I was thinking about my post from yesterday about McKinsey & Co and the false technocratic managerial class and it got me thinking about some of the ugliness of modern America.

The majority of human beings like to be productive.  Our brains are hardwired this way.  When we accomplish something, our brains squirt out a little bit of neurotransmitter called dopamine.  Dopamine is our motivation chemical.

This is most likely an evolutionary advantage.  The lazy hunter-gatherer starved.  One might be motivated by the survival instinct to work just hard enough not to die.  But a brain that rewards strong motivation and accomplishment is going to make a caveman that is going to be prosperous and have an increased likelihood of survival.

We see this in our lives all around us.  Having one lazy, restful day after a hard workweek feels good.  Being indolent for days on end feels like shit.

The highest rates of misery, drug and alcohol abuse, and crime are found in neighborhoods with high unemployment and lots of welfare.  Neighborhoods, where the rates of employment are high, are generally peaceful, with happy people and low rates of crime.

Productive work doesn’t make people miserable, being idol makes people miserable.

But there is a caveat to this.  People need to feel rewarded for their work in order for them to feel productive.  There are many kinds of rewards, some immediate, others long term.  It is that reward at the end of the hard work that really makes our brains happy.

Just watch Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel.  The people featured in that show do hard and often disgusting jobs.  Overwhelming they are small business owners and they always love their jobs.  They work hard and at the end of the day, they make good money and can say proudly “I accomplished something.”

Enter the capitalist system.  In its purest, small-business-mentality form, capitalism is the economic system that best fits our brains.

You work hard, develop certain skills, produce a good or provide a service that people want.  You sell that good or service and make money.  You take that money, work even harder, make more money.  There is a direct relationship between hard work and success.  Motivation and accomplishment.

This is fundamentally why the capitalist system encourages success.  Any economic system that strays from this encourages failure.

Now enter the McKinsey mind.  The article I covered yesterday talked about how McKinsey gutted middle management and the idea of someone working their way up from the bottom.  Outsourcing, part timing, and gig work have become the name of the game.

Despite the booming economy, half of Americans didn’t get a rise last year.  Most of them were in the middle of the economic ladder.

So what has happened?

The McKinsey model means that while the middle class works, the management class gets the raises and bonuses.  Productivity at the middle level of the company is not rewarded in a real, tangible way.  No short term bonuses, no long term upward mobility.

The lean, mean, cut-to-the-bone, “employees are an expense to be minimized, not an asset to be invested in” McKinsey model has been the primary driver of the lack of raises, promotions, and bonuses to the non-professional management middle sector of our economy.

This is absolutely demoralizing to the human brain.  We need our accomplishment fix.

For many young men, video games provide this.  Video games are a digital microcosm of work and reward.  The more intense you play, the higher the score you get.  Do something really special and “Achievement Unlocked” appears on the screen.  It’s real, immediate gratification, and that is highly addictive.  It’s the same neurology/psychology as gambling addiction.

If video games don’t do it, you can just consume alcohol which forces your brain to release dopamine or opiate that stimulates the dopamine receptors in the brain.

We have seen how alcohol, drug, and video game addiction is increasingly prevalent among young men in the working and middle classes.

With no reward or upward mobility, and a very real sense that a career is non-existent and life is simply treading water between gigs, it is no surprise that the demographic that experiences this turns to artificial means of feeling accomplished.

Yes, I am saying that I believe that McKinsey is largely responsible for the drug and video game addiction of so many young men in America today.

Again, I want to make this clear.  I am not indicting all of capitalism.  I am a capitalist.

I am indicting this particularly destructive idea that has created a cloistered, self-protected, managerial and consulting elite, that exists only to reward itself at the expense of everyone else.

Hopefully, one day, we as a society will come to see McKinsey and the managerial consulting class activity for what it is, a crime against humanity.