![[Great Depression - Car]](/mt/files/daily/depressioncar.jpg)
1-To what extent my past is influencing my view of the current situation? (a lot)
2-Why people like my right-leaning co-worker think that banks can go under, stocks crash, and unemployment go up, and it will be good for us?
The first answer is pretty obvious: starting with the fire in 2000 my life became so stressful and uncertain that I've had symptoms of PTSD ever since. To this day whenever I hear people talk about how "close knit" small communities are and how Mormons are to be envied for being so tight with each other I find myself exploding in an emotional tirade. Those communities aren't as supportive as they seem and if you offend them they will kick you out and do everything in their power to destroy you.
People who have known me since I moved to Seattle agree: I talk about it much less than I used to...
![[Great Depression - Bank Run]](/mt/files/daily/depressionbank.jpg)
But the second question is more puzzling.
I tried to understand my coworker's view, that the people who created this mess aren't the political and financial institutions, but rather the people who borrowed more than they could afford to get things they didn't need. And where the institutions failed, it was because they had hired these "hot shot" kids as money managers. But the old guard, they were stable and their only mistake was to give in to customer demands for higher returns.
I'm oversimplifying his argument, but his basic point was that the only people who would be hurt by a collapse are people who, through their selfish, consumerist, actions, deserve to suffer. He honestly believes that his suffering will be minor and a fair price to pay for a return to some pure-free-market nirvana (that has never existed...).
As I came to see his view, I saw why I can't argue with him: he has a vision of the future, based on his own fantasies and experiences. No amount of data will change it. I feel for politicians who try to effect that change in voters. If people see reality, they see that the future is probabilities, not certainty. But certainty is so much more comforting (its why religion is so popular: it gives a sense of certainty that is false, but feels good).
Based on my anxiety-inducing experiences, I see a future of soup-kitchens and double-digit unemployment. I have the presence of mind, however, to know that I'm clouded. Reality is different: we may end up in my worst-case scenario, we may not. The difficult thing is to decide which probability is most likely and prepare for it while not ignoring the other probabilities.
But since we are animals, we hoard. There's nowhere to flee, we're too low on the power pyramid to fight, so we freeze. And that makes one probability become a certainty.
Anyone who thinks allowing the market to play out without interference will somehow improve the underlying structure and prevent future bubbles should read the first few chapters of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Particularly the Tulip Mania and Mississippi Scheme. They are fabulous examples of the unavoidably cyclical nature of the speculation bubble (or more popularly, the pyramid scheme) and the corresponding impact on the market as a whole. The fact is that many people are inherently stupid and greedy (and definitely all the more so in a glorified unfettered capitalist state) and they will involve themselves in these get-rich-quick ventures every chance they get. And their recklessness swings up and then crashes down the entire economic region, screwing those who never even took part just through the misfortune of proximity.
So even if you were responsible and saved money and never played into the real estate bubble, your job security, your savings, your community resources have all been squandered by everyone else who did. That's how it works.
What was it Jon Stewart said last week? "Those who do not study the past get an *exciting* opportunity to repeat it!"
The average American continues to get fucked by the upper class who maneuver, as pawns, the vast majority of politicians and lobbyist groups.
As George Carlin said:
"The real owners (of this country) are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying – lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."
From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0
Why does this happen? Because a huge % of Americans are too fucking ignorant to choose reason and logic over an illusion of an invisible man painted by ancient, sexist, racist, murderous, and fanatical desert nomads thousands of years ago.
Delusion is force fed into children from a young age and irrationally accepted into adulthood by the stupid and narrowminded. Yet, reason, logic, sincere questioning, and open debate are painted as "character flaws" and stifled by these nimrods.
God I miss Carlin...
Somehow the children didn't get left behind, just the scientific method. I got really angry about that "Intelligent Design" shit that went down in Pennsylvania a few years back. The one glimmer of hope I saw was that the judge called it the religious brainwashing it is and ruled against it being taught.
But those groups keep coming back, certain that *this time* will be the time that they win and Jesus will come back to burn the rest of us.
2000 years is a long time to put off your return, don't you think?
In the end that's why I don't sign up for the revolution: you can't overthrow human nature.
"its called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."