Adrift summary

Hatred and anger are spewing on social media. Wealthy elites are stacking the system in their favor. Community connections are fraying. Friendships are fading. We’re facing a crossroads of major crises.

Yet, despite that, there are still glimmers of hope scattered throughout our rapidly changing world. While Scott Galloway does discuss major challenges in Adrift, he also brings a refreshing sense of optimism and a willingness to focus on the positive aspects of modern life. It’s both a warning and a hopeful call for a better society. By understanding what’s going wrong, we can make choices that put us on a better course.

And while this Blink is primarily a look at a superpower facing existential challenges, it also offers important insights and advice on a range of topics from the necessity of openness to new ideas to the benefits of risk and the value of strong community connections.

In this Blink, we can’t hope to cover all 100 separate charts featured in Adrift. What we can do is draw out some of the key ideas and statistics and give you a sense of the meaning that each of them holds.

You may have heard recently that college is overrated. It’s certainly true that educational institutions offer degrees that may not lead to a high-paying career. Not to mention college costs have soared and so has student loan debt. The cost of a college education rose 169 percent from 1980 to 2019 and wages didn’t even come close to keeping pace.

From that, your takeaway might be that college is a foolish money sink. But a college education is even more key to landing a job now than ever before. If you want to be part of the middle class, you need to find a way to afford college or vocational training.

In 1973, a whopping 72 percent of jobs only required a high school diploma. The situation is reversed now. By 2020, only 36 percent of jobs were open to people with just a high school education. And, in that same time span, the share of jobs requiring a bachelor’s or master’s degree has more than doubled from 16 percent to 35 percent.

Getting a degree may be more difficult than ever but ignoring the benefits of college isn’t the answer. Without earning a college degree, you’re much less likely to make a comparable wage to those with a degree. Economic frustration is a good recipe for social unrest, and on a personal level, it’s not something you want to experience.

Think creatively, though. While college can be key, don’t overlook the value of vocational education. Would you like a job that starts at $70,000 or more? In the United States, that’s the average starting salary for 94 percent of apprentices who finish their program. Despite jaw-dropping numbers like this, few people in the US are pursuing apprenticeships compared with other countries. In Denmark in 2019, there were 48 apprentices for every 1,000 people in the workforce. In the US that same year, there were three for every 1,000 – even despite the obvious benefits.

Your education, whether you earn it from a university or a less traditional venue, is essential. It might take a creative approach but don’t sell yourself short by giving up on the idea – even if it comes with major challenges.

There’s a reason the wealthiest members of society have cornered most of the stock market. You can bet they aren’t renting their homes either.

Stocks and homeownership are portrayed as financially sound investments. And they are if you can afford them. An increasingly large number of people can’t buy homes because their value has ballooned.

Increasingly, the US economy is centered around the stock market, and we base our feelings about the economy on how those markets perform. The US government policies cater to shareholders and so do corporate policies. 

But real estate and the stock market are also both notorious for their bubbles and stock prices have been increasingly untethered from the actual value of companies. Look at the soaring prices for stock for troubled companies like GameStop or Hertz – sometimes driven by little more than social media hype.

This fixation on stocks has made it much easier for companies to hit a valuation of $1 trillion. Apple brought in $229 billion in revenue the year before its stock value reached $1 trillion. A couple years later, Microsoft got to a $1 trillion valuation with only $110 billion in revenue. And in 2021, Tesla met the $1 trillion landmark with only $32 billion in revenue.

We also turn founders like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk into cult figures. But their large followings can distract from the actual health of their companies. Also, instead of clear communication about value, some companies indulge in outlandish yogababble – vague pronouncements about how they’re selling a lifestyle or feeling. Or they overpromise, sliding into aspirational claims about what they’re eventually going to achieve.

Stock prices can follow these narratives instead of the actual math and insight into fundamental business values. But you shouldn’t buy in. Look past the claims and make sure you know what these companies can actually deliver.

The internet has changed the world. That means it’s good … right?

OK, so we’ve all seen through that by now. But it is true that the internet revolution makes most of modern life possible, and we can be glad that access is growing in developing countries where it’s traditionally been out of the question. Aside from its obvious positives though, it’s increasingly hard to ignore all the downsides that the internet brings as well.

Social media, for example, makes money when it has our attention. And it does that by appealing to outrage, which drives us apart and harms democratic institutions and norms in the process. In this way, social algorithms inevitably push us to divisive content.

Media outlets, competing for clicks, have also catered to sensationalism. That can lead to a skewed view of the world. For example, as crime has gone down, media reports have continued to focus on crime, with the result that many people feel crime is getting worse.

But herein lies the dilemma: we also rely on news media to help us navigate the false claims and fake news that spread like wildfire around the world on the speedy pathways of the internet.

The internet, though, has taken a huge bite out of the news industry while tech companies like Google and Facebook reap enormous profits. 

If your local newspaper looks thinner, it’s not your imagination. In 2008, newspapers brought in almost $40 billion in ad revenue. By 2020, that had fallen to less than $9 billion. And it’s not just newspapers. Different kinds of news outlets employed 114,000 journalists across the US in 2008. By 2020, thousands of journalists had lost their jobs or quit until only about 85,000 remained.

The result? We have increasingly less access to good information – even as social media companies drive us to divisive and anxiety-inducing content.

So think critically about your news sources but value the contributions of reliable news media. Don’t simply rely on your social media news feed to tell you what’s going on. Too often, what it’s feeding you is misinformation and outrage to keep you coming back.

You know what’s actually good for society? Risk and instability.

Well, OK, they also come with a lot of downsides. Nobody asks for a crisis like a global pandemic throwing everything into confusion. But at the same time, risk and instability can actually foster innovation and research. When old ways of doing things fall apart, people come up with new ideas. New and better restaurants may move into a neighborhood to replace failed ones. Tanking rents may not be great news for landlords but they can clear the way for more people to move into an area for job opportunities.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with all kinds of job loss, we also saw a rise in business applications as people innovated and adapted.

Immigrants know about risk. They make the choice to upend their lives and move to an entirely new culture. And by doing so, they bring a needed jolt to the economy, not just by supplying labor, but also from their willingness to launch new businesses. Many important startups were founded by immigrants. Over the past few decades, they’ve been as much as two times more likely than adults born in the US to launch a new business.

The banking sector is another example of the benefits of upheaval, not to mention a positive side of the internet. As online banking has upended our old systems, we’ve seen a huge global opportunity. Many people around the world – about 1.7 billion, or about a third of adults – still lack access to basic banking services. But creative services like Ualá in Argentina or M-Pesa in Kenya are helping change that. They’re new and different – they’re a positive change bringing economic opportunity to many who lacked it. The resulting prosperity could be good for democracy too.

So while none of us likes upheaval or a crisis, we should learn to value the attitude of immigrants who learn to be flexible and take risks in changing times. The economy is better for it, and we can be too.