Welcome to radical personal finance today on the podcast. I want to share with you some advice that I harvested from Twitter deep in the bowels of Twitter many months ago. This is a conversation that never really took off and wasn't really popular, but I thought it was a good set of advice and I want to share it with you the tweet thread.

I'll link to it in the show notes today. If you want to read the original, but I'll read most of it to you and provide a little bit of commentary. This comes in reaction to a decline in US college enrollment. The original tweet says that US college enrollment decline from 2017 to 2021 is approximately 1.5 million students and the percentage of this decline that is attributed to male students is 71%.

Responding to that, a Twitter user named Indian Bronson writes this set of tweets. Point number one, young men matter the most. This sounds wrong to the modern ear. Aren't there lots of talented young women? Don't older people of either sex love things to contribute? Sure, but they don't matter the most.

And here he links to an article that's unimportant for our current conversation. Spanning Scandinavia to India, Iberia to east of the Urals, the religions, languages, and lineages of bands of young warriors from the steps who thundered out in chariots yet resonate today in the minds, tongues, and bloodlines of hundreds of millions of men.

For all of human history, societies have lived and died by the fates and feats of their young men. Armies have conquered or been conquered, cities have been put to the sword, industry has prospered, pestilence has taken hold, and new frontiers have been penetrated through the blood, sweat, and grit of young men.

Between 20 and 30, give or take about five years, concurrent with coursing testosterone, enough knowledge to be dangerous, with neither the perspective or family obligations to be hesitant or too busy, young men drive civilization forward. Any society which loses its young men through catastrophe or self-inflicted lassitude is doomed.

Any society which harnesses them has the world to win. A little bit of commentary, I believe that if you are someone who cares about the future, as I do, your entire focus of lifting up civilization should be on lifting up and encouraging young men. I don't know all of the ways that it's going to express itself, but right now, young men in my home society, in the United States of America, and all around the world are facing an enormous generational crisis.

And for those of us who are older, who are hopefully not in crisis, it is up to you and to me to find some way of encouraging young men. Don't lose sight of that mission because our society will rise and fall based upon what we do and how effectively we encourage and lead the young men in our ranks.

If you're someone who's looking for a sense of purpose in life, something to do, maybe you're retired, maybe you're looking around and wondering what to do, find some young men and mentor them, help them, coach them, guide them, help them to face reality, help them to be strengthened. The future of our civilization depends upon it.

This is one of my core passions as a father of four sons. You notice that in almost anything I do, this is our current need to really, really focus on. Continuing the tweet thread, young men matter the most part two. However, even if you are or why haplogroup R1 and have quite a detectable quantity of step MLBA ancestry, DM me if you do brothers, you are not allowed to just kill people who get in your way.

But how much more fun would the economy be? Right, right. But something interesting has happened. You can still encounter many of these sorts in America's most dynamic tech businesses and science tilted undergrad programs, starting companies, etc. It's just the same guys over and over. And here in the original Twitter format, he links to YouTube videos and basically showing how this is the environment where you find a lot of young men.

If you are listening to me and you are a young man, one of your goals should be to find a predominantly male environment for yourself. Now, in today's world, all of the male-only environments that we used to depend upon to create cultures of manliness, to create, to pass along the skills that we had as older men to younger men, those have basically all collapsed.

I can't point to any place where you can find a male-only environment. Male-only clubs are difficult to find. They're legally questionable in our current world. Discriminating against women, keeping women out of organizations is very difficult. It's very difficult to keep women out of sports, very difficult to keep women out of anything.

And so there's been an enormous collapse of male-only environments, which are extremely healthy environments for young men to be in. Everything about a male-only environment, the communication style, the things that are discussed, is so much superior to a mixed-gender environment. In a mixed-gender environment, men have to carefully choose their words, they have to carefully choose their conversation tactic, everyone is on edge constantly.

So if you can find a male-only environment, you should spend a lot of time there. The challenge is, how do you find it? Well, again, since there are significant legal restrictions on creating male-only environments, and since our society has basically abandoned male-only environments, then you basically have to go where male-only interaction is common based upon the nature of the work.

And what that means is, in many cases, go for tech and go for science. If you go to tech and for science, you'll find a very high predominance of young men working in those industries. And you can enjoy the camaraderie and the environment of working on a team that is at least very predominantly male, if not entirely male.

And you can experience some of the camaraderie that former generations had from their intensely male-only environments. Military, firefighting, police, all of those environments used to be very male-oriented. They're changed, but in tech you can find it, so you should consider pursuing that if you're a young man. Now, point two, the trades are okay, but what about the trades?

Shouldn't a young man who is getting demolished by super liberal admissions committees and HR departments just become a plumber or general contractor instead? Well, I've no doubt that many skilled tradesmen make an incredible amount of money and that it will be somewhat harder to automate many of their jobs than those done by people at the computer, eventually.

But it is also clear that people who leverage information always have an advantage over those who do not. And anyone who has done roofing or hung drywall for a living will tell you they don't want their kids doing that for 30 years. If you feel the trades are your calling, by all means, you'll work harder because you love it and find little competition.

I think this is important. There is currently a renaissance of people saying, "Go for the trades." And I myself am sympathetic to this perspective. I think that it's quite surprising and yet seems self-evident that men who are working in the trades have more job security than they would have dreamed of, any of us would have dreamed of, 10 years ago.

Who'd have thunk that it would be white-collar workers who are in the most danger of being completely replaced by technology and blue-collar workers are recovering from, you know, are fairly well positioned. And I respect and admire anybody who is encouraging the trades. I'm a big fan of Mike Rowe and his work for many years.

He's tried to encourage people to go into the trades. I think that we should have many pathways into the trades and it absolutely is something that we can and should encourage. It is possible to make an amazing living in the trades and it's really useful. If that is attractive to you, pursue it.

But if that's not attractive to you, don't think that you can somehow manipulate yourself into becoming a tradesman. You should go and do it. I would love to see all teen men go and do trades. I did myself probably four to five summers worth of just trades level kind of work.

I've done a good amount of carpentry. I worked for a tile setter for a summer. I've done lawn maintenance for a good amount of time. I worked on a farm. And what I'll tell you is that for me, those occupations are ineffably boring. They're just incredibly boring because there's not much mental stimulation.

Now, you can bring some mental stimulation in by listening to podcasts constantly and learning and doing something like that. But they're just super, super boring over time. And you feel frustrated if you have nothing but mental stimulation coming in and no actual practical outworking of it, no practical expression of it.

There's probably always a good healthy balance. People who do our knowledge workers probably should have some kind of physical outlet. You should carve something with your hands, create something in your property, sculpt an amazing farm where you're putting your intellectual work and you can see the fruit of your hands.

That seems like something that is really, really attractive. But if you're the kind of person who goes into the trades and finds it really boring, then acknowledge this is not for me. But don't check out of life. Go and do something. Go and do something next. Go to the next tweet.

Number three, you're smarter than you think. Again, no shade to blue-collar jobs. But if you can do something that pays you more per hour or gives you a better quality of life, you should. The worst thing I see in some people is a self-defeating narrative of I could never learn that.

Yes, you almost certainly could. There is next to nothing that anyone in the professional classes, in tech, in finance does that a motivated person of reasonable IQ could not learn. If you're this many tweets in reading from this account, you're already somewhat preselected for being a certain kind of person attracted to a certain level of complexity.

You can learn to write code. You can learn to do V-lookups. You can learn to invest. You can learn jargon, et cetera. Will you be the absolute best programmer? No. That guy started when he was 12, and it's all he does. But he's not wealthier than 10,000 someone else's who love what they do and are good enough at it, including good enough to hire well, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, for basically every skill there is.

I think one of the things that is a real passion of mine is to try to persuade young people to try many, many different things, to try different jobs, different careers, especially when you are young. If you're a teen, your goal should be with your summer work not to just earn the maximum amount of money.

On the contrary, one of your major goals should be to try the maximum number of things. And so if you can get a summer job doing one thing, and then you can get an after-school job doing something that's completely different for six months, then the next summer you can do a third thing.

And then the first year out of high school, you spend a year going and doing an 18th thing. You're going to get exposure to so many different things, and you'll be able to make different decisions in a period of life that is significantly in advance of the lock-in. So you want to gain as much exposure to many things as possible and recognize that anything is learnable.

Everything can be learned. Number four, if the game is rigged, do something else. This one goes out to my young white male followers of a certain political verve to whom I'm highly sympathetic. Stop bitching. I know all the sharp-edged, spicy, esoteric, politically lethal taboos about the world and how it maltreats you that you do.

I post about them often. In fact, a few of them probably indirectly learned from me. Stop bitching. No one is coming to pick you up and kiss your boo-boos. You're going to have to win or die. Your whole mindset needs to change for your race, for your family, for yourself.

Now, I myself am not particularly prone to vulgarities, but I think that is a proper use of vulgarity. Gentlemen, especially those of you who are older, if you are interacting with young men and you see them going down this super whiny pathway of just, "Everything is against me, life is so hard, so I'm going to curl up in a corner and die," take your hand, probably metaphorically, but take your hand and slap those men across the face in some possible way.

When you look at where we are in human history, it has never been better on a macro level. And to have people sitting around and whining about, "This is hard, this is difficult, so I'm going to withdraw from life," is a deadly, deadly spiral to get into. And we've got to change it.

And it probably comes from people basically smacking people across the face and saying some variation of, "Stop bitching." It's perfectly fine and appropriate to understand the challenges that people face. It's perfectly fine and appropriate to look at the data and recognize, "Well, I face difficult things." I myself, I, Joshua, I have zero patience for it.

Pass, just acknowledging it intellectually. Turn off whatever doom porn you're scrolling and go and read Up From Slavery. Booker T. Washington should be your hero, not whoever you're following online that's indulging your whining. Number five, Picasso's early work was good actually. Remember, college, which can be college or it can mean conventional paths to success, should be your backup option.

It should not be not an option. Weird alternative people should show they can be, by the book, normal people. If you can do conventional stuff and color within the lines really well, you earn the credibility to be wild. In fact, you'll also learn some very useful skills that come in handy for being a whack job with money and access.

It's okay to be an oddball. You should cultivate your bizarre perspectives and fascination with compelling things. But you have got to learn how to behave or no one worthwhile will be able to help you out. Try to get into the very best college you can. Be in a position where you can take a gap year or drop out of it.

Try to get the very best normal job you can. Be in a position where you can afford to quit on good terms. Because then, if things don't work out, you can go back. Now, the Picasso illusion here is to demonstrate that Picasso developed this wild, crazy style at the later part of his career.

But he was perfectly skilled at painting conventionally beautifully and attractive portraits and paintings. And I think that's the key, is that if you are capable of succeeding in a conventional world, you should absolutely succeed in the conventional world and follow the conventional path until you have earned the place to be able to go down the wacky, zany path.

There is an entirely fallacious argument that people make to say things like college doesn't matter. After all, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Guess what? They dropped out of Harvard. They didn't drop out of their local community college. If you are capable of going to college, you must go and then drop out later when it's appropriate for you to drop out.

I think there's a very strong argument to be made that things like college don't actually make your long-term success, that you need -- the college needs you more than you need them. I think there's a very compelling argument where you can sit down and you can say that Harvard's job is basically to go out and figure out the people who are most likely to be the next future leaders of the next generation and get them to Harvard so that they'll have Harvard in their resume to burnish the reputation of Harvard, much more so than the fact that Harvard itself makes any material difference in the long-term outcomes of those individual people.

I think that argument is very, very strong. But even if it were entirely true that Harvard needs you more than you need Harvard, your ability to get into Harvard will demonstrate that you are able to express the skills and play the games that are necessary for social success. So get yourself accepted into Harvard, go and then drop out.

Or get yourself accepted into Harvard and then take a gap year. Start your multi-bazillion dollar business and never go back. But don't ignore the conventional path. Don't be so iconoclastic and countercultural that you destroy all of your options. Picasso's early work was really good and then he developed his skills over time.

You want to make certain that you go to the best college you can, you get the best job that you can, and then you invest your nights and weekends on your thing so that if things don't work out, you can go back. Next, number six, things I think driven young men should do in 2024.

Okay, you've read this far, wild. I hope you read fast. I write fast, but I'm also verbose. Anyway, the first four things are explicit programs. These are things I think you should try to do having gotten into the best college or gotten the best job you can get. The second four things are just things I would do if I were about 15 to 25 years old again, knowing what I know now and having some sense of the world as it is.

Number one, Teal Fellowship at tealfellowship.org. This is hyper-competitive. You should really only be coming at this because you are completely confident that what you want to do is worthwhile, that you have demonstrated the skills to make it happen, and you could actually do it without the money, $100,000, or mentorship.

But if that describes you, go for it. Apply for the Teal Fellowship. ZFellows, zfellows.com. This is not less competitive than the Teal Fellowship in the sense of quality of person applying. However, it's easier to justify 10 $10,000 investments than a single $100,000 bet. By the way, this relationship is not linear.

For the math, see this article, and no shade at all to Peter Teal, but it's dramatically easier to meet with basically anyone else on earth than him, and the advisors are top-notch, including close friends and co-investors of his. Number three, BloomTech, bloomtech.com. I think Austin Allred has one of the greatest jobs in the world.

He built a machine to regularly produce new gainfully employed fellows who then start families and tell him about it. He's a family man himself. His dopamine receptors must be happily fried. There's other material on the marketing site, but that chart speaks for itself. Number four, App Academy, appacademy.io, the original.

The careful reader who read Hasib Qureshi's blog post above will notice that he came out of App Academy as well. One thing that's great about App Academy is that they have a completely free option. Those are the first four. Other bits of advice. Number five, invest as much effort into your health as possible.

In writing this, I'm a bit like a chain smoker telling you not to take up smoking. Well, not nearly that bad, actually, but still. Things that are no trouble at all in your late teens still won't be noticeable into your late 20s, but you're taking damage. And they will start to manifest in your mid 30s.

Get healthy, get fit, maintain it as well as you can, drink lots of water, just trust me on this. Number six, identify peers, possibly from school or work or Twitter, who want to work with you in doing any of these things. Pool money and get to the cheapest cost of living situation you can.

Your goal should be to earn as much and spend as little as you possibly can. Explore crypto, try to own a rentable property, again, even as a group, as soon as possible. Ideally, you're all together on all of these things. Seven, forget about politics/take the most cynical possible view of the formal political process as you can.

Expect nothing from it. Everything you want is outside of it. In fact, if you have any kind of political orientation, have one of exit is greater than voice. And links to a couple of interesting articles, an easy version and a hard version. Number eight, get really good at Twitter, which is really to say, get good at expressing your worthwhile ideas and connecting with people.

To do that, you have to be good at expressing ideas, clear thinking. You have to have worthwhile ideas. You do, don't you? And connecting with people, being interesting. That last one is pretty important. Every other signal is fake-able, except the signal of being interesting. It's the err signal. You cannot deceive someone into being interested in what you have to say.

Okay, that's enough. I hope this has been helpful. This concludes the tweet thread. And as always, you just stumble across something and say, that's a pretty good encapsulation of ideas that really should be discussed and heard by most people. Specifically, most young men. I think there's a lot of wisdom in there.

To review, number one, young men matter the most. Invest into young men. If you can get the young men to succeed and young men are doing well, every other part of society will work itself out. If young men are failing, you'll be constantly putting out fires in other parts of society.

If young men are strong, they're doing well, they're succeeding, everything will work. If your organization is fitting them, everything is good. If young men are not, you're going to have terrorists. You're going to have war. You're going to have violence. You're going to have people abusing women. You're going to have crime.

You're going to have all kinds of issues. Young men matter the most. Number two, the trades are okay, but number three, you're smarter than you think. You can learn this stuff. Number four, if the game is rigged, do something else. Number five, Picasso's early work was good, actually. Number six, some specific suggestions that driven young men should do in the year 2024.

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