Yes, I know economics is called the "dismal science". I know university instructors and political appointees a la the President's Council of Economic Advisors have turned it arcane, cryptic, boring and untranslatable. But it's really easy, so simple once you get a few principles down. I once heard it referred to as the "rationing of finite resources". That was in relation to health care, which is definitely being rationed today. The speaker said -- and I paraphrase -- that America used to have the "Lexus of health care", by which he meant access by all to the best health care in the world regardless of income and regardless of who-you-know. Now health care appears to be a question of Who-You-Know who can bump you to the front of the queue.
But my thoughts turn to the Katrina aftermath and further back to Ivan, Bette and earlier ones. I remember a great hue-and-cry about how merchants were "gouging" and taking advantage of human misery in raising their prices on necessities like chain saws, bottled water, ice, etc. Well, let's take a typical scenario. A hurricane has just struck; there is widespread devastation; shortage or nonexistence of essential supplies. A 7-11 has a finite supply of bags of ice and bottled water. If, at the time of the disaster, the ice bags are 99 cents and the bottled water is $1.97 each, if the merchant doesn't raise his prices, what is going to happen? The first hurricane victim who reaches the 7-11 is going to buy up the entire supply and there will be an instant shortage. Every victim after the first lucky one to arrive at the 7-11 is going to be SOL. Rationing of finite resources has to happen in order for every victim to have at least one bag of ice and one bottle of water.
There are some who say the market should decide how resources are rationed; there are many others who say the government should decide. The government advocates say the market should not decide because it isn't sensitive and caring towards The People the way government is, never acknowledging the truth that politics is nothing more or less than Who You Know, who can get you to the front of the line! The market is impersonal, unfeeling and plays no favorites. If you can purchase it -- whether you're white, black, Aleusian, Eskimo or Native American -- it's yours.
Listen to tales of FEMA incompetence, GOP chumminess with its big donors and callous indifference of Homeland Security chief (and Lenin-death's-head lookalike) Chertoff to American (as opposed to Israeli) suffering and the market should win out every time.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Cock-eyed Vision
One of my favorite passages in contemporary writing is in Vince Bugliosi's book on the OJ Simpson trial, Outrage. The first chapter is titled "In The Air". Reading it was one of those moments when another piece of the puzzle snapped into place. Bugliosi writes of how so much of what we think we know is part of the landscape, picked up through radio, television, magazines, commentators, casually overheard conversation in everyday settings.
Bugliosi was specifically writing about all the network pundits commenting on the trial who were presented as eminent "legal authorities". Bugliosi's point was that he -- the winningest DA in LA history and after a lifelong career as a trial lawyer and eminence himself -- had never heard of any of them. The ones he did know he viewed as lightweight or worse on the subject they were weighing in on.
We absorb what's floating around us and assume It's Reality. So much of what we are presented as the truth, or what really is, is a tightly controlled lie endlessly repeated until dissension or disagreement from it appears aberrant or demented. Andrei Sarkharov comes to mind.
Anyway, the latest bit of groupthink that set me off was in an advice column by a local "relationship guru" answering a 35-year-old, single careerist female who suddenly realized the office and a paycheck is not enough and wants to "settle down", get married and start a family.
The "guru's" response (in part) was a classic of I-Want-My-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too feminism: "There has to be a point when your priorities change from all work and no play to a healthy balance of both, allowing you to finally have it all...You don't have to sacrifice your career to make room for a man, but you need to find a way to fit him in." (emphases are mine).
So, in our postmodern world of "Girls Rule!" and made-for-TV movies where the First Female this-or-that is constantly showcased as proof that the glass ceiling has finally been smashed, a man has been reduced to a mere appendage to a successful woman's career. He is viewed as simply another appliance that will somehow fulfill whatever is left unfinished in Contemporary Woman's quest for completeness.
Never mind that Society now is hellbent on destroyng the very idea of a male as head of household and breadwinner, and that divorce and family courts are extortion rackets that exist only to keep him in financial and mental penury for the rest of his life paying for ex-wives who always get custody and their new boyfriends.
Our "relationship guru" expects the average single young man -- whose opportunities for advancement, thanks to affirmative action, government-dictated hiring practices, frivolous sexual harassment lawsuits and outsourcing, have left only the meatgrinder of the military as a career path -- is expected to leap at the chance to make Modern Woman fulfilled, married, financially secure and a mother. At least until she gets as bored with him as she is of her Brave New World of corporatism and paycheck.
If I were a 20-something guy looking at a future like this, I would either join the French Foreign Legion (unless feminists have made it a kinder, gentler bastard shadow of its former self) or be packing a prenup agreement in my wallet.
Bugliosi was specifically writing about all the network pundits commenting on the trial who were presented as eminent "legal authorities". Bugliosi's point was that he -- the winningest DA in LA history and after a lifelong career as a trial lawyer and eminence himself -- had never heard of any of them. The ones he did know he viewed as lightweight or worse on the subject they were weighing in on.
We absorb what's floating around us and assume It's Reality. So much of what we are presented as the truth, or what really is, is a tightly controlled lie endlessly repeated until dissension or disagreement from it appears aberrant or demented. Andrei Sarkharov comes to mind.
Anyway, the latest bit of groupthink that set me off was in an advice column by a local "relationship guru" answering a 35-year-old, single careerist female who suddenly realized the office and a paycheck is not enough and wants to "settle down", get married and start a family.
The "guru's" response (in part) was a classic of I-Want-My-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too feminism: "There has to be a point when your priorities change from all work and no play to a healthy balance of both, allowing you to finally have it all...You don't have to sacrifice your career to make room for a man, but you need to find a way to fit him in." (emphases are mine).
So, in our postmodern world of "Girls Rule!" and made-for-TV movies where the First Female this-or-that is constantly showcased as proof that the glass ceiling has finally been smashed, a man has been reduced to a mere appendage to a successful woman's career. He is viewed as simply another appliance that will somehow fulfill whatever is left unfinished in Contemporary Woman's quest for completeness.
Never mind that Society now is hellbent on destroyng the very idea of a male as head of household and breadwinner, and that divorce and family courts are extortion rackets that exist only to keep him in financial and mental penury for the rest of his life paying for ex-wives who always get custody and their new boyfriends.
Our "relationship guru" expects the average single young man -- whose opportunities for advancement, thanks to affirmative action, government-dictated hiring practices, frivolous sexual harassment lawsuits and outsourcing, have left only the meatgrinder of the military as a career path -- is expected to leap at the chance to make Modern Woman fulfilled, married, financially secure and a mother. At least until she gets as bored with him as she is of her Brave New World of corporatism and paycheck.
If I were a 20-something guy looking at a future like this, I would either join the French Foreign Legion (unless feminists have made it a kinder, gentler bastard shadow of its former self) or be packing a prenup agreement in my wallet.
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