Re: Who was Responsible for the Recession
Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 1:16 am
I won't even call it greed. It was hope.
When I was a kid, most people lived with limited means, and their lives were poor and harsh by today's standards. But most people lived the same way, so there was no shame in it. People accepted it.
What changed is that, starting in the 60s, people started making more money. Not everyone, but a lot of people. That snowballed, and more and more people were making more and more money. That did two things to us: ordinary people had hopes or expectations of prosperity that they'd never had before; it was no longer acceptable to live a modest, simple life. Making and spending lots of money became a social necessity. If you didn't, it meant there was something wrong with you. So the carrot was hope of betterment, the stick was fear of failure. Neither hope nor fear had ever defined a society in this way.
People got more and more clever at making money, until money became divorced from value. Getting money any way you could was good, even if you produced little or nothing of value. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that money became the supreme good of our society, more important than any of the traditional virtues, which came to seem quaint. Citizens became "consumers" - what a strange way to describe people. Human relations once thought permanent became short-term transactions: family, marriage, work, community were now all matters of temporary convenience which could be changed at will, if you had enough money.
Now we're in a rough spot. The money is going away, but millions of people have nothing else left to believe in or to order their lives around.
I can't blame people for wanting a better life for themselves. But society must create and enforce ethics. Ours has failed to do so. I'm not talking about criminal law or government regulation. By the time they're needed, it's too late. I mean the values and expectations of those with whom we interact every day, and don't want to disappoint. It seems money is the solvent which dissolved our social ties.
When I was a kid, most people lived with limited means, and their lives were poor and harsh by today's standards. But most people lived the same way, so there was no shame in it. People accepted it.
What changed is that, starting in the 60s, people started making more money. Not everyone, but a lot of people. That snowballed, and more and more people were making more and more money. That did two things to us: ordinary people had hopes or expectations of prosperity that they'd never had before; it was no longer acceptable to live a modest, simple life. Making and spending lots of money became a social necessity. If you didn't, it meant there was something wrong with you. So the carrot was hope of betterment, the stick was fear of failure. Neither hope nor fear had ever defined a society in this way.
People got more and more clever at making money, until money became divorced from value. Getting money any way you could was good, even if you produced little or nothing of value. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that money became the supreme good of our society, more important than any of the traditional virtues, which came to seem quaint. Citizens became "consumers" - what a strange way to describe people. Human relations once thought permanent became short-term transactions: family, marriage, work, community were now all matters of temporary convenience which could be changed at will, if you had enough money.
Now we're in a rough spot. The money is going away, but millions of people have nothing else left to believe in or to order their lives around.
I can't blame people for wanting a better life for themselves. But society must create and enforce ethics. Ours has failed to do so. I'm not talking about criminal law or government regulation. By the time they're needed, it's too late. I mean the values and expectations of those with whom we interact every day, and don't want to disappoint. It seems money is the solvent which dissolved our social ties.
