A link between video games and unemployment

There is an episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" where Charlie, a character who never gets any success in life (a janitor living in a dump of an apartment, gets rejected by his love interest constantly, abused by his friends, etc) gets really engrossed in an online videogame. He becomes really good at it, and exclaims "I'm thriving! I never get to thrive, and I want to be the guy who thrives for once! It's like when I'm doing good in the game, I'm doing good in real life!"

It feels like there's an interesting insight there - if you're near the bottom of ladder in life (in an area with few/no jobs, have a hard time making friends, have no money for activities, etc), positive feedback loops can be few and far between, and it is very hard to get a feel for whether you're actually making progress or not. Work hard in life, and maybe you can reap some rewards years and years later, or maybe not (working at Walmart 20 years won't make you wealthy, or a respected Walmart executive). But work hard in a videogame for a few weeks or months, and you can have very concrete evidence of your progress. It's not hard to see why people would prefer investing hours in the latter then.

Maybe that's where the appeal of the army lies for some. The very clear hierarchy means you know exactly where you fit, and what the path to the next rung of the ladder is - something that is true in very few other organizations.

There's worse forms of escapism that are far less stimulating.

Alcohol or drugs, for example.

It's nice we live in an age where there's engaging entertainment like video games instead of just more passive entertainment like TV.

I don't know if drugs are less stimulating. Simulation of a different kind, to be sure, but probably not less in intensity.

Certain drugs, such as psychedelics, can also provide opportunities for personal reflection and growth.

It's the logic of Late Capitalism: all problems and failings are those of the individual, never of the system.

-if the post-scarcity UBI future ever happens-

I live in a country that throws away half of its prepared food. Like we're not even talking about some chopped up animal corpse that sits out for too long and has to be discarded before it goes rancid - in the US we strait-up assemble food in some factory, wrap it plastic, burn fuel shipping said wrapped and assembled food to a store halfway across the country, unwrap the food, put it in another container, and then at the end of the day just toss the remaining contents of the container into the garbage bin because you've got a few more tons of shipped and prepared food already in storage that needs to be sold. This is the post-scarcity future.