1. Introduction
In the previous article, we explored the concept of ‘Money Dysmorphia.’
It refers to the feeling of having nothing left despite earning money.
It’s not absolute poverty where you’re starving to death, but it is undeniably an existential threat.
We discussed that the primary cause of this is the collapse of the economic leverage structure. Contrary to popular belief, comparisons and relative deprivation via SNS merely act as moderating variables (Z) that amplify Money Dysmorphia.
The main causes destroying economic leverage were identified as
- inflation
- the absence of inheritable means of production
- living in high-cost areas like Seoul or London
- the socialization of financial insolvency
- delayed entry into the job market.
In this article, we will examine the second factor triggering Money Dysmorphia: the collapse of social leverage.
[See: Money Dysmorphia (Part 1): Working Hard to Stay Broke — The Death of Economic Leverage]
2. The Collapse of Social Leverage: A Labor Market Where Meritocracy No Longer Works
(1) The Death of the Public Education Meritocracy Myth
Public education meritocracy is the core engine that maintains social leverage.
This is the myth that ranking first in the public education system guarantees social success.
In the past, this was true.
Even a kid from a poor family just needed to study well.
A single exam could get you into a prestigious university, a top conglomerate, or a career as a judge or prosecutor.
The evaluation metric was singular.
A single report card was the sum total of one’s ability.
Because of this, parents skimped on food and clothes to pour money into education.
Even if they were poor, their hearts were full.
Because they could see the future.
This is the core point.
Current expenses didn’t just vanish into thin air.
They were a solid investment for the future.
In such a society, people don’t feel poor.
Observing South Korea and Vietnam during their periods of rapid economic growth centered on manufacturing, this was exactly the state of affairs.
In an era where ‘cheap and fast’ was the competitive edge, there was only one path for ability development.
You could line people up using the public education curriculum and exams.
Diligence was the highest virtue.
Like the college student in Kafka’s novel (Amerika)—sleeping three hours a day, working at a department store by day, and studying law by night—that life was the American Dream.
Democratic nations guaranteed equal educational opportunities, which greatly contributed to increasing manufacturing labor productivity.
However, starting around 1990, the game changed.
China arrived. Eastern Europe arrived. Southeast Asia arrived.
As they took over the manufacturing board armed with low labor costs, ‘cheap and fast’ was no longer a competitive edge.
Now, ‘being different’ is the edge.
You cannot expect a different output from the exact same input.
It became an era where abilities forged by public education struggle to create added value. Differentiation doesn’t come from there.
A time lag occurred as manufacturing got swept up in price-cutting competition
and failed to pivot to high-value-added products.
The speed at which the pie was growing slowed down.
The democratized generation, having become the establishment, began building moats that restricted free competition under the guise of human rights, welfare, and morality.
Dynamism began to vanish across society.
The era where an individual’s knowledge or test scores decided everything was over.
Pedigree, licenses, capital, and networks became what mattered.
In conclusion, when manufacturing collapses, public education meritocracy stops functioning properly. Working diligently is no longer enough.
The institutional and political moats have become too sturdy.
To pierce through them, you need pedigree, a license, capital, or networks.
Otherwise, you need a stroke of genius to flip the board in one go:
- Someone who seems to just play and eat, but has extraordinary ideas.
- Someone working from home who codes a mind-blowing program.
- A college dropout who drives public opinion with a fresh perspective.
- Someone who talks about space and innovation for a living.
These are the people generating massive added value.
Pouring money into education no longer guarantees success.
Current expenses do not accumulate as future assets.
They are simply burned.
The feeling of ‘having nothing left’ stems exactly from here.
(2) The Accelerated Pace of Change: Tech Replaces Manufacturing
Above, we looked at how the narrative of the public education meritocracy myth vanished alongside the collapse of manufacturing.
Now, let’s look at it structurally.
The void left by manufacturing was filled by the high-tech industry.
This industry has high added value, but the pace of change is incredibly fast.
Because of this, school education itself is becoming meaningless.
Middle-class parents in advanced nations around the world, including South Korea and the US, invest massive amounts in their children’s education.
There was only one reason they could stomach the $100k-$200k cost of a college education.
They could see the future cash flow.
It wasn’t an expense; it was an investment.
They had the certainty that the money spent now would return later.
But when that certainty evaporates, it feels like throwing money down the drain.
[The Murky Job Outlook]
In the early 2020s, software developers were high-income earners.
Competition for computer science departments skyrocketed.
Five years later, those same departments became unemployment factories.
The stampede toward medical schools intensified.
This was driven by the fear that only jobs protected by licenses would survive.
It takes about 6 years to finish a university education (especially considering military service),
and no one knows which majors will survive by the end of it.
AI has arrived.
Even physicians and lawyers are having their incomes threatened.
Education is a 10 to 20-year long-term investment.
If the market has completely changed by the time the results are supposed to come out, all those expenses are written off as a total loss in one go.
It’s structured similarly to venture capital investment.
The difference is that in VC, you can diversify your portfolio and cut your losses.
You cannot diversify or cut your losses on your own child.
The risk is venture-tier, but there’s no way to manage it.
Now, the reason parents spend on education has changed.
It’s no longer the certainty of making them succeed.
It’s the terror of letting them fall behind.
But spending for success is an ‘investment,’ whereas spending to prevent falling behind is a ‘cost.’ Since there is no guarantee of a better return in the future, it feels like nothing is left.
[The Disappearance of Juniors]
Musk and Altman say,
“With AI, why even go to college?”
They aren’t wrong. AI is destroying junior-level jobs.
For seniors, human skills are key.
They rely on networks and political savvy.
The ability to directly call a decision-maker with one phone call
and orchestrate a deal at an alumni gathering—these are skills AI cannot replace.
Juniors, on the other hand, perform functional, repetitive tasks.
These can be patterned. AI easily replaces the junior tier.
If getting a job is impossible anyway, logically,
it makes more sense to skip college, grab a job ASAP, and upgrade your skills using AI.
But reality doesn’t move by pure logic.
There are no parents who say,
“Just play, I’m glad I don’t have to spend money.”
Instead, they pour in more money just so their kids don’t fall behind in the AI race.
The few promising jobs that remain apply even stricter academic filters.
Why?
Because if anyone can produce average results using AI,
companies need to pick the people with the potential to be truly exceptional.
👉 The conclusion is this:
To avoid the guilt of ‘not doing your best’ for your child, you have to spend more than in the past.
In the era of AI competition, parents who spend less become sinners.
The system is rigged that way.
(3) Public Education Curriculum is Virtually Abandoned
As the myth of public education meritocracy vanished and job prospects grew murky,
the public education curriculum was essentially left neglected.
Consequently, the burden of educational expenditure shifted from the state to the household.
This caused the financial burden felt by families to skyrocket.
There is no guarantee of a return on investment, yet the amount being spent has only increased.
The pace of technological change is so fast that much of the education is anachronistic.
For example, in the age of AI, they are still teaching kids how to measure angles using a ruler and a compass.
They constantly miss the timing.
For instance, the Korean Ministry of Education decided to make coding mandatory;
it took 3 years to create and distribute the textbooks.
By the time the books came out, that specific coding language was already dead.
It was an era where AI was writing the code for you.
The state has thrown its hands up.
“We can’t keep up with the speed. Figure it out yourselves through private education.”
Standardized public education can no longer guarantee survival.
The household bears the rest of the cost.
This is exactly when education costs became an existential threat.
There is no certain future.
The next generation must evolve into 1-person companies that educate themselves.
(4) Three Interviews, Three Types of Incompetence
It’s not that the concept of ‘competence’ itself is an illusion.
It’s just that during the manufacturing era, there was only one way to prove it.
That made it fair.
👉 Ranking first in the public education system
and graduating from a prestigious university was the competence.
But things are different now.
Regardless of the method,
if you can produce a different result than the status quo, that is your competence.
Let me share some stories from my own experience.
First: Networks are a skill.
While sorting old documents in a company warehouse,
I stumbled upon a confidential list of job applicants.
The remarks column was packed:
- ‘Son of VP at Client X,’
- ‘Son of Executive Director Y,’
- ‘Recommended by the Chairman’s wife.’
I cross-referenced it with the current employee roster.
All of them were placed in top-tier departments.
In Korea, people call this unfair.
They aren’t entirely wrong.
But let’s step outside the myth of public education meritocracy.
That network is the asset, and it is the skill.
Since a university education alone no longer generates added value anyway,
it is vastly superior for a company to hire someone with an exclusive network that others lack.
From the company’s perspective, it made the most rational choice for its own survival.
Second: Quick-wittedness (Improvisation) is a skill.
It was the final interview for a global automotive company.
The interviewer asked a candidate,
“I see you also got accepted into law school. Will you give that up if you join us?”
The candidate replied without missing a beat,
“Absolutely. This company is my dream.”
After the interview, I asked him privately,
“Did you really get into law school? That makes no sense.
Why come here instead of becoming a lawyer?”
He laughed.
“It was a lie. I only submitted the application. It’s all or nothing anyway.
If they ask later, I’ll just say I decided not to enroll.”
I immediately thought this guy would excel even if he actually became a lawyer.
His quick-witted audacity was his skill.
His school grades were irrelevant.
In a society like this, pouring money into traditional education naturally leaves you with nothing.
Third: Differentiation is a skill.
An interview for a top-tier US consulting firm.
During my contract period, I had already received unanimous recommendations for a full-time offer.
Out of nowhere, the Vice President asked me,
“Estimate how many pigeons are in Gangnam.”
I replied,
“How can I guess that without any established premises?
Maybe 20,000?”
He smiled.
“Setting the premise is also a skill.”
The result was a rejection.
A year later, the Executive Director who originally recommended me called.
He had been promoted to Senior VP.
He offered to recognize my gap year and match my salary expectations.
He was someone who highly valued ‘diligence.’
Through the lens of diligence—which values the process—I might have been highly competent.
But through the lens of differentiation, I was utterly incompetent.
The process is meaningless.
At the end of the day, I failed to instantly fabricate a plausible premise.
The ability to spout ‘persuasive bullshit’ without panicking
when clients throw curveball questions is a crucial skill for a consultant.
This is because while trust takes a long time to build, distrust is generated in an instant.
Even if, upon later reflection, you realize it was utter nonsense.
“In the long run, we are all dead.” 🤣🤣
Michael Sandel argues that the equality of opportunity assumed by meritocracy is a fiction.
I view it differently.
During the manufacturing-centric era, equality of opportunity practically existed.
There was a time when just studying hard was enough.
That time is gone.
The added value of the economy has shifted to ‘making things differently.’
There is no need to diligently study English grammar for seven years.
It is actually more of a ‘skill’ to drop out, party abroad for a few years,
and come back writing English rap lyrics.
The process has lost its meaning. Only the results need to be different.
[TL;DR]
- The myth of public education meritocracy, which emphasized diligence, collapsed due to structural economic shifts.
- If the result is differentiated, the process is largely irrelevant.
- The time and money spent on traditional schooling are essentially wasted.
- The money spent and the pain endured now are entirely consumed as ‘costs.’
(In the past, they accumulated as future assets, so people felt mentally rich even if they were materially poor). - This deepens “Money Dysmorphia”—the chronic sensation of having nothing left.
3. Real Competence Belongs to the Collective, Not the Individual
The ‘individual’ was at the center of the public education meritocracy myth we traditionally believed in.
This contributed to the advancement of manufacturing, which in turn allowed the era of mass democracy to blossom.
Ironically, however, as mass democracy evolved, the subject of competence shifted from the individual to the ‘collective’ (Group).
In reality, when the power of a collective becomes the true measure of competence, individual-centric meritocracy collapses.
- The thought that working hard changes nothing.
- The thought that massive labor unions, farmer cartels, and doctor cartels are distorting the price system.
- The thought that the giant bureaucracy extorts my taxes, but the benefits go to someone else.
When these thoughts begin to dominate your brain, the Money Dysmorphia of ‘having nothing left’ severely intensifies.
When Alexis de Tocqueville observed America, he found something fascinating.
In Europe, individual aristocrats stood against the King.
But in America, citizens banded together to form ‘collectives’ to stand against the government.
Hobbies, religion, commerce, politics—they formed associations for every interest and enforced their collective will.
Tocqueville viewed this positively.
The positive belief in pluralism and interest groups remains the mainstream view in American political science. They believed that the pursuit of collective interests could be rationally mediated.
Time has passed.
Today, the separation of powers is fundamentally broken.
The core of power has shifted to the Legislative branch.
Why did this happen?
As Hans-Hermann Hoppe pointed out,
because democracy is a political system where ownership is scattered as fractions (1/n),
politicians focus solely on the short-term and the highly visible.
👉 The Executive branch is represented by a highly visible individual: the President.
Because they are visible, they are easily checked by civic rights, the media, and the law.
Thus, their true power is weaker than in the days of Tocqueville or David Thoreau.
One wrong move, and bureaucrats are sued, their budgets slashed by Congress, or their departments disbanded. This is what bureaucrats fear most.
👉 The Judiciary, meanwhile, deals with complex interests
and consists of many unelected officials, making them easily lose touch with reality.
They are locked inside their own ‘castle.’
They are always busy with something, but nobody knows why.
They are buried so deep in procedural graves that their speed is agonizingly slow.
In the meantime, the power of the Legislature has become absolute.
The parliament uses time lags to recklessly churn out populist legislation, operating as an omnipotent group that bears zero responsibility.
The parliament lacks a single central figure, its power is dispersed.
It does not directly execute laws, making it largely “invisible” to citizens.
Because they take no responsibility for execution failures or rights disputes,
they are nearly impossible to control.
As a result, the power of ‘Giant Interest Groups’ that can directly lobby the parliament has grown asymmetrically.
The massive cartels that can guarantee the campaign funds and local influence
that politicians crave are granted extreme privileges.
Compromise and debate are no longer necessary.
A group that can gather sheer numbers to pressure the parliament
and doesn’t hesitate to use brute force—that is a “competent collective.“
And the parliament prefers dealing with exactly those groups.
What about the ordinary office workers and self-employed individuals who belong to no such group?
They are treated as transparent wallets or fat pigs to be slaughtered by the IRS, bled dry by taxes, yet no organization represents their interests.
When the bus union strikes, citizens walk.
This happens even though bus companies are quasi-public entities running on tax dollars.
When doctors strike, patients wait and die in ambulances.
These ordinary people have “no competence.”
The state collects their taxes to subsidize zombie companies and feed giant labor unions and NGOs.
The city spends millions on bizarre monster sculptures and plants lettuce on the city hall roof,
but not a single tangible benefit reaches the taxpayer.
In a society like this, feeling like ‘even if I make money, I have nothing left’ is the only logical conclusion.
Case 1: The Medical Association – The Leviathan Above the Constitution
Regardless of whether the administration was liberal or conservative,
the government tried to increase medical school admission quotas due to a rapidly aging population.
Instead of talking, the doctors shut down the emergency rooms.
The message was clear:
“Touch our vested interests, and we will paralyze the entire healthcare system.”
Patients died.
The parliament and the government fell to their knees.
Case 2: Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) – Modern Aristocrats Wearing Workers’ Masks
The KCTU is an extralegal sacred cow.
That would make even the 1970s American Teamsters shake their heads in disbelief.
Verbally, they champion workers’ rights.
In reality, like medieval aristocrats, they demand that their jobs be inherited by their children.
Even when a company faces financial ruin, they strike, halt the factories, and demand guaranteed employment.
They receive massive state subsidies but refuse to disclose their accounting ledgers.
They do not hesitate to engage in blatant political activity.
Some executives were convicted by the Supreme Court for acting as agents for North Korea, an enemy state. There was no remorse.
Instead, former KCTU representatives become Ministers of Employment and Labor and take over the parliament. Journalists join the KCTU and act as their PR mouthpieces.
Because the parliament reacts and the executive branch yields when they throw a tantrum,
there is practically nothing that can stop them.
An entrepreneur who visited my shop told me the brutal truth:
“Let me be honest with you.
Running a small business in South Korea is a dead end.
Do you think truck drivers in the Cargo Union make good money
because their individual skills are exceptional?No. They make good money and get guaranteed wages
because they can unite and paralyze the nation’s infrastructure.”
The ability to unite and extort the parliament and the media—that is the definition of competence.
Those without that competence simply keep paying taxes.
That is why they feel they have nothing left.
4. Conclusion: The Pain Engineered by the Structure
Money Dysmorphia (the phenomenon of feeling like nothing is left despite earning money) is not an individual failure.
- A structure where diligence goes unrewarded.
- A structure where money spent on education fails to guarantee the future.
- A structure where paying taxes yields no returning benefits.
- A structure where the political brute force to unite and pressure the government has become the only real competence.
In a society like this, struggling to improve your “individual skills” naturally feels like pouring water into a bottomless pit.
Society preaches to the self-employed, small business owners, and contract workers:
“Who forced you to do that? Build your skills!”
But in an era where the narrative of public education meritocracy has been shattered,
no one actually knows how to build those skills.
The money spent by individuals is merely burned as a cost that fails to secure the future;
it does not accumulate as an asset.
In the next article, we will explore how Joseph Campbell’s narrative of the “Hero’s Journey” further deepens this sensory illusion of poverty.
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