Worthiness

Cup 'O' Joe ^ | 2008.01.21 | Joseph Vecchio

[B-Chan]

From skimble, via the Sideshow:

If we deplete our stock of American intellectuals simply to make more money — without actually doing anything to make more money, such as research or innovate — where will we end up?

Where we are. Money worship is what got us here: to the subprime mess, to hedge fund managers wildly overcompensated and undertaxed, to international wars for SUV fuel and no-bid defense contracts, to monstrous CEO severance packages, to corporate ownership of life itself through court-sanctioned genetic patents, to a legislature and presidency whose campaigns serve only as an advertising windfall for television networks and a financial windfall for the lobbyists who write the legislation.

The American ship is sinking from the weight of its own economic narcissism. Our accountants and finance professionals have been richly rewarded for squeezing the last microscopic drop of profitability out of every other profession. That's why American newsrooms don't bother with news. That's why American old age homes imprison their residents as cheaply as possible. That's why American insurance companies refuse to pay out claims for sick people or destroyed homes. That's why we've proven that America is massively incapable of nation-building in Iraq or in Afghanistan or even in Louisiana.

So, thanks to the beancounters who know what things cost but not how to actually do anything, American is accelerating toward becoming a third world nation. And no one in the rest of the world will give a shit, and rightfully so, thanks to our cavalier attitudes toward Iraqi civilians, toward Sudanese refugees, toward the Chinese children who sew our clothing, toward the immigrants who work on our farms and in our hotels and hospitals and in those extremely profitable old-age homes, and toward anyone who isn't white and speaks English.

When the American bubble bursts, it could end up being a good thing — but only if the beancounters are pulled from their thrones and tossed back into the basement where they belong. Because American ingenuity and insight originate not on the balance sheet but in the laboratory, not in the boardroom but in the field of play, not on the spreadsheet but in the streets where human beings live and work. American inventiveness should concern itself not with "devising, selling and trading mortgage-backed securities so complex that no one, even those Harvard grads, can fully understand them," but with activities that enhance life itself.

I would also add that the beancounters may know how much everything costs, but don't know what anything is worth. I've said before that to certain people, money is the only thing that's real, but the truth is that money is an illusion, worth only what we believe it to be worth. And when you base a society on that illusion, sooner or later that bubble is going to burst...

This is one of those instances where you don't have to believe me, you can see it yourself, every day at different places. I buy a lot of things from dollar stores and similar places, and all I ever see is not enough people doing far too much work, and for far too little money, all because some fatass at the top wants to make $10 million instead of $9.98 million a year. So those of us who lack a highly professional skill no longer work to have a better future for ourselves and our children, we work to keep ourselves going one month at a time and pray that a financial disaster doesn't fall on us, like someone we love getting seriously ill. But if you have a skill in sales or fundraising or otherwise squeezing just a few more drops of blood from what used to be the bedrock foundation of our society (long-term jobs at decent wages), then for you, the sky's the limit. I guess how they deal with their own conscience is their own business.

What these beancounters also fail to understand is that if no one has any money to buy anything, no one buys anything. There are things I would like to buy, nothing overly frivolous: for example just some nice, inexpensive, assemble yourself furniture that would make this little room a little more my own. I would have been happier to stay where I was and not have had to move in the first place, but in this beancounter-driven workplace it's been determined that I don't have any real value to anyone, so such thoughts are nothing more than a pipe dream. As it is for millions more like me.

I wish I was smart enough to know how to really fix things, apart from just saying "pay us more money and stop charging so much for necessities such as food and housing". I wish I could lay out a groundwork for a better, more efficient economy, and a society where the measure of someone's value isn't determined by the amount in their bankbook. But I'm not, and I can't, and I think things are so bad right now that I don't see any hope of real improvement in my lifetime. But maybe if we all work hard and if we stay focused on what's really important in life (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness as opposed to work, indebtedness and pursuit of money) then maybe things will be better for our kids. We can only hope.

[B-Chan]

While I would disagree with the author on many issues, I agree with the sentiments he expresses here. The economy is a game rigged to concentrate wealth in the hands of the power pieces — the pirates, swindlers, and bastards. The creative types (who create wealth) and the hardest workers (who physically make it) are merely disposable pawns. If twenty-eight years of playing the game have taught me anything, it is this: the bigger bastard you are, the better liar you are, the more ruthless you are, the more you will benefit. And the Talent always gets paid last — if at all.

But, as with all games, this one will eventually end. The Gods Of The Copybook Headings will not be long denied.

"If no one has any money to buy anything, no one buys anything."

[hellbender]

There are some liberal overtones here, but overall the author is right on target. If the Republican Party continues to follow the Wall St. Journal “free”-trade, open-borders policies, they and the country are doomed. The kind of swing voters needed to win elections will never fall for that stuff. Many of us have a deep-seated feeling of unease at the rampant materialism which now dominates society. People will not fight, risk death (as our military does every day), or even vote just for money. The elites who sneer to the average citizen that he should prepare to “reinvent” himself several times in his career to stay ahead of sweatshop Third-World competition repel most people. It is those elitists who need to be “downsized,” “outsourced,” and “offshored.”