Collapse of the Optional Economy
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Collapse of the Optional Economy
Every crisis repeats features of the last and introduces new elements that require new thinking. Unfortunately, the great credit collapse of 2008 hasn’t yet sparked the kind of authentically new thinking we’ll need to get out of the current hole and stay out.
Think of the new president’s initial prescription, that the economy needs ‘shock treatment’. Maybe he was thinking of the shock paddles in the ER or the barbaric electroshock-to-the-brain therapy for the clinically depressed.
Either way, the prescription was like shooting adrenaline into a cancer patient, when surgery, chemo and a supervised recovery would have been more appropriate.
I am a ground level, 'buckets and wheels' economist. All economies have certain basic features, the core survival functions that feed all the rest. Food, energy, shelter and the exchange and transportation infrastructure needed for food, energy and shelter are the essential elements of the buckets and wheels economy. Everything else is optional.
I could see the pending collapse just by watching cargo ships at a major American port. Cars and cheap Chinese goods were coming in. Scrap metal was going out. How long can that go on?
In the Great Depression, food production was seriously impacted and fuel supplies were impaired. In the current malaise, large, over-priced homes are going vacant in favor of apartments; second homes are going on the block; purchases of flat screen television systems, upgraded computers and restaurant outings are being deferred.
The overheated credit system grew to a gigantic scale because it was 'necessary' to support a vast optional economy that depended on a relentless stream of advertising to generate demand for more optional consumption. Because the credit system required the fig-leaf cover of underlying loan-securing assets, an artificial boom in American real property became the new 'gold standard'. But the whole hugely leveraged game rested on a fragile daisy-chain system of incomes that eventually began to fall in on itself.
Here’s the dirty little secret. Bernard Madoff’s multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme is the dominant metaphor for the entire optional economy. Money manipulation does not create real wealth.
JBG
Comments
WELL SAID. JBG
"Optional" was the best word found in the message. Why?
Consider:
The missing element in every human 'solution'
is an accurate definition of the creature.
The way we define 'human' determines our view of self,
others, relationships, institutions, life, and future. Many
problems in human experience are the result of false
and inaccurate definitions of humankind premised
in man-made religions and humanistic philosophies.
Because man, hobbled in an ego-centric predicament,
cannot invent criteria greater than himself, the humanist
lacks a predictive capability. Thus, his man-made criteria
rises no higher than eyebrows - and too often, no higher
than pubic hair! Without instinct or transcendent criteria,
humanism cannot evaluate options with foresight and
vision for progression and survival. Lacking foresight,
man is blind to potential consequence and is unwittingly
committed to mediocrity, collectivism, averages, and re-
gression - and worse. Humanism is an unworthy worship.
Human is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by
nature and nature's God a creature of Choice - and of
Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive
characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and re-
spectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is orien-
ted to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the
universe. selah
Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly
developed, and sensitive perception of variety. Thus
aware, man is endowed with a natural capability for enact-
ing internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends
itself as the superior basis of an active intelligence.
Human is earth's Choicemaker. His title describes
his definitive and typifying characteristic. Recall
that his other features are but vehicles of experi-
ence intent on the development of perceptive
awareness and the following acts of decision and
choice. Note that the products of man cannot define
him for they are the fruit of the discerning choice-
making process and include the cognition of self,
the utility of experience, the development of value-
measuring systems and language, and the accultur-
ation of civilization.
The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits,
customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of
his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the
creative process, is a choice-making process. His
articles, constructs, and commodities, however
marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor idol-
atry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth's own
highest expression of the creative process.
Human is earth's Choicemaker. The sublime and
significant act of choosing is, itself, the Archimedean
fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of qual-
ity and diversity. Further, it orients him toward a
natural environmental opportunity, freedom, and
bestows earth's title, The Choicemaker, on his
singular and plural brow.
That human institution which is structured on the
principle, "...all men are endowed by their Creator with
...Liberty...," is a system with its roots in the natural
Order of the universe. The opponents of such a system are
necessarily engaged in a losing contest with nature and
nature's God. Biblical principles are still today the
foundation under Western Civilization and the American
way of life. To the advent of a new season we commend the
present generation and the "multitudes in the valley of
decision."
Let us proclaim it. Behold!
2009 AD: The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14 KJV
Posted by: Jim Baxter | February 25, 2009 01:35 PM
Right On.
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