A Wheelbarrow Full of Outrage. The devaluation of moral currency has reached the hyperinflation stage. No one can buy social peace.

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 18, 2020 | Joseph C. Sternberg

[karpov]

The U.S. made outrage a form of social currency. Now we’re in the hyperinflationary phase.

Outrage, over racial injustice or anything else, has always constituted a form of political capital. In its best form it would manifest as the bullion of righteous anger demanding and achieving justice. In its worst form, the cynical and adept could leverage copper pennies of indignation into lucrative television contracts, speaking gigs, lobbying empires and the like.

But the advent of new technologies such as Twitter has dramatically increased the supply of a particular sort of paper anger, with no apparent regard for any real-world limit. Technology also has sped up the pace at which outrage spreads through our political ecosystem—in monetary terms, the “velocity” of this new political scrip.

It’s no surprise to a monetary economist, then, if each individual bit of outrage becomes devalued in this marketplace. Politicians, tweeters, old-media commentators, social-media influencers and corporate executives all feel compelled to engage in ever more provocative or elaborate displays of anger. At the moment this takes the form of “wokeness,” which can be understood as a type of performative progressive outrage used to boost one’s capital in the political marketplace.

Sometimes the results are ridiculous, as when Democratic leaders in Congress take a knee while wearing Ghanaian textiles for fear that a traditional press conference no longer draws sufficient attention. Sometimes the results are dangerous. See “Twitter, any day in the life of.”

Elsewhere, wokeness now appears to be a form of intangible compensation in many workplaces. Surveys consistently show that credentialed millennial employees especially place a lot of value on the social purpose of their employment. This isn’t entirely novel. The notion that work should be fulfilling rather than just a paycheck has been growing for a couple of generations.

[karpov]

There are hard-working conservative Americans who value the freedom to express themselves on social media and elsewhere on their own time without being fired. Companies should understand that firing people for political will cost them good workers and goodwill among moderate and conservative consumers. Someone should make a list of companies that have fired people for political reasons. For example, Raymond James wrongly fired Robert Larkin IMO. I don't want to patronize such companies.

[rktman]

Political capitol? Pffft! Monetary these days. Is blm a 501c3? Nope. So the funds blm receives from whoever through an intermediary are not accountable to anyone? Nice gig.

[Travis McGee]

[DugwayDuke]

Excellent article that explains why there are those who insist on escalating their ‘wokeness’ and why they will never be satisfied.

[libertylover]

performative progressive outrage

It actually offends me that the term "progressive" is used to describe people who push moral decay, climate change hoax, and communist economic plans that have failed around the world. I'm 70 and, overall, our progress has been a negative number.

The old term "liberal" doesn't work either because it's been a long time since liberals/progressives have been in favor of liberty.

Changing a term is very hard to do from the bottom. I know, I've been trying to get the term "unborn" changed to "preborn" for 25 years with very, very little success.

But we need a new term. Any suggestions?

[KC_Lion]

Thank You for posting.

[snarkytart]

Hell yes it is. Another Dem fundraising group.

[snarkytart]

Look at Gillette their CEO came out said I dont care if we lose some profit the message is more important. That’s when they were doing all those woke commercials with transgender kids shaving with their parents and stuff. Some of these CEO’s are part of the millennial generation who are cultural Marxists, again it’s a cult.

[pluvmantelo]

The ultimate ‘fiat currency’, I guess.