The Script Is Dead
Worked when timing was right.
Don’t take advice from parents, boomers, family, teachers, and especially from the government, and definitely not from some jesters on the internet.
Be yourself; don't compare yourself to others. Try things, fail, fail more, learn from failures, and start trusting your intuition.
+20 years ago, it was wonderful!
When I was 19- 20 years old, after the army, I walked to a bank and got a loan for a 1-bedroom flat. My salary was “low” but the house price was 2-3x annual salary. Interest rate 4-5% + margin 0.2%.
The model: Go to work, buy walls, be the sheep. Worked flawlessly. Even better if you had a university degree. Was it competence? It was timing; the times were different…
Living quality was fantastic. You could lose your wallet in a bar with cash, and the cashier would give it back. Alcohol cheap, food cheap. 3-day summer festival ticket? 50-60€ and top tier artists. Now it’s 200€+, and the artists are worse.
EU membership was a huge boost in the early 2000s. Nokia was conquering the world. The script: be a sheep in Finland, worked and was extremely simple. Small, homogeneous country, high trust, welfare state affordable because the demographic pyramid was right.
Then it broke.
School was free and, for a while, the best in the world. Ranked number one. University was the same. Yes, of course taxes were paid, but the deal was that money in and a somewhat functioning country out. Is it working anymore? The state is growing bigger and bigger every year while services are going down.
The batshit crazy part is that people keep on voting and paying more. The same cycle, same parties, bigger budget, worse service. Yeah, I voted too.
Kicking the can down the road (debt) and letting the central banks do the rest. Rates to zero, printers on, and everything my generation already owned, houses, stocks, funds - pwice only up. Not because we did anything. Because money got cheap “Just go to work”.
Youth own none of those assets. You just get to pay the entry price we set. You inherited the bill, not the balance sheet.
Why not so wonderful anymore
Too much government. More debt. More government.
The welfare state math is broken. Bad politics, aging population, low Finnish fertility, taxpayer base shrinking. Doomloop that won’t be fixed.
AI and technologies are changing fast. How about the Finnish economy? Stuck in the 70’s. Sorry, but there won’t be any new Nokia. More EU, more government, more regulation.
Global competition is fierce. Entry level jobs to Poland 10-15 years ago, now to AI. Get a degree, get a corporate job, retire. High competition, low reward. Look at what companies are offering recent graduates. 1800-2500€ a month. These postings are becoming the new normal.
The majority still want to believe. Bankers got too greedy, politicians lie, nothing new. Look at them crying now. Let’s do something radical: “100-year mortgages,” lol. Of course the champions of free money want more of that. Is the solution always more bad debts and more free money? Yeah, of course it is needed to hide the incompetence of bankers, middle managers, and government bureaucrats.
Tips
1. Don’t buy the apartment. “But it’s stupid to pay rent”. Even more idiotic to have a 40-year mortgage on a depreciating asset. Well, let’s pay interest for the rest of our lives! Yeah, it’s the bank’s asset not yours, use your brain. Let’s innovate a 100-year mortgage so people can keep buying at current prices. When they have to invent perpetual debt to keep the “market working” the market is telling you prices are wrong = bullshit.
2. Own things, don't owe things. You start small, but over time it grows. That’s fine. €10k in index funds, some cash, and yes, a bit of Bitcoin (curiosity and monetary literacy are needed). That beats a +40-year mortgage on a flat you don’t own. My generation got brainwashed the other way. “Only an idiot pays cash.” Cars, kitchens, phones, holidays. “It’s basically free money.” No. It was debt. It’s always debt. You are the product.
3. Live like a student = freedom. Low fixed costs are the biggest lever a young person has. €800/month rent + share is 10x more optionality than €2500/month mortgage. Sharing an apartment is not a failure. Buying an overpriced apartment with debt in a declining housing market is a failure.
4. Skills that compound. University is awesome if the field and skills are relevant. Government jobs and bullshit corporation jobs will fade away. You will need actual skills. Cooking? Plumbing? Electricians? Not so bad anymore. Real skills stack over years. NPC jobs just repeat. Pick the stacking kind.
5. It’s ok to fail. Try running a side hustle. What’s the worst that happens? It fails? So what? Nobody cares. You learned something. Finns are programmed to follow the script. Break the programming early.
6. Health is true wealth. Exercise, eat clean, sleep. Nobody's coming to save you in your 40s if you wreck your body in your 20s. The old system had employer healthcare and stable careers to catch you when your health broke. That safety net is gone. Take care of the body and mind because the state won't.
7. Protect your time. Real friends beat social media. Read books, not doomscroll. Limit gaming time. Play the game of skills, goals, habits, growing wealth. Everything on the internet is designed to steal our time and money nowadays.
Be Bullish
My generation is the most confused and scared by AI. Not the kids. Us. Because my generation has very little knowledge about actual value.
We knew how to show up. Fit in. Advance through bullshit economies. AI removes the bullshit. So it removes the value we thought we had.
Look at how the biggest “winners” of the system got rich. Big corporations squeezing everyone downstream. Steal time from employees. Make suppliers suffer. Fuck the customer. Extract as much as possible. Top and bottom lines are all that matters.
That was the winning formula for +30 years. AI is coming for that formula. Good. Yes, currently big corporations and big government own the AI stack, which means the pendulum swings harder toward more bullshit. Then it goes the other way, it always does.
Most of my generation coasted. Yours doesn’t get to. That’s not the tragedy it looks like; the bullshit jobs die, and real work gets rewarded again.
The majority of my generation got trapped by the system and didn't even notice. Build things. Sell. Service. Solve problems. Do honest work. Love your people. Sleep well and be hopeful.
I’m bullish
