Self-Made or Built-Together? Book Debunks Crucial Myth

Salon.com today has a review of a new book that explodes the myth of the "self-made person" and in the process brings the conservative house of cards it barely supports crashing to the playing field. Maybe some of the craters will level that field if enough people pay attention.

The book, The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, is the work of Brian Miller and Mike Lapham. Using the technique of interviewing a number of well-known business leaders and weaving their stories together, the duo make the case that nobody does it entirely on their own any more, if ever they did. My favorite pull-quote:

Saying you did it all yourself and therefore don’t owe anybody anything is about as absurd (and self-centered) as saying that you raised yourself from babyhood, without any input from your parents, and therefore don’t have any further obligations to your family.

The centrality of this myth -- it's the basis for almost all of the disingenuousness of the conservative socio-economic policy positions in the United States -- makes this book extremely important reading.
Tagged Business Economy Entrepreneurs

Kunstler's Reality Check: A Lot of Truth Cloaked in Nakedness

I'm no big fan of James Howard Kunstler, though I do find him uncommonly insightful at some points and vaguely if somewhat insanely humorous at others. But his current Web post entitled "Reality Check" makes some keen observations that I agree point toward some of the possible scenarios lying in front of us now as a nation and a world. I do not buy into his pessimism; I believe that humanity will come to recognize the problem before its extinction and that it will be willing to transform into a sustainable model of living on this planet. At least, I believe that is as probable as Kunstler's negative views of the outcome.

Kunstler, who was uncannily accurate in predicting what the world and the United States would look like in 2010, is unflinching in his presentation of what lies immediately ahead for a national and world economy which are creating the illusion of "recovery". Here are my favorite pull quotes, with the occasional kibitzing from yours truly.

We've entered a contraction that will seem permanent until we reach an economic re-set point that comports with what the planet can actually provide for us.

Sustainability is a recurring theme in this short, pessimistic think piece and I think it is perhaps the central question of our time. When the fear-mongers talk about the end of the world, what they really mean is the end of humanity as we know it. And that end seems to me inevitable without a sudden and dramatic course change. Here, I agree with Kunstler at least in principle. The re-set point is the key; if we can all move with relative speed and consensus toward a point that is sustainable by the planet on which we travel through space, we can survive and perhaps even thrive. Failing that, we will...ahem...fail that.

[O]ne of the main themes in this presidential election - not even stated explicitly - is the defense of the entitlement to a suburban lifestyle; in other words, a campaign to sustain the unsustainable.

Though corporations and giant institutions seem to rule our lives these days, they will soon go extinct. Anything organized at the giant scale is going to wobble and fall: 
 
IOW, not only is nothing too big to fail, but it seems possible in Kunstler's view that all big things are destined to fail.

Eventually we'll have to face it: the fossil fuel age is ending and there are no miracle rescue remedies waiting to come on-stage.

 Some scientists think it is already too late to stave off the calamity of the end of fossil fuel's relatively free availability because we've dallied in the world of cars for too long.

We're not going to "tech" our way through the array of mega-problems we face… We're heading instead into a "time-out" from technological progress, duration unknown….

I'm not sure about this one. But it is certainly harder than it has ever been to see with any clarity a path by which tech innovation can begin to cope with the staggering scope and nature of the problems facing us as a race at a rapid enough pace to overtake the huge shift looming just over the horizon.

Our towns, counties, and states are all going broke and will not be able to keep the stupendous roadway system in repair. That's a major reason why we have to return to living in walkable towns instead of disaggregated suburbs, and why we desperately need to repair the regular (not high-speed) rail system.

Amen. We forget that the highway system in this country was built to make it possible for the automobile and its associated industries to succeed. At a time when so many of the raisons d'etre and merits of an automobile-based culture are fading rapidly in the side view mirror (where this problem, at least, is really closer than it appears), we are going to have ask ourselves the real value of maintaining the roadways for a population increasingly interested in creating sustained, walkable, self-contained communities.

For the moment, all leadership in America has drunk too much Kool-aid, all of it lacks conviction and competence, none of it wants to enter the actual future.

And the question is whether we will emerge from this moment focused on sustainability or on "restoring" a dream that is no longer sustainable and no longer viable even in the near term.
Tagged economy enoughness politics

Maybe Stock Market Isn't the Right Gauge?

Let me see if I get this.

The country is driven to the very brink of defaulting on its national debt because the government is unable to act on legislation that was purposely overly complicated by both sides.

We're told that if that logjam isn't dealt with on time, our bond rating could be affected and the stock market could tumble.

A "compromise" is reached. (Don't get me started.) The crisis is averted, at least in the main.

The next day, our bond rating is unchanged but the forecast for the bond rating is downgraded severely. Given that bonds are always trading on the future, this seems at least similar to a downgrade in the bond rating itself, just not of the same immediate effect.

And, oh, yeah. The stock market plummets anyway. This time, the excuse given for the drop is investor concern about the slowness of the recovery. A slowness that has just been greatly exacerbated by the passage of a "compromise" debt ceiling bill that both parties are guilty of mangling worse than anyone could have imagined a year ago. 

So Wall Street drops if we don't raise the debt ceiling. It encourages the irrational and almost unprecedented tying-together of the debt ceiling (which deals with debt already incurred) and upcoming budgets (which do not deal with debt already incurred, duh). Then when it gets what it wants, it plummets out of concern for the consequences of its actions.

Maybe we need to find a better barometer of our nation's economic state than the Stock Market, which has actually long ago stopped being a valid indicator of economic movement because of the day trading and automatic triggering brought to bear in the past 15-20 years.
Tagged Economic crisis Economy Politics
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