A Generation of Sociopaths

How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

By: Bruce Cannon Gibney

Narrated by: Wayne Pyle

What happens when a society is run by people who are antisocial? Welcome to baby boomer America.

In A Generation of Sociopaths, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows how America was hijacked by the boomers, a generation whose reckless self-indulgence degraded the foundations of American prosperity. A former partner in a leading venture capital firm, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.

Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts - acting, in other words, as sociopaths - the boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible - and when, not coincidentally, boomers will be dying off.

Gibney, whose 2011 essay "What Happened to the Future?" transfixed the investment world, argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the boomers accountable and begin restoring America. Distilling deep research into a witty, colorful indictment of the boomers and an urgent defense of the once-unquestioned value of society, A Generation of Sociopaths is poised to become one of the most controversial books of the year.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2017 Bruce Cannon Gibney (P)2017 Hachette Audio

there's an idea there... but!

This is a curious case. Yet another person finds that something is utterly wrong with our socity, but what is it?
Well a quick detour is in order. Upon my first reading of DSM V I developed a bit of a hobby of armchair psychiatry, deploying newfound knowledge everywhere with reckless abandon. As fun as such exercise is, it is hardly scientific; but to try to do it on a scale of population cohorts, as tempting as it is, I'm sure, is sheer lunacy. Especially given how much DSM V emphasise the individual patient difference.
And thus is the main flaw of the book, the author tries to cram his arguments to fit the description of a mental disorder. A metaphor gone too far takes over the narrative. Yet, if that flaw can be put aside, and that takes quite an effort, mind you, many gems can be found in this book.
There is however a great irony here, since the DSM V was in fact a rather questionable tome written in no small part by pharmaceutical industry it is surprising that the author does not make any reference to altering the water supply. On the other hand, I find the whole thing rather questionable since if he ignored all the flaws of DSM V while trying to cram the content of the book into a diagnostic model prescribed by it, one can't stop and wonder about the quality of the rest of the evidence.

boomer bad, future gens good

this book is fantastic.
listen to it
listen to it again
listen to it a 3rd time and start a revolution.

Good until the end and then it went wrong

The author is correct in his psychological assessment of boomers as sociopaths. However, he shows his own sociopathic tendencies of being part of the 1% (he is very wealthy) when he tries to provide suggestions about how we can course correct policies. He puts too much emphasis on people needing to save money for retirement while ignoring the fact that decades of stagnant low wages not keeping up with the increasing cost of living and economic recessions have left many millions of people unable to save. One cannot budget themself out of poverty; they need to be paid more and the boomer led companies have made sure to keep wages low and costs high. The author also asserts that corporations do pay taxes but that a lower rate would help them stay in the US. Given when this book was written, the author still had data to show him that the largest, richest companies like GE, Amazon, the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and many others pay literally zero dollars in taxes. That allots for billions of dollars they are not paying back into society. The taxes of the rich do not subsidize the taxes of the poor. Why does the author think that people who can barely make ends meet should be paying really anything in taxes comes off as out of touch and cruel. Also, he says the defense and military have been “starved.” I’m not sure how he can assert this when the military budget is the only thing that gets increased funding every single year. He fails to mention that reallocating just 1-2% of the military budget would provide enough funding for the entitlement programs and other human infrastructure we need to catch up to other modern countries of the world. The vast majority of Americans pay more than they should be in taxes; it’s the ultra-rich and corporations who are cheating society, and yes, those companies are led by boomers. The rich are not subsidizing the rest of the population. What a false assertion! Also, the attacks on Bernie Sanders seem a bit unwarranted and more personal or self serving. I thought this book was goof until the last couple chapters. I’m unashamedly returning this book though. The author doesn’t need my money and I don’t appreciate his misleading readers at the end with what solutions he offers.

He's not wrong.

This is a brutally honest read and one that was long overdue. Just having watched their actions and words while in power for the entirety of my life demonstrates that almost the entire Baby Boomer generation royally blew it for the rest of us who will have to live with the aftereffects of their sociopathic behavior for decades, provided our species even makes it that long given that Boomers deliberately ignored the onslaught seen by human induced climate change. At some point, soon rather than later, there has to be a reckoning with that generation - they, just as the author posits, really did screw the US with their selfish, ignorant, sociopathic, entitled behavior. And they're forcing younger generations, nearly all of whom didn't deserve the broken world the Baby Boomers happily leave us with as they slowly pass on, to pay the collective costs regardless of what we say or do.

Give the people what they want is their fault?

If you could sum up A Generation of Sociopaths in three words, what would they be?

Government sold out the future for immediate power

Who was your favorite character and why?

Colonel sanders when he was only a corporal

What does Wayne Pyle bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

better voice than Gomer

If you could give A Generation of Sociopaths a new subtitle, what would it be?

our government always wrong

a generation of degenerates

historically this is an accurate breakdown of the sociopathy involved in Boomer tax formula and generational distribution of wealth away from helping the poor and maintaining Society to helping themselves. I would actually say that his path Ford proposed is not nearly Progressive enough like taxing billionaires who are currently paying nothing you know no taxes whatsoever.

A must read for everyone but Boomers

This book makes the convincing case that boomers need to be dealt with immediately. If you are under the age of 60 you need to vote immediately for anyone not 60 or older. It's that simple.

Awesome Work!

It is a little over the top as as far as blaming everything on baby boomers, however, facts are facts. Though I don't think it was necessarily organized or with intent as much as a lack of checks and balances. Or maybe better stated what happens to anything when someone that did not stuggle takes over.

Very insightful

Gives us insight into how the Boomers destroyed America for future generations and blame it on everyone else.

Interesting concept, conflates cause and effect

Does a lot of work describing an observable phenomenon (the toxic effect of one particular generation on American culture and politics), but does so in a strange way. The DSM V criteria for diagnosing sociopathy isn't suited to diagnosing entire populations, and it's particularly difficult to diagnose someone with a personality disorder when they themselves don't think anything is wrong.

The writer isn't a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so that detail is of little importance. instead, the writer is a venture capitalist so presumably there's no need to actually know what one is talking about.

But, that isn't really the problem with this book. If it were just that, it would still be an interesting, if flawed, rhetorical concept.

The problem is 1) reifying generational politics (i.e. making generations a coherent thing) and 2) ignoring the material conditions which create the culture of a given moment.