Greenspanned
I read with interest recently of Alan Greenspan's recantation. He has finally admitted that the economic policies he presided over were some sort of pyramid-selling scheme in which the assets and worth of future generations were traded away under the assumption that wealth would never dissipate. This humans-conquer-the-cosmos thing has long been an SF trope: you can find the idea that man will run out of time before they run out of space and matter in most science fiction of the 1960s to 1980s.
Timothy Rutten, in the Los Angeles Times, has an interesting take which does not only address issues of time, space and matter. This is what he has to say:
No one begrudges a company about to go out of business the right to cut payroll, but now nobody blinks when a CEO throws people out of work for an uptick in the stock price or to ease the service of ill-considered debt. It's been a long time since anyone who analyzes the economy has been willing to say that it's immoral for a profitable firm to deprive families of their income and health insurance, to strip hardworking men and women of labor's dignity.
"I did not forecast a significant decline [in the housing market] because we had never had a significant decline in prices," Greenspan told the committee, adding that the Fed's record of economic foresight remains unequaled. "We can try to do better, but forecasting ... never gets to the point where it's 100% accurate."
Perhaps only an economic education prepares a man to draw as his conclusion from catastrophe the gnomic declaration that fallible human beings are not infallible. Some things, however, are true 100% of the time: Societies in which the few are allowed to fatten themselves without limit on the labor of many are not just; they aren't even particularly productive for very long. Countries -- like companies -- that cling to notions that allow some to pursue their own interests by behaving indecently toward others come to bad ends.
There is no recovery from moral bankruptcy.
The full article can be found here. It's just one of the many pieces now available in journals and newspapers around the world. Can we have only just woken up?
The answer is NO. Simply put, the voices championing rights for the employee and a fair deal have been drowned out by the voices of wealth, prosperity gospels, and the idea that wealth will always trickle down to the bottom (like the collector tray at the bottom of some vast hydroponic tank).
The operative word there was always 'trickle'. Wealth was associated for far too long with moral dominance. It was never supposed to be so; Jesus would have been the first to identify the need to keep the love of money away from the hearts of men, and to always tie responsibility to power. The Bible is full of it: the scholar, officer and gentleman are not to boast of wisdom, power and wealth — they are to boast (if they must) in terms of how well they know God and His ideals of mercy, justice and righteousness. And of course, to know Him is to do His will not according to the understanding of men, but according to the Word and the Spirit.
You who read this might not subscribe to that sort of theology or any kind of deicentric belief. But it does seem that, as Rutten puts it, some people actually can be found who believe that doing nasty things to your underlings makes the world a better place for everyone. That folly is now being exposed. Maybe altruism is indeed a survival trait after all, and the dinosaurs of this age will perish.
Timothy Rutten, in the Los Angeles Times, has an interesting take which does not only address issues of time, space and matter. This is what he has to say:
No one begrudges a company about to go out of business the right to cut payroll, but now nobody blinks when a CEO throws people out of work for an uptick in the stock price or to ease the service of ill-considered debt. It's been a long time since anyone who analyzes the economy has been willing to say that it's immoral for a profitable firm to deprive families of their income and health insurance, to strip hardworking men and women of labor's dignity.
"I did not forecast a significant decline [in the housing market] because we had never had a significant decline in prices," Greenspan told the committee, adding that the Fed's record of economic foresight remains unequaled. "We can try to do better, but forecasting ... never gets to the point where it's 100% accurate."
Perhaps only an economic education prepares a man to draw as his conclusion from catastrophe the gnomic declaration that fallible human beings are not infallible. Some things, however, are true 100% of the time: Societies in which the few are allowed to fatten themselves without limit on the labor of many are not just; they aren't even particularly productive for very long. Countries -- like companies -- that cling to notions that allow some to pursue their own interests by behaving indecently toward others come to bad ends.
There is no recovery from moral bankruptcy.
The full article can be found here. It's just one of the many pieces now available in journals and newspapers around the world. Can we have only just woken up?
The answer is NO. Simply put, the voices championing rights for the employee and a fair deal have been drowned out by the voices of wealth, prosperity gospels, and the idea that wealth will always trickle down to the bottom (like the collector tray at the bottom of some vast hydroponic tank).
The operative word there was always 'trickle'. Wealth was associated for far too long with moral dominance. It was never supposed to be so; Jesus would have been the first to identify the need to keep the love of money away from the hearts of men, and to always tie responsibility to power. The Bible is full of it: the scholar, officer and gentleman are not to boast of wisdom, power and wealth — they are to boast (if they must) in terms of how well they know God and His ideals of mercy, justice and righteousness. And of course, to know Him is to do His will not according to the understanding of men, but according to the Word and the Spirit.
You who read this might not subscribe to that sort of theology or any kind of deicentric belief. But it does seem that, as Rutten puts it, some people actually can be found who believe that doing nasty things to your underlings makes the world a better place for everyone. That folly is now being exposed. Maybe altruism is indeed a survival trait after all, and the dinosaurs of this age will perish.
etched with acid at 4:07:00 pm
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