Lately, I've been thinking about what a year 2008 was. You think of the monumental years out of the last 100: 1914, 1929, 1939, 1945, 1968, 1989, 2001. You have to agree that 2008 is in that lineup and in my lifetime, could be the most important. What did we find out? Wall Street, and US banks turned out to be a scam run by incompetents. Manufacturing giants like GM and GE weren't making money by producing things but through financial schemes. We were in Afghanistan for seven years and the Taliban were popular again. Pakistan is falling to the "terrorists." Communist China leads the capitalist world. Despite pumping in trillions of dollars and making Iraq a "democracy," the people made a hero of the man who threw the shoe at Bush.
In other words, we woke up to our delusions. I've put many core beliefs that I held under review. I'm trying to view the world with fresh eyes.
On this note, I saw this interview on Charlie Rose, with Joshua Cooper Ramo about his new chaos theory and new way of thinking. I don't agree with everything he says, and I don't agree with some of his "new thinking." But I think he has the germ of an idea here. The world has been turned upside down and our old ideas about analyzing it might be out of date. (Press play to view, it is 16 minutes.)
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I think Ramo is off base about the income inequality. The differences might be there but the poorer are better off in an industrialized, capitalist system. Without question.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other Anon. This guy cuts down capitalism on income inequality. How about China.
ReplyDelete50 years of income equality did not seem to work, so they turned to capitalism. In one system everyone is in poverty, but there is income equality. Capitalism still leaves some in the poor house, but you also get a large middle class and some rich people.
The world is always changing, start getting used to it. Ramo`s argument seems to be that because the world is changing, we need a lot more government programs. The new Department of Resilience should be as big as the Department of Defense, good Lord!
That's a good point. Opening another huge govt. department is as wrong a solution as you can get.
ReplyDeleteI simply like his idea that the world has turned upside down, and we need to have more flexible thinking to deal with the new reality. For example, the Afghan War is not helping solve extremism and terrorism in the middle east. We need to admit that and try a different strategy. The US elect a "dove" for president and all he can do is send more troops.