Collective Responsibility

“It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.” (Oscar Wilde)

I’m super busy these days so, instead of championing “another crazy view”, I’m going to talk about two related issues without advocating any particular stance. Ideally I’d like this to turn into a forum of ideas where you, the reader, describe why you think what you do about this stuff and we all become more enlightened through this sophisticated process of sharing. But I realize that that might not be realistic given the sparse comments Alex and I receive and your general reluctance to formulate an opinions into words on the interweb. Nevertheless, here we go.

First, I want to ask: can we hold groups responsible for what they, as a group, do? And, if yes, can we justifiably attribute blame to all individual members of a group if they, collectively, did committed some wrong? Let’s look at an example: Assume that it was wrong for Americans to re-elect George “Dubya” Bush. I’m focusing on Dubya’s re-election because, I think, here we can say that that act was a foreseeable wrong and this will get around objections from those who’d say: “uhhh, I didn’t know he’d be such a fuck-up.” So if it’s true that him getting re-elected was a wrong, can we consider ALL Americans (who, at the time of his re-election, had the capacity to vote) responsible for that wrong? To try to answer this, let’s divide American voters into two groups: (1) those that voted for Bush; and, (2) those that didn’t. The former can, surely, be held responsible for obvious reasons – they played a direct and intentional role in his re-election. But, surely, the latter group can be held responsible as well since they had the means to prevent his election, either through casting their vote in a meaningful way or by contributing resources (e.g. time, money) towards a campaign against Bush. So the members of (2) share some blame in virtue of their failure to do enough to prevent his re-election. Okay, since all American voters fit into these two groups, can we say that all Americans are therefore responsible for Bush? Seems like yes. Can we say that they are “collectively” responsible? Again, seems like yes. Now even if you want to challenge me on how we got to this point, for the moment, just assume that (through the means I described or some other method) we can hold all voting Americans responsible for the re-election of Bush. With that in hand, can we trace the responsibility back down to individuals? By that I mean can we say our American friend - call her Jenny – is responsible for Bush’s 2nd term? Can we say: “Jenny, you jerk, it’s your fault we have to deal with Dubya!” Intuitively we might think not, after all, nothing she did as a individual agent made him get re-elected (or could have prevented him from getting re-elected). But this intuition is hard to grapple with, especially since we do treat friends like Jenny as if they were directly responsible for Dubya; regardless of her political leanings. If you think the Bush case is too much of a charged of an example, consider something else: The actions or activities of corporation X contribute to the destruction of our environment. Are the employees of X collectively responsible? Those who played a part in decision making processes are: either for contributing to the decisions that led to X doing those harmful acts or for not taking sufficient steps to influence the decisions such that the harmful things wouldn’t have happened (these would be managers, for instance); or, for being a cog in, that contributes to the efficiency of, a machine that does actions or activities that are considered bad (these would be file clerks, for instance). Here, more vividly that in the Bush case, people who don’t want to be considered responsible to the wrong being done by the collective can leave – if you don’t agree with what’s being done, leave the group. So all those who stick with corporation X can justifiably be considered responsible for the harmful acts of corporation X, right??

Needless to say, there’s heaps written on this stuff in moral and political philosophy. While I find it really interesting, I haven’t, unfortunately, had a chance to become familiar with it at all. And even though someone learned on this stuff could comment on this post with a response that would adequately address the points I raised (I welcome anyone able and willing to do it), I’m more interested in hearing the intuitive responses from others who haven’t really thought about this stuff before. But maybe I’m just on my own thinking there something worth talking about here. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.

B-IRAQ HUSSEIN OSAMA.

I was originally going to call this post, 'McCAIN: NOT ABLE', which was the most cleverest pun of BIBLICAL proportions I have ever come up with. And I was going to blog about what a terrible president John McCain would be for the United States of America, and how sad that made me - because once upon a time, back before John McCain morphed from a pragmatic and easy-going 'Mr Fix-It' to an angry walking metaphor for the disaster that it is American conservatism, I actually believed in, and supported a President McCain. But while I am happy to defend 'primary-era McCain' in a different post, should the reader of 'a word on failure' demand it, that post would now be sort of redundant. McCain's poll numbers are dismal, and short of Barack Obama tatooing a '666' into the back of his head and urinating over the American flag live on CNN - he will be the next President of the United States.

So this post isn't about what an epic fail a McCain presidency would be. But it is about the epic fail of the McCain campaign - a campaign that when it was out of fresh ideas to help the Republican party ruin America resorted to disgraceful, evil attacks on the character of Barack Obama, and in doing so have created a very,very divided and very very dangerous America.

I'm not the best person to try and explain this, cos its late and I'm tired .So I'll let someone with less foreign policy and economic experience, and only a little bit more executive experience than me give a first hand account of what a McCain campaign rally looks like.



Apart from looking a little bit like a lynch mob, I think this video is even scarier than it looks.
The real issue here isn't Bill Ayers, who is now a relatively respected Chicago community organizer and his education initiatives are supported by Republican and Democrat alike. (btw, the 'weather underground' stuff occured when Obama was 8). There are three far greater, and far scarier things if we scratch the surface of Palin's rhetoric.

1) 'not a man who sees America as you and I see America' - here she is attempting to potray Obama, as different, not just unAmerican, but actively antiAmerican
2) 'palling around with terrorists' - notice the 's' at the end of terrorists. The McCain campaign doesnt want Americans to associate Obama with Ayers, they want to associate Obama with terrorists in general
3) 'terrorists who made plans to attack the pentagon'....hmm, does this conjur up any memories in people? any specific dates?

Why is this a problem? Well, there is still a sizeable chunk of the American electorate that believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. That Barack Obama, if elected, will be a sleeper for some terrorist master plan that will wreak the final destruction upon the land of the free. There is also a sizeable chunk of the electorate that still harbours deep misgivings about a black president in general, on the despicable grounds that black people are racially inferior to white people.

Don't believe me. Well, ill let the fruits of my late-nite Youtubing do the talking for me.






Pretty sickening stuff, huh - especially the second video. (For the record, the guy is at a Sarah Palin rally, holding up a MONKEY with an Obama sticker on it). I don't for a second want to tar any American with the same brush as this fucktard, but I show it to make the point that there are people out there for who the Obama presidency is a very 'scary' thing indeed. A thing that some crazy racist xenophobe may be willing to prevent.

The McCain campaign has actively promoted the idea, in speeches and in rallies, that Barack Obama is anti-American, is only a couple of steps removed from the monsters who bought down the world trade center, and who is just not a person who we should accept in our society. Should he, and I paused before deciding to continue typing here, be assassinated by some madman who is motivated by these views....then the responsibilty, to an extent, would fall upon John McCain and Sarah Palin. It is not a claim I make lightly, but this is the extent to which they have played upon the irrational fears of the lowest common denominator.

Perhaps realising the irrational and nasty flames he had fuelled among his supporters, McCain to his credit, attempted to pull his campaign out of the depths. Here is the last video I will show you, promise! But its a good one...



In my view, McCain did not go far enough. His response 'I am scared of Obama, because he is an Arab' was 'No m'aam Senator Obama is not an Arab, he is a good man'.
A far, far more effective victory for race relations in America, a response that could have fundamentally changed the discourse on race in America would have been - ' Ma'am, Senator Obama is not an Arab, or a Muslim. And if he was an Arab, or a Muslim - so what?'

The best way to defeat racial predjudice is to challenge the racists assertions, force them to justify their core assumptions, beliefs and predjudices. McCain was faced with a golden opportunity to change the way America thought and talked about race, asking 'what is wrong with being different' rather than ' i know he looks different, but trust me - hes one of the good guys really'

McCain blew it. Happily, McCain is also blowing the election. And while I remain deeply worried for Obama's safety, I am cautiously optimistic that a 'President Obama' could be the catharsis that destroys any lingering legitimacy of the idea of a 'superior white-race' in the eyes of a shrinking minority. The McCain-Palin campaign will be remembered, I hope, as a 'never again' moment in world history.

Now that would be change I could believe in.

Alex.

The Repugnance of Having to Eat

“You can tell alot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.” (Ronald Reagan)

There are a number of things we have to do that are ugly. There are also things we choose to do that are similarly ugly, but today I'm going to focus on one particular thing: eating. We all gotta eat. While it'd be great if we didn't have to… if there were some sort of Jetsonian pill we could pop that would placate our nutritional requirements while also appeasing our appetite, this whole issue would be moot. But, until some genius gets us that pill, were stuck having to eat. So I'm going to say why having to eat is one of the most degrading things that we do on a daily basis; I'm going to explain that we should try (if not succeed) in raising ourselves above the negative aspects of eating. We fail to do avoid the caused degradation, I think in at least part, because of how we typically approach eating. I’m going to argue that, in large part, the thing that makes it a repugnant act is rooted our a general failure to recognize the sickening qualities of having to eating.

So let’s start by differentiating between two aspects of this discussion: (1) the physical act of eating; and (2) the way we eat. I'm going to say that both of these are disgusting and contribute to our degradation. Let's start by focusing on the act itself: We take solids and liquids, most often dead things, and place them in our mouths where the solids are mashed until they become liquid-ish. Only then do our bodies go through the process of changing that stuff into waste. Because there's a necessity to eating it's an activity that associates us with our savage ancestors and the lower creatures we share this world with. Having to eat lowers us away from the superior status we, as people, have (a privileged status we’re entitled to in virtue of the abilities we have; traits that separate us from the other entities on the earth). However, while there's an inescapability to this hardship that is having to go through the physical act of eat (so repetitively too boot), this isn't the key contributor to the repugnancy of eating. By that I mean the overarching problem, while contributed to by the fact that we need to go through the disgusting physical process of eating, is really rooted in how we typically eat.

The way most people eat is plebeian. Like cattle to the trough we queue at cafeterias, cafes, fast food restaurants, hot dog stand or whatever. We trudge to the counter where the slop du jour is heaved over. And while this is bad enough, the typical repulsive behavior doesn't stop there. It’s compounded by the fact that some of us take our dead objects and liquid to a safe comfortable place – like the warthog that drags its food back into its cave - and begin the awful required physical act. Others of us take our sustenance and cram it down in front of, for instance, a TV. There we zone out like ghastly zombies eating brains. The worst of us, while doing the act, hunch over the grub like a convicts protecting what little they’ve got from the scum that surrounds them. If, at this point, you say "that doesn't apply to me - I make my own lunches!" Sorry, you missed the point. Instead of lining up like cattle when you're ready to eat (something you do at an earlier point; namely at the grocery store) you have your stock of substance piled at home 'tidily' hoarded into cupboards and the fridge ready to be hedonistically pillaged whenever the mood strikes.

Thankfully, because the primary source of the problem with eating is generated by how we eat, we can (at least in part) make eating a bearable activity. Those who thought: "I'm not that bad, I engage people intellectually or socially in conversations while eating", are halfway to the solution. To state it plainly, the solution is to eat in the most aristocratic fashion you possibly can; do everything possible to maintain your elevated status while partaking in the required physical act. Those who are eating at the up-scale restaurant are doing it right; there eating is the tertiary activity. Eating takes a backseat to the act of going out, doing something trendy, engaging your companions conversationally, and whatever. See, now, how those who gossip with friends at McD's are, at best, getting it half right? If we fail to maintain our superior status when we eat, we degrade ourselves. When others eat improperly we are all degraded as it adversely affects out common humanity. While some of us may struggle to avoid eating like Neanderthals we need to put in as great an effort as we can possibly muster. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.

'a word on financial failure' - part 2: EEK- OH NO-Mics!

Yeah I know I'm not Paul (although I often wish I was). And I know the posts always go Paul,Alex,Paul,Alex and so on. I apologise to all fans of Paul (ok, just matt m), that Im jumping ahead of the queue and blogging in his rightful spot. Paul will be back soon, in full colour, and blogging up a storm in his own calculated and logical way. Until that time tho, heres me - ranting about politics and using the term 'lol' in a far too liberal fashion...

I heart capitalism. Not the ugly, gross social inequities that are too often the byproduct of the free market -no, those things suck. But the general idea that people get rewarded for their hard work and talents, that individuals determine how much of something we get based on how happy it makes us and that anyone, regardless of original social position, who works hard enough could become a leader...well, its kind of a cool idea in theory. Needs a lot of work to tidy up the fringes, and there is a major role for a government in ensuring that there is some minimum standard of rules and incontestable rights that all parties have to play by, and also ensuring that we bandy about concepts like 'equality of opportunity' we're not forgetting that your opportunities shouldn't be limited by the lottery of birth. But overall, its a good basis for society, and it encourages entrepreneurship, individual freedoms and allows citizens themselves to define the society they want to live in.

That's why two things are currently making me emo, whenever I read the paper and see that the stockmarkets are doing their best Hindenburg impersonation, or whenever I talk to someone who uses money, likes using money, and who is sad they wont have as much money to use soon. The first is that people are confidently predicting the demise of capitalism and the monetary economy (not sure what it is to be replaced with, perhaps we will barter shiny beads for bread, or some Hobbesian every-man-for-himself state of nature.) The second is that people appear positively gleeful about this.

In my first part of this two-part financial blogstravaganza I talked about how the leaders had badly failed us in this current financial crisis (at least, thats what I thought I was talking about.) In today's post I want to go further, and talk about the problems that exist when economics meets politics, and how some irreconcilable differences have hampered attempts to fix things. And cos Julian asked me really nicely to do so, Ill attempt to show my point through the use of America's recent $700 billion 'bail-out' plan.

First lets talk about the economics of the bail-out, which to me seem essentially pragmatic and necessary. I'll repeat that my grasp of economics is shaky (bit of an understatement, like calling Hitler 'not that nice'), so if anyone wants to show me how I've analysed this wrong on an economic level, well Id be happy to concede the point. (Note: Ill talk about the political arguments soon.)

The way I understand the bail-out plan was this: financial companies/banks etc gave mortages to people with no assets or income. When house prices fell, people now owned mortages that were worth more than the home, and had no way of paying it back. So they walked away from the home, and the banks lost money on the bad debts that couldnt be repaid. BUT due to some grand financial wizardry, all the mortages, from the sub-prime to the ridiculous, had been put under the same category of 'securities' on the balance sheet. So...banks had no way of telling the good mortages from the bad mortages, so had to take a loss on the whole of their mortage loans, leading to billions of dollars in losses. Some of these banks collapsed, people lost confidence in the sharemarket, stocks fell, people lost money, more people lost confidence, less money in stocks, more companies collapsed. and so on and so forth in some sort of sad financial failtornado. I hope I got that part of it right.

K, so what the bail-out appears to be doing is the government, as the only people with the funds to afford it, are offering to buy up ALL these bad 'securities'. This gives banks some capital, returns them to a clean balance sheet, and hopefully sets a new and credible market price, so private investors who are currently sitting at home with their money in the mattress or in a cookie jar may be encouraged to come in, inject some investment back into the financial system, and make everything start humming again. After the initial crisis is over, the Government can subject the companies to some more vigorous regulation, and ensuring the kind of in hindsight ridiculous risks can never be allowed to happen again. (Was the entire mortage moneymaking scheme really resting on the fact house-prices would NEVER come down?) Thus, the US Government could have broken the cycle of panic and pessimism that I mentioned in my previous post, the pessimism that exacerbates market slumps and turns a downturn into a depression.

So to my mind, the economics of the bail-out were, and still are pragmatic and neccessary. It was a plan that desperately should have passed through Congress the first time, to give investors the idea that this was a plan that deserved support, that fixed the crisis, and had positive long-term benefits. When it failed to pass in the Congress, that sent out the message that not only was it a crappy solution, but also that leaders had NO IDEA how they were going to solve this, and it was a good idea to run away to your underground bunker while you still had the money to afford tinned food.

But the bail-out didnt fail because it was bad economics. It failed because it was bad politically. Just look at the tag it was given 'bail-out', which suggests that quite the opposite of being a socially beneficial economic plan, it was a victory for special interest and political cronyism. Both the left and the right found something to hate about this plan. Both were wrong.

Lets look to the right's opposition first. It went something like this: 'capitalism rests on the principle of competition and entrepreneurship. It works because people who make good decisions get a good reward (more monies), and people who make bad decisions lose. The finance companies made a bad decision in lending to people who couldnt afford it. A committment to the free market requires that they fail, and any alternative is 'socialism'.

My response to this is very simple. When markets fail, governments are the best institution to make them work again. Goverments can commit the most funds and have the power to introduce not just new rules for a company, but can actually change the practices of an entire sector of the economy through regulation. So, if the sector that is failing is vital for the economy or indeed for society, the goverment has a duty to intervene, and prop up that sector. Banks, which lend the money that allows businesses to invest and grow, are pretty much the most crucialest things there are. So, government intervention to not let banks fail isnt communism, its common sense.

I have a bit more sympathy with the arguments of the left. These arguments go: 'When so many citizens cant afford healthcare, cant pay their bills, are losing their jobs -why should each American pay $2500 of their tax dollars to bail-out the bank fat-cats that didnt give a fuck about Joe Sixpack while they packed six-figure daily salaries into their wallets'. Its true- and the worst part about the bail-out plan is that it wont stop house prices falling or return the economy to its pre-mortgagefuck position. So, working-class Americans will still be losing their jobs, homes and livelihoods while the greedy pricks who took bad risks to take big short-term money, despite inevitable long-term losses. go back to making millions.

Its hard to accept, but not fixing the financial sector has woeful consequences for all sectors of society. When banks are struggling to meet their losses, they are forced to withhold assests and withhold cash. So interest rates increase which make it harder to invest. Companies and individuals, fearful of a banking sector collapse also withhold their money. Company managers will look to cut down on costs, and employees. Unemployment rises. Less people are buying stuff, that further tightens the squeeze on businesses. Businesses fail, and people lose jobs -everyone loses. So, while its painful to admit, we need those 'fat-cats' in their corporate diamond towers making their monies, to protect the jobs, industries and consumption abilities of ordinary blue-collar citizens.

A lot of my argument rests on 'short-term hardship for long-term economic survival'. Its the principle on what a lot of economic theory rests - that while some people lose in the short term, everyone wins in the long-term. But its an idea that runs into 3 problems. The first is that no-one is quite sure how long the long-term is, which makes it hard to sell economic ideas in a political system that demand timelines for implementation. Secondly, in democratic systems which vote every 2 (in the US House) years, suggesting that an economic policy will actually HARM your constituents in the short term is about as politically sexy as spongebathing John McCain. Thirdly, explaining economic concepts is often fiendishly difficult, explaining the technical terms and how something will benefit the economy is much harder than explaining social ,black-and-white issues. So good economically sensible plans fail because they dont tick all the political boxes, and politicians retreat to idealogy, and black-and-white thinking. Economics requires consensus, an innate understanding of the political shades of grey and it needs strong leadership to avoid creating market panic and pessimism.

The bailout was a perfect example of what NOT to do in a crisis. And the result was a plan that could have worked, that could have been a stabilizing force for the world economy ended up looking like too little, too late .It was $700 000 000 000 that didnt do anything to stop markets failing, and stopping the globalised world spiralling into a nasty, prolonged recession. Luckily, Im a law student, and the first thing that happens when people lose everything is they turn on each other and try and gain someone elses everything. Ill be occupied with lawsuits, and have a comfortable salary. The rest of you, well....you're fucked.

Merry Christmas.

'a word on financial failure' - episode 1: A new hope?

Paul has made it quite clear that if I do not make a post soon, there will be tears and shouting and name-calling and general crankiness. Truth is, I've wanted to post, but there has been many essays to write for university, and there has been no time left for poorly-worded, half-baked expositions on obscure topics. But for both the readers of A WORD ON FAILURE - Do not fear, I am back and I am opinionated. At least,I am back until it is time to study law.

I write this post with a certain trepidation that upon reading it people will realise that although I am three years into an economics degree, I am about as competent at economics as Robert Mugabe is at fostering democracy in Zimbabwe. And I also realise that I am posting about things that for the most part happened a couple of weeks ago (reflecting the fact I havent had time to see what I could plagarise from various newspapers for a while). But a friend has been bugging me for weeks to tell him what I thought of the financial crisis, the bailout, and the general sense of epic fail that is gripping the world economy. And to be honest, its a pretty scary thing. Hearing the rhetoric that we could be headed for another Great Depression, or that the entire concept of 'finance' as an industry, a business, an ideology, a whatever is ripe for collapse isn't the sort of thing you expect, or want to hear in your lifetime. I guess having lived through a long sustained period of global economic growth, the temptation is to feel that 'sweet, the world leader's have figured out how economics works and capitalism is going to make sure that my tasty peice of success pie is going to grow bigger and bigger'. No one wants to hear that there might not be any pie for you at all anymore.

My thoughts about the financial crisis fall into three, largely unrelated areas.Because I dont want to subject you kids to the longest post in the history of blogging, I'm going to sorta pull a Paul, and break it into two parts. Today's post will focus on how the crisis has been exacerbated by world leaders forgetting that in crisises we expect them to ooze confidence, and lead - not look like they have actually run out of ideas and wish that someone else could be the president, just for today. My next post will outline the poor standard of discussion relating to economic issues in modern democratic politics and how viewing economic issues through a lens of political idealogy rather than economic pragmatism added to this financial mess.I'd also quite like to outline the massive and understated role played by central banks in a country's democratic politics. Sound Exciting? Dont worry, Ill be back to ripping into McCain-Failin08 soon, promise.

Firstly, lets talk about pessimism. Of course, one would expect pessimism from certain sectors of society. For the media, headlines like 'Nightmare on Wall St.' are every aspiring PUNdit's (c wat i did thar) wet dream, even if they do offer the image of zombie stockbrokers eating each others brains. We can legitimately expect that Joe Public will be quite pessimistic about the whole thing, due to the collapse of the complex, distant and elitist world of high-finance, ordinary people are now rightly worried about their jobs, their homes and their families. But what is unusual in this crisis, and a cause for concern is the pessimism emanating from the desks of world leaders.

Economic activity and performance is driven as much by people's perceptions and expectations as anything else. If people are optimistic, they will buy things and invest in things, which will lead to other people having money to also buy and invest in things, which means more jobs, more money, jobs, money .... yey, economic growth. If people think the economic apocalypse is upon us, they will not buy things - which means that there is less money for other people to buy things, which equals less jobs, less investment and more sad faces. So...obviously, the idea is to keep ordinary consumers like you and me being as optimistic for as long as possible, so we keep buying and keep the economy strong. Because once we think (or know) the economy is about as solid as the Black Caps batting line-up, then the economic situation gets much, much worse.

Just for the record, I didnt come up with this idea. John Maynard Keynes did, and while I know this logic seems Colbertian in its application (if you tell people something is good, then it IS good). but I think it makes sense, and has been proven to work. (If not convinced, you can read about by following this nice link here and here.) Nixon responded to economic downturn in the 1970's by saying 'well, if I had money I'd be putting it in shares right now'. This is largely credited with helping to stablise and revive the economy.

I can appreciate that 'lying to people' isnt a good political look, and being to support an economy that experts say is tanking can be seen to invite electoral disaster with opponents able to potray you as out of touch, out of ideas and a key architech of the problems in the first place. And in the case of George Dubya, after eight years of presiding over the complete and total failure of his Administrations neoconservative ideologies, if he were to give a Nixonian endorsement of the economy, we would probably see the Dow plunge to zero overnight and the sight of hundreds of thousands of stockbrokers committing a lemming-like group suicide.

But if lying to people is politically risky, it is sometimes economically necessary. And besides, what is always economically and politically disastrous is to have your leadership fail when the people who elect you depend on it most. In this financial crisis, the leadership on the issue has reminded me of a possum in the headlights of a large SUV. Leaders the world over have stressed the severity and the generally apocalyptic nature of the crisis, but have been less good at showcasing that they have a plan for economic renewal, or worse - that they even really understand the full extent of whats going on. Perhaps its exceptionally bad-timing that the full force of this financial hurricane should hit as a number of fading governments in the western world come up for re-election. It gives a hungry opposition a vast number of political points in tagging the encumbent government to the economic disaster, and forces the government to focus their energies on defending their record and their economic plans rather than proposing new solutions.

Nowhere has leadership failed more, and being more damagingly pessimistic that in the Bush Administration. Bush gave a key speech on September 24 to outline a prescription for economic recovery. John Stewart, in a victory for infinite LOLz, was able to show his rhetoric on the Iraq war and the economic clusterfuck were depressingly similar. This is a man who clearly can't wait to get back to his ranch in Crawford and pretend the whole last eight years never happened. I guess being told most of the world hates your guts on a daily basis must hurt your feelings after a while. Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, two very capable, very intelligent men, have given the impression of being two scared and confused little economists trying anything and everything that will work in case it sticks. Bear Sterns was considered too important to fail, but saving it didnt stop the bleeding. Lehman brothers was allowed to fail, in the hope that appealing to capitalist 'take bad risks, take the hit' idealogy, would allow the market to correct itself. It allowed the market to grade itself an F, and fall in a drunken heap on the floor. People got scared of the continuing market upheaval, and became increasingly pessimistic. The Keynesian 'animal spirits' had define the marketplace were the spirits of sloths and slugs.

The final ace-in-the-hole, the $700 billion dollar 'bailout' plan, offered a very good plan of what to do, in buying up all the bad 'securities'. But Paulson and Bernanke did not to a very good job of explaining how this plan would fix the economy, and why people should be optimistic. Indeed, their rhetoric seemed to be 'fuck, we gotta do something or we are all doomed lol'.

Economic busts cannot be truly righted until people feel their money in safe and institutions and thats its ok to go outside and spend some money again. That requires politicians to retain faith in their economic system, hope like hell the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and that the storm can be weathered. In America, we saw the exact opposite - a financial system pilloried by everyone from both inside and outside, and the result has been chaos.

Still, the bailout was a good, economically pragmatic idea. Its failure to pass the first time round was an unmitigated disaster. It also shows evidence of the problems democracies face in discussing and planning economic policy. But cos I really want to get back to studying contract law, a discussion of that will have to wait till next time.

Alex.

A “Relations” 3-part Series - Part 3: The Effects of Love

“One is very crazy when in love.” (Sigmund Freud)

As I mentioned in my first post in this series, the first time a girl said she loved me was in the 5th grade. Since then a few other chicks have expressed their love to me; sometimes I was romantically involved with the girl, while others were just friends who had (up until when they uttered those three lil’ words) kept their feelings secret. With the exception of the 5th grade incident all of the other girls that have said it, meant it. What I’ve noticed is that love makes people do and say things they otherwise wouldn’t. But this post isn't a catalogue of my experiences, rather I'm going to talk about how being in love regulates your behavior; what sorts of things it makes you do.

So what I won’t do here is provide an account of what love is. Love's a tricky thing to define. Soo many people have already tried to tackle that topic and, without having read much of it, my contributions wouldn’t be particularly insightful. But even though my aim is to describe what love will make you do, it'll be worthwhile to at least make a few broad and sweeping statements about what it means to be in love with someone. First of all, let's focus on love between people in romantic relationships (by that I mean sexually active ones, or at the least ones that used to be sexually active… surely your grandparents are in love in the relevant way despite the fact that they don’t… ya know). When you’re in love you’ve got a deep and meaningful connection with her - a bond that isn't shared with anyone else - which is manifested in the feelings. It might be describable as feeling completely content with the person as she (or he) is. While you might prefer her behave or act differently, you’d be just as happy if those changes never happened. Moreover, the way you feel towards her is such that, were you never romantically associated with anyone else, you'd be happy (so long as you have the one you love). While there are undoubtedly other conditions or properties to being in love, at the very least this is an adequate description of the minimum standard. Suffice it to say that if you don’t meet this standard, you’ve either got "love-with-reservations" or maybe just a "deep admiration" for your significant other. When you get down to it, love is unqualified; to say that you love someone but don’t surpass this minimum threshold is to say that you love someone conditionally, which, ultimately, doesn’t count as love at all. I also want to reject the suggestion that love is subjective or relativistic – that everyone can have their own conception of what love is. Having said all that let's not get stuck on what we mean by love. I think, or hope, that we all more or less have a sufficiently clear intuitive understanding to move on.

Turning to the question at hand, if you're in love, how does that impact the way you act? In short, being in love regulates your behavior and your disposition towards others. So if you love someone you’ll act differently towards that person and approach the relationship with a different mindset than you might otherwise. But you’ll also relate to others differently. Let me explain. Being in love with someone will prevent you from developing a similar connection with someone else. The bond you have with your significant other is of such a privileged kind that you won't be capable of developing a similar conflicting connection with someone else. If you think you can fall in love with multiple people at the same time, then you aren't experiencing genuine love; the love you feel is incomplete; you fail to meet the minimum standard I described above. Love will also keep you from acting poorly towards the one you love (or, to put that differently, it'll make you try to be the best partner you can be). What this means is that love will make you want to, as much as is possible, keep from infringing on the happiness of your loved one (or, to put that differently, it’ll make you strive to be an enabler of her happiness). Ultimately, you’ll want your significant other to do that which will make her happiest and you won't let your feelings get in the way. So, for instance, if you're a jealous person, as much as you possibly can, you'll control that and let her associate with who she wants. After all, trust is a prerequisite for love. This also means that you'll be willing to let a loved one go, if it's in her best interest. By that I mean, if you genuinely love someone, you'd be willing to end the relationship if you know you’ll only hold her back; you’d be willing to sacrifice your own happiness for hers.

When you boil it down, what I’ve said here is that being in love will make you selfless. As I’ve said in a previous post (see: “On Being Jaded”) people are inherently selfish and self-interested. The caveat that I now add to that claim is that you’ll act selflessly towards a person you genuinely love. Because such behavior is atypical to how people normally are it might make you seem just a little crazy. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.

NB: An interesting follow-up question (that I won’t blog about) is: Why does love make you act the way you do when in love? Off hand an appropriate answer would seem to need to be predicated on what I’ve said here coupled with a robust account of love is and its properties are.

A “Relations” 3-part Series - Part 2: Differentiating Friends and Lovers

“The only difference between friends and lovers is about four minutes.” (Scott Roeben)

This post was originally going to just be about intimate interpersonal affiliations - everything from one-night stand, to flings, to friends-with-benefits, to short-term relationships, to long-term partnerships, and everything between - but I've since come to think that that wouldn't be interesting enough and miss an important other way that people connect: friendship. So what I've decided do is distinguish between friends and lovers and point out that the difference between the two kinds of relations isn't as substantial as, I think, most of us think it is.

So what are we talking about; what does it mean to be friends with someone? It means that you enjoy, and want to, spend time with that person; you want to have shared experiences. You find him or her interesting, fun, trustworthy, or whatever criteria you use to choose your friends. This is slightly different from being friendly with someone; to be friendly with someone is to have him or her as an acquaintance. An acquaintance is someone you get along with well enough, but you aren’t sufficiently motivated to become full-blown friends with. This could be for any number of reasons – you don’t have the time or interest in developing another friendship, you just aren’t motivated enough by his or her personality, you aren’t on the same emotional/intellectual/cultural level, or whatever. True friends are those who you want to keep in touch with; people you are proactive about getting to know better. Friendships take time to grow; you don’t just go from being strangers with someone to being good friends. Friendships need to be fostered and maintained, or they’ll die. As you become better friends with someone you’ll get to know him or her better; there’ll be greater trust along with a deeper and more meaningful bond (those developments are reciprocal).

And what about lovers; what does it mean when you have (or want) an intimate interpersonal affiliation with someone? Clearly one of the requirements for this is physical attraction or, at the very least, the absence of repulsion. After all, if you're desperate for affection, or physical intimacy, you might settle for someone that you ain't really attracted to (but who still meets a minimum threshold of acceptability; the individual has to be able to turn you on). This is what’s needed to get an intimate affiliation started but, for it to last, chemistry is necessary. What I mean is that, were you to become involved with someone with whom there's a mutual attraction, it can still die if at least one party isn't satisfied. This isn't so much one person’s fault, I would say, but an incompatibility; that is, a lack of chemistry (call it a disparity between expectations, desires, needs, or whatever). Some kinds of affiliations require more than this attraction and chemistry. Let’s call the ones that don’t require anything else type-A relationships (e.g. one-night stands, flings, booty calls) and the ones that require more type-B (e.g. short-term relationships, long-term partnerships). The minimum additional thing for type-B relationships would seem to be a tolerance of the person's personality. But, ideally, you'd want a more substantial form of companionship.

Restricting our focus to only friends and type-B relationships, did you notice the difference between the two? The presences or absence of sexual intimacy. Lovers are simply friends-plus-sexuality. As noted friendship comes in degrees; but as does the emotional bond you have with your lover. The greater the friendship, the greater the bond. The same is true for lovers. More often than not, though, the bond you have with your lover is deeper (or of a special kind) than that with your friends. But, at its core, the kind of bond you have with a lover is of the same sort that you have with a friend. It's just because you tend to spend more time with a lover, and the way you spend that time is of a more intimate sort, that you develop a slightly different connection; but, fundamentally, the connection you have with a friend and a lover is the same. If you want to give that variant kind of connection you might develop with a lover but not a friend a name, it’d be love. But let's hold off on that until next time. So, in review, friendships are relationships without physical intimacy; type-A affiliations are sexually intimate relationships with people who aren't your friends; type-B affiliations are friendships with a romantic inclination.

You might think that I’m reducing all romantic affiliations to friends-with-benefits here, but that’s not really the case. I do think all romantic affiliations are friends-with-benefits, but I’m using “friends-with-benefits” in a more literal sense than how it’s colloquially used. I’ll clarify the colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits. But before I do that, it’s worth noting that the colloquial sense is a hard kind of relationship to describe; is it type-A or –B? I’d say it straddles the two types. The colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits is friends you’re intimate with but the connection you have is of a reserved sort. You aren’t committed to the development of that friendship beyond its current state. More often than not, the kind of person you’ll have as a friend-with-benefits is an acquaintance. The colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits refers to relationships where you want something more than a type-A affiliation, but not a type-B. Typically, when you start a type-A affiliation you don’t know the person (or at least not very well). When you start a friends-with-benefits relationship, in the colloquial sense, you do know the person beforehand. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.