I admit, your average blogger seems to have reams of new revelations to make on a daily basis. I don’t seem to have the bloggariah gene. So the posts come when they come.
Danogenes has become introspective of late, so he has had little to share. Events keep marching with remarkably little protest from those being rolled over. You should go see Michael Moore's Capitalism a Love Story. Much of it is well trod ground fro Moore, but several of the stories are affecting and infuriating.
Gliding past Moore's polemics, what struck me most was a deep sense of awe at the power of our oligarchs to create and continually orchestrate all the elements of a powerful but flawed collective dream. My personal introspection comes from a sense of impotence at seeing any meaningful way of effecting any change in the steamroller of the growing coup of the financial titans. In my thoughts, the same themes repeat as if in a broken symphony. The candle of honesty shone in the faces I find reflects a dark hole.
Nobody seems to actually care that the climate destruction may have actually passed the point of no return, or that is the point where whatever changes we make to future consumption will be inconsequential to averting a catastrophe. Everyone goes on with they actually believe the economy as we have known it will magically rejuvenate and provide for our collective maintenance of current realities. The short form of that perception is that us Boomers are about to find out that the promise of retirement and future ease has been erased forever.I am amazed that we aren't dealing with issues that are visible ahead rather than staring at a pleasant past glowing in our rearview mirror.
For instance, it seems that us proto geezers had better start making good friends with our children, because they are going to have us living with them for quite a long time. If we are really lucky, our collective incomes might be sufficient to keep paying the rent. But then, a interesting future challenge arises. Who will be how to decide who makes “the rules of the house”. I guess that will be the stuff of a lot of blogs in 10 years.
Now we come to the essence of my personal challenge. The future has been clearish, but my timing has been way off. Friends make fun of me for a long career of doomsaying. And they are right. I can only explain it by saying that certain paths are clear into the future, but having seen where things are going, I have missed the stately pace of events that need to unfold to get us there.
For instance, It was evident in 1987 that there was going to be a day of reckoning on our post war debt binge. I thought that day was immanent, but I gotta admit, the bankers lacky, Alan Greenspan sure kept it at bay with the constant pump on the debt bubble.
For what its worth, I believe that if we had allowed the Great Recession in 89 we would already be into a new healthy growth period. But no, taking away continual growth was too great a burden for my fellow Americans. We inflated assets instead and got this wonderful world of banking oligarchs and a rapidly disappearing middle class. This dance has gone on so far that I’m thinking that the economic collapse of the past year is merely a gentle squall compared to the fury of the coming storm.
Here is the elephant in the room as I see it. We have had a wonderful 30 years of run up in the value of our investments. Real Estate blossomed, the stock market boomed and everybody became convinced that patient investment in their collected assests was ultimately going to provide riches and security. There was never any real consideration of the actual worth of those assets in relation to the real world around us. As long as we all believed (because if you didn't believe, wealth would never come your way) that real estate would always go up in value. If you did regular purchase of stocks, so would the stock market. Even now, we still believe that once the "correction" is over everything is still going to be wonderful. (BTW, did anyone ever notice that 401Ks were investment accounts, not savings accounts?)
What that big elephant in the room is really telling us is: once the bubbles burst there is no going back. That is the painful prospect that faces us at this moment. The property values are not going to start climbing again, they may even decline a whole bunch more. The stock market is rigged like a casino with the High Frequency Traders controlling the wheel. We know in our hearts that the next 20 years will not be like the last, but we still refuse to make real choices based on that knowledge. Somehow, we are convinced that with enough belief and determination it will all turn around. We have no plan B to turn to if that doesn’t happen.
So I return to the one big question which constantly runs through my mind; why we can’t actually agree to downscale our expectations and pull back from our obscene collective level of demand? I then keep assuming that it has to do with status. We all need a sense of status in the world, which is difficult to internally generate. But why?
One explanation was provided by Dimitri Orlov in his Club Orlov posting which takes this all down to an even more guteral level. We do it because we just can't go back. Once you have flush toilets, you cant use an outhouse. However, I think he has a point. In a debate a friend want to know why people must demand technical solutions to problems like hanging solar panels and electric cars when it would be simpler to cut back demand and change the lifestyle so a car is not needed.
Orlov: I have thought about this long and hard, and came to the conclusion that it all comes down to a very basic question: "How to please a girl?" After all, any modern, progressive, educated and attractive person begins to scoff if you take away her flush toilet and substitute a bucket, or if she has to go shopping leading a donkey, or if, instead of a shower, she is invited to go and stoke a sauna. From time immemorial status in society has been determined by access to luxury goods. As society becomes richer, luxuries turn into necessities. And when society starts to grow poorer again, it turns out that there is no going back. That is, there is a way back, but it is blocked by the innate tendencies of our clever species. …It is very hard, gentlemen, to change the lifestyle, but not change the woman! If someone succeeds in this, then he is a hero and a genius, and we should all learn from him.
OK, I know there are a number of my female friends who will be insulted by his framing. On the other hand, there may be a number of the guys who agree. Of course I would be interested in comments.
Personally, I think the issue of status and how it is measured is one of the great unstated questions of our age. Celebrities have status, the rich have status. Hell they get all the attention in the press and blogosphere. If you listen on the train platforms and in the gym, the talk is of the celebrated. People seem to think that living vicariously through the elite is really how they should speed their time and attention. I don’t know about you, but I believe that where people put their attention is also where they put their values. Right now, those values are screwed.
OK, enough of fulminating. On to something positive.
Speaking of Attention, might I suggest you in Massachusetts pay some attention to Alan Khazei who is running for the Senate nomination. He is the first guy I have seen in a long time that talks about citizenship and participation rather than what votes he is going to make when he gets elected. Big Citizenship, what a concept. He is a long shot, but I beg you Mass voters to consider checking him out for the December primary. Hey, I have even volunteered some video services for him. You can see the result on Youtube of my signature petition training video. So much for that pitch.
Next time, I will explore steps to Cultural Confederacies and how a Progressive Libertarian vision might emerge.
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