive females are already getting as rare as the Hope Diamond. Nowadays, they are either fully “blubberized” , and / or a complete basket case social justice warrior, or at the far end, are not even really a female……god help us all.