…I'm freakalicious!
you're pretty damn freaky without scaring everyone
you have some excellent freakage. you're comfortable in your skin and can probably do just fine in normal society, well done.
We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese …
We can’t do this anymore.
Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
Something always seemed fishy about that system to me, too. All, or almost all, of this "stuff" eventually ends up in the landfill, where its of no further use to anybody ever again. Taken to the extreme, this system eventually results in a situation not unlike the gray goo scenario: all matter on Earth has been converted into discarded consumer goods. The only difference is that the consumer goods aren’t being manufactured by poorly programmed nanobots (yet). Instead, the culprit is an economic system operating under a set of flawed rules, which could be thought of as its programming.
So we have a system trading money for stuff that ends up buried. This wouldn’t be quite as bothersome if the burying of the stuff somehow resulted in money returning to the system. It doesn’t, of course. This is a situation where tame gray goo would come in handy! All that discarded stuff could be turned back into raw materials for the next round of manufacturing… which would result in money returning to the system. Sadly, that technology doesn’t quite exist yet.
As for the issue of Chinese buying US T-bills, it seems to me that’s the equivalent of falling into a payday advance trap. It’s covering a shortfall at one point by borrowing from the future. If money to cover the shortfall never materializes, then one has no choice but to repeatedly pay off one loan with another, accumulating additional fees each time. This continues until the individual either goes bankrupt, enters a debt consolidation program, or wins the lottery.
This is like one of those machines that’s designed to run faster and faster until it explodes. Anybody know what are those called?
The zombie corpse of Memeday rises from its grave to perform an interpretive dance. Or possibly to look for brains to devour. Or perhaps it’s just here to torment us all with a Friday Five.
- 1. If your car/bike is wrecked (if your mass transit service goes belly-up), do you know what you would do to replace it, perhaps even have the car or bike you want already picked out?
- Let me make sure I understand this correctly. Let’s say that the car for which I am still paying spontaneously explodes one morning, fortunately not with myself or anybody I know or care about inside. I’m not entirely sure insurance will cover that. I’d be stuck paying for a pile of smoldering wreckage, wouldn’t I? So let’s say it’s not really a spontaneous explosion, but is due instead to a collision (while parked and occupied by nobody I know, etc.) with a flaming Mad Max deathwagon (fully insured, even.)
Would I even want a new car? Not really, but San Diego is such a sprawl that the only way to get anywhere worth going is via freeway. There are some cities where one could get by easily with a cute little Vespa, but not here. Not with the freeways. Now, if I lived in one of those cities, I’d totally do that. But I don’t, so I suppose I’d have to just find something affordable. Preferably something that doesn’t attract Mad Max deathwagons and is not prone to spontaneous explosions. - 2. A client/friend gives you a lottery ticket, which wins you a prize worth (after taxes) ten times as much money as you earned/received last year. What will you do with it?
- First, I build a Mad Max deathwagon, then I set it on fire and ram it into some poor schmuck’s car. But only after I pay everything else off, and only before I ultimately fade into obscurity.
- 3. Fight or flee?
- Can I win? No? Run awaaaaaaaay!
- 4. Someone performs a random act of kindness that is exactly what you need on a bad day. If you wish to pay them back, would you write a poem, bake, buy something, or what?
- I will probably later get volunteered into helping them move, debugging their computers, or clearing smoldering wreckage from their driveways.
- 5. Your manager commands you to pick a charity to contribute to. Do you resist? If not, which charity would be your first choice?
- Am I commanded to donate my own money? Damn right I resist! I insist that I am my own charity and produce a poorly forged 501(c)(3) document.
TitanKT asks:
What I keep wondering is… what is our modern day version of The Great Depression going to look like? It just seems like our society is too technological to fit this mental image of what life was like during the Depression. However, it sure seems like that is what we’re in for. My hope is that whatever economic hardships are in store for us (as a country) we will step up and engender a new age of hard work and innovative entreprenuership that will revolutionize global economic systems. Yes, I may be optimistic, but I like it here… it’s sunny and warm most of the time. *grin*
I think we’ll first see a new embracing of frugality. Thrift shops, dollar stores, swap meets, and of course Wal-Mart and eBay. Frugality is the ability to maintain a certain standard of living while spending less to do so. It’s slightly different from being cheap, which is simply a desire to spend as little as possible.
We’ll see cheapness also, of course. I suspect that we’ll see the quality of some goods decline in order to keep them affordable. Folks will still be able to have their HDTVs, their phones, their portable computers… but they just won’t make them quite the way they used to.
Some folks predict that we’ll see a new age of reuse and repair. That rather than throwing a broken TV into the trash, we’ll prefer to take it to be repaired. Or in the case of easy fixes, such as torn clothing, we may fix it ourselves.
We will certainly start to waste less. And perhaps we’ll once again realize that waste is wasteful. People may take recycling, water conservation, etc. seriously if there’s more of an incentive to do so than "feeling good about the planet."
The fine folks behind the National Blog Posting Month have declared March the month of "Giving" and/or "Giving Up." I can’t think of a bigger example of giving than the AIG bailout.
Why must we, the taxpayers of America, fund the resuscitation of this giant corporation? Why, because it is giant! It has apaprently grown so huge and become so entangled in economies around the world that, should AIG fall, it would doubtless crush villages full of nuns and orphans beneath its convulsing corpse. The gases released by its putrefaction would raze forests and suffocate kittens! Behold the horror of the unfettered free market!
But seriously, about a hundred years ago, we learned at least one valuable lesson about letting corporations get too big. It seems now that we are going to learn another. As much as Bush sought to emulate Theodore Roosevelt’s image as outdoorsman and big-stick wielder, I think perhaps Obama may end up emulating Roosevelt in his roles as trust-buster, regulator, and conservationist.
Now Reading: The Art of Capacity Planning, by John Allspaw.
Just Finished: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson.
As highly rated and recommended as this book was, I felt a bit disappointed by it. Perhaps my expectations had been set too high by both the hype, and the author’s later book, The Diamond Age. I felt that somewhere in the middle of the book, the story came a bit unglued, perhaps coincidentally with the introduction of the Sumerian connection. The latter I felt to be expecting the reader to accept a bit too much, though it would not have seemed a bit out of place in the likes of Foucalt’s Pendulum or even Indiana Jones. I was also a bit unhappy with the abruptness of the conclusions of the various plot threads.
These objections aside, I found the book to be enjoyable, at least as much as Wetware.
About
-
Blogs!
-
Comics!
-
Catatonic Blogs
More
www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos and videos from cosmic_flurk. Make your own badge here.
ERIK
