Because You Never Asked

 

(3/09)

     For this chicken soup philosopher, the main event in the world he lives in becomes the most likely fodder for material. As I write, the sky is falling. Our socio-economic team has blown a 10 run lead in the 9^th inning and has brought in its touted young closer, Barack Obama, to save the game.

     I’ve written a lot about the economy lately. Until Brittany Spears does something we can laugh at again (hey, there’s good money in being laughed at), the “economy” seems to be the only game in town. Ergo, here we go again.

     In order to do so, I will eventually bring back our fictional financial “experts“, Morgan Wharton and Nigel Brown, in representation of all such creatures (see essay, “The Crash of ‘08”). Morgan is a “scholar” at one of those Cato-Brookings type “think tanks”, a peculiar name for institutions that seem to have little relevance to either word. Nigel is a financial expert at London’s “Financial Times“, where even the Jamaican lady who cleans his office is a financial expert. But first, some background:

     When I work, I listen to a goodly amount of egghead news and commentary on National Public Radio. Except for some specialized publications and outer reaches of the Blogosphere, NPR is about as “egghead” as America gets --- and it ain’t nothing to write home about. Much like all of Big Media, the economy, economy, economy, --- the economy. Since the Holy Economic System fell into its “Chernobyl” mode, I’ve been subjected to a lot of roundtables, interviews with experts, debates amongst partisans, G20 summits, on and on, from the eggheads and commercial news alike. It all sounds very much the same wherever you are on the viewing-listening dial. What seems to separate the eggheads from the Wolf Blitzer crowd, is that the eggheads do a lot less Alex Rodriquez. But the message is pretty much the same.

     This essay was hatched from 2 in depth discussions of the economy (what else?) I heard on NPR. I cannot remember the names of the participants, nor the organizations they represent, which would be something like knowing who’s pitching long relief for the Florida Marlins these days. As a result, I will use Morgan and Nigel to represent these roles, because --- really, once you’ve heard one economist, you’ve heard them all.

     Why do they all sound so alike? Elementary: something like 100% of the economic “experts” we hear from in our culture have been trained and nourished in the current form of neo-liberal capitalism. It is the breast they feed from. They are its advocates, and when it functions poorly --- and really, in a global sense, it always functions poorly --- they end up being its apologists and rationalizers. They only carry on a debate within the framework of this economic system that has engendered them. This framework could be described as puny in comparison to the abundance of choices humans have in developing and distributing the world’s resources.

     So there I was one morning, listening to the Diane Ream Show on NPR. This is a program that could fool you for awhile, but in the end, it too is constricted to that narrow framework of acceptability just mentioned above. And Morgan Wharton (or was it Nigel Brown?) was expounding upon a tsunami that has yet to drown the shores of the current economic disaster, that being the amount of personal debt rung up and still outstanding in the United States of Gringoland. In the words of that hip-hop, basketball playing sage, Alan Iverson, “we’re talking about plastic, man, plastic”. You thwap it down on the counter, they run it through that vaginal-like slot, and voila! you can now go home with those $200 shoes you just “had to have”. (See essay, “Destructive People”).

     Morgan is very worried about this. According to him, the amount of personal debt still outstanding in the United States is equal to 100% of the Gross National Product. The last time this happened was in --- let’s look it up, one moment --- oh, yeah, in 1929.

     Ahh, the memories ---

     Very interesting, but here is where Morgan begins to play the apologist role for “his” economic system. He starts blubbering away on how it really isn’t a question of regulation or non-regulation, of government action or inaction, of privatization or nationalization, of stimulating or letting it be --- no. It’s a question of personal responsibility, of each and every one of us not being reckless with our fiscal possibilities. We’ve been living beyond our means. It’s not really the system, its us. Personal responsibility.

     That is a lot of personal bull.

     Sure, in the grand stew of human endeavor, there might be a teaspoon of truth in Morgan’s assertion, but it is overwhelmed by not only what our economic system leads us to do, but, even more importantly, what it needs us to do.

     One of the milestone moments in human history was the invention of the television. It is unfortunate this wonderful apparatus has been set into our culture in the way it has. TV has become the salesman of consumerism, acting with robotic persistence in making us want the things that nourish the Holy Economic System. As if that weren’t enough, Morgan and his ilk decided to pile on by propagating the universal use of the credit card. This was no accident. This was a calculated effort to make it as easy as possible for any consumer whim to be consummated. Which begs the question --- who gave everybody these credit cards? Hey, Morgan, if we are talking about responsibility here, maybe this is where we should look first. After all, it was the “experts” that did this.

     So talking about “personal responsibility” in such a socio-economic environment is a hollow rationalization for the poop that’s been piling up. But it is just pocket change compared to the real problem. What Morgan seems to ignore is that his Holy Economic System cannot work unless the mass of people are actually living on the edge of their credit cards. The amount of consumption necessary to sustain it is preposterous. If the personal responsibility referred to by Morgan actually happened, the Holy Economic System becomes sick. It cannot sustain its work force. In such a system, the idea of personal responsibility is turned on its head: we must spend --- not be frugal and responsible.

     About a week later, on the same Diane Ream Show, I heard an even more absurd apology for the Holy Economic System. About a half hour into her show, Diane will say, “and now, let’s open the phones for our listeners --- “. All programs with listener participation have “screeners” who maintain each show’s particular brand of  PTA-Kiwanis Club approval for questions. In addition, the 7 second delay serves as the final firewall for poor taste. In this instance, perhaps they let one get away, and it could be the best question I’ve ever heard on such a show.

     “Tell me Diane, why is it, when you talk about anything having to do with the economy, you never have anyone on who is opposed to this economic system? Why is it always people from within the system, the same organizations, the same type of experts? Why don’t you ever include someone who doesn’t like this system, instead of people who are just trying to put it back together”?

     Have you ever been in a group where someone has farted and there are those prolonged, awkward moments, where everyone is trying to ignore it and act normally ---   Me? You? Who?

     This question was the fart in the Diane Ream Show, and an awkward silence in radio is about the same as the cable going out in television. Diane tried to rescue her show, “but --- well --- they are the experts --- I don’t know --- who else could I --- “. At this point, Nigel Brown (or was it Morgan Wharton?) came to the rescue. Firmly, confidently, “look, in spite of its shortcomings, free market capitalism has still been shown to be the most efficient and fair way to distribute goods and services”.

     Enough of this insurrection! Next question.

     I’d like to have a nickel for every time somebody defending the status quo has said, “yeah, but it is still --- “ “Yeah, slavery, for all its badda-boom, it is still --- “, or, “yeah, women not voting, it might be yadda-yadda, but it is still --- “, or, “not letting workers organize could be seen as blah-blah, but it is still --- “, or, “segregation might be seen as dippity-doo, but it is still --- “. Here’s a philosophical rule of thumb: anytime someone defending the status quo says “it is still” or any derivative thereof, change what is being defended as quickly as possible.

     Nigel claims his neo-liberal capitalism is efficient. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being perfect efficiency, the Holy Economic System gets a 0. It wastes more resources than anyone could have conceived of perhaps no more than 50 years ago. The next time you buy a 2 inch plastic car for junior to play with, see where it was made. That’s right, 10,000 miles of shipping just to make that insignificant item cheaper (see essay, “Walmart or The Stupid Economy“). The Holy Economic System is so wasteful, so destructive, so ecologically irresponsible, we’d have to invent another word for the inefficiency it entails.

     And here’s another good one; Nigel thinks the Holy Economic System is fair. My guess is that Nigel lives on planet Earth, but maybe he’s never heard of Bangladesh, or seen what is happening on the Mexican-American border, or made aware of the waves of Africans on less than seaworthy boats washing ashore in the Canary Islands. There are a majority of dirt poor people out there, and they are a part of Nigel’s Holy Economic System too.

     The public discourse in America has been strangling in its own rhetoric for way too long. The problem is that only 2 choices are given for socio-economic policy: free market capitalism or Stalinist communism. In the simple minded terms of Yankee propaganda, the latter lost. That leaves just one choice. This is like letting a pitcher throw only 75 MPH fastballs, and right down the middle. Hopefully, our touted young reliever, Barack Obama, has more pitches than that.

     Relevant Material:

“You will never have enough of what you don’t need”.

When asked what we should acquire in lieu of material things, she answered,

“experiences”.

     These two remarks are from April Lane Benson, a renowned psychologist specializing in compulsive buying.