Economic Interregnum
President Bush went in front of one of the old line laissez faire think tanks, The Manhattan Institute, yesterday to defend what Larry Kudlow calls “Cowboy Capitalism”.
“The crisis was not a failure of the free-market system, and the answer is not to try to reinvent that system,” Mr. Bush said, in a 24-minute speech at Federal Hall in downtown Manhattan. He added: “Free-market capitalism is far more than an economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility, the highway to the American dream.”
The president made few references to the stream of bad news that has battered his administration: rising unemployment, increasing home foreclosures and sinking consumer confidence. Rather, the speech, coming from a leader who is overseeing a huge government intervention in the financial markets, was an attempt to put him front and center in advance of the summit meeting, and to frame the debate on his terms.
I have been using the term Interregnum for the last year to depict a world in which the “old is dying, but the new cannot be born” and the hastily called economic summit of the G-20 taking place in Washington will be a textbook example of that thesis. A lame duck President clinging to a lame duck set of economic bromides calling a summit seems to me to be a shadow play of the most evanescent substance. Nothing will be accomplished in the next 48 hours. Gordon Brown, Nicholas Sarkozy and Hu Jintao will strut their stuff, but with Barack Obama safely off stage in Chicago, it will be a pointless exercise in trying to prove that George Bush is still relevant.
As the stock market plunges once again clueless talking heads on CNBC like Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and Dennis Kneale spout their outworn neo-conservative bromides. Like George Bush, no one has informed them that the world has changed and we have no use for their ideas or their witless pronouncements. What is needed is new thinking. We are making our own attempts here and others like George Soros are contributing to the debate.(Thanks to AB)
In my book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets
, I argue that the current crisis differs from the various financial crises that preceded it. I base that assertion on the hypothesis that the explosion of the US housing bubble acted as the detonator for a much larger “super-bubble” that has been developing since the 1980s. The underlying trend in the super-bubble has been the ever-increasing use of credit and leverage. Credit—whether extended to consumers or speculators or banks—has been growing at a much faster rate than the GDP ever since the end of World War II. But the rate of growth accelerated and took on the characteristics of a bubble when it was reinforced by a misconception that became dominant in 1980 when Ronald Reagan became president and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the United Kingdom.
The misconception is derived from the prevailing theory of financial markets, which, as mentioned earlier, holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations are random and can be attributed to external causes. This theory has been used to justify the belief that the pursuit of self-interest should be given free rein and markets should be deregulated. I call that belief market fundamentalism and claim that it employs false logic. Just because regulations and all other forms of governmental interventions have proven to be faulty, it does not follow that markets are perfect.
Market fundamentalists always believed that fear would balance greed, but it didn’t turn out to be true. This is a time for bold new thinking. We will not get out of this crisis defending a system that has failed us. We will also not serve ourselves well by instituting a system of crony capitalism corporate welfare.
tick tock tick
tick tock tick
“engine of social mobility”…mobility works downward as well as upward, and the dream has become a nightmare for many.
“engine of social mobility”…mobility works downward as well as upward, and the dream has become a nightmare for many.
So, are we going to have to wait for Barack Obama’s first 100 days before we can get any traction on the economic crisis? — Bernie
So, are we going to have to wait for Barack Obama’s first 100 days before we can get any traction on the economic crisis? — Bernie
BTW, Jon, are you available to be nominated for Treasury secretary? You are one of the few people who seem to understand what’s happened and what is happening. This interregnum has got to end sometime.
BTW, Jon, are you available to be nominated for Treasury secretary? You are one of the few people who seem to understand what’s happened and what is happening. This interregnum has got to end sometime.
Agreed. And here’s an interesting note on systemic risk and trade finance http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/11/systemic-risk-contagion-and-trade.html
Thats how I define systemic risk. LB has a good (additional) example of one more market under a positive feedback (ie catastrophic) failure scenario.
Sure, it’s failure of confidence, but banking is only about graded trust. Call it risk (rather than trust) if you like, but there are too many who call themselves risk managers for me to trust them!
Back to the real world
Agreed. And here’s an interesting note on systemic risk and trade finance http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/11/systemic-risk-contagion-and-trade.html
Thats how I define systemic risk. LB has a good (additional) example of one more market under a positive feedback (ie catastrophic) failure scenario.
Sure, it’s failure of confidence, but banking is only about graded trust. Call it risk (rather than trust) if you like, but there are too many who call themselves risk managers for me to trust them!
Back to the real world
The thing that has always worried me, at least from the time
that I realized that world population growth was unsustainable
(maybe thirty years ago) and that our leaders were always
equating market and GDP growth with successful
management of the economy, was that sooner or later the house of
cards we’ve been building would collapse. (I
don’t think this current
collapse, is that collapse, by the way.) Our leaders of the past
and present, and the powerful capitalists that have helped them
into and to stay in power, have turned a rather blind eye to the
finiteness of the resources on which human civilization and
economies are built. I guess the thinking goes something like “if
we ignore the population issue long enough and manage to keep the
strong economy facade standing long enough, when the ultimate
collapse happens, we’ll retreat to our well-stocked island havens
to weather the storm” … and the rest of us get
to deal with the fallout.
So, when I hear Bush and others say that we need to get this economic
crisis resolved as soon as possible, with the goal of putting it back into an
expansion mode, I cringe. The G20 thing seems a charade, if, as Jon says,
the only goal is to get back to the status quo, but it is even more so if we
fall back on the idea that healthy world and national economies
are always growing. The reality that a stable world economy based
on sustainable resource use, which, necessarily, can only be based on
a sustainable level of world population, cannot be ignored indefinitely
and yet no one is really paying any attention to the population gorilla
in the room.
The thing that has always worried me, at least from the time
that I realized that world population growth was unsustainable
(maybe thirty years ago) and that our leaders were always
equating market and GDP growth with successful
management of the economy, was that sooner or later the house of
cards we’ve been building would collapse. (I
don’t think this current
collapse, is that collapse, by the way.) Our leaders of the past
and present, and the powerful capitalists that have helped them
into and to stay in power, have turned a rather blind eye to the
finiteness of the resources on which human civilization and
economies are built. I guess the thinking goes something like “if
we ignore the population issue long enough and manage to keep the
strong economy facade standing long enough, when the ultimate
collapse happens, we’ll retreat to our well-stocked island havens
to weather the storm” … and the rest of us get
to deal with the fallout.
So, when I hear Bush and others say that we need to get this economic
crisis resolved as soon as possible, with the goal of putting it back into an
expansion mode, I cringe. The G20 thing seems a charade, if, as Jon says,
the only goal is to get back to the status quo, but it is even more so if we
fall back on the idea that healthy world and national economies
are always growing. The reality that a stable world economy based
on sustainable resource use, which, necessarily, can only be based on
a sustainable level of world population, cannot be ignored indefinitely
and yet no one is really paying any attention to the population gorilla
in the room.
Bush is a pustule. What he says is of no significance.
I watched a few minutes of CNBC this morning just to try to get a little information on the market, and what I got instead (as if I didn’t know better than to watch cable news) was two talking heads trying loudly to outdo each other in heaping up praise of what they call “capitalism” and horror and condemnation on what they call “socialism.” While the obligatory 25-year-old female supermodel host tried to get a word in edgewise.
There is a hell of a lot more shrill ideology out there right now than there is analysis. I hope those grinning talking heads end up flat broke and scrounging in dumpsters for food.
Meanwhile, another cable news story (that will teach me etc.) informs me that the base is buying up guns and ammunition at an unprecedented rate. Apparently they fear (or hope for) a massive race war once Obama is in office.
Bush is a pustule. What he says is of no significance.
I watched a few minutes of CNBC this morning just to try to get a little information on the market, and what I got instead (as if I didn’t know better than to watch cable news) was two talking heads trying loudly to outdo each other in heaping up praise of what they call “capitalism” and horror and condemnation on what they call “socialism.” While the obligatory 25-year-old female supermodel host tried to get a word in edgewise.
There is a hell of a lot more shrill ideology out there right now than there is analysis. I hope those grinning talking heads end up flat broke and scrounging in dumpsters for food.
Meanwhile, another cable news story (that will teach me etc.) informs me that the base is buying up guns and ammunition at an unprecedented rate. Apparently they fear (or hope for) a massive race war once Obama is in office.
Population growth has slowed down in industrialized countries, and the HIV/AIDS virus is doing quite a number on population control in Sub-Saharan Africa. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of folks will think twice about bringing children into the world in this time of financial upheaval. But will folks spend on birth control? They’ll certainly want sex as a nice way to rise above the daily grind…
Population growth has slowed down in industrialized countries, and the HIV/AIDS virus is doing quite a number on population control in Sub-Saharan Africa. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of folks will think twice about bringing children into the world in this time of financial upheaval. But will folks spend on birth control? They’ll certainly want sex as a nice way to rise above the daily grind…
In Jared Diamond’s fascinating book “Collapse”, he writes of exactly these situations, when the self interest of the leaders diverges from the needs of the population they serve. I’m thinking of Greenland, where as the growing season shortened and farmers began starving, rather than focusing on fishing etc., they continued to hunt walruses for the ivory, because they were so prized in Europe, and could be traded for jewels and other vanities. Generally, in that situation, the prize for the richest was being the last to starve to death as their agricultural system collapsed beyond repair. Actually, I think that at the end of it all, the rest of the starving farmers raided and ate the brood stock of the richest and subsequently no one survived, but I don’t have the book at hand, so feel free to correct any faulty memories.
In Jared Diamond’s fascinating book “Collapse”, he writes of exactly these situations, when the self interest of the leaders diverges from the needs of the population they serve. I’m thinking of Greenland, where as the growing season shortened and farmers began starving, rather than focusing on fishing etc., they continued to hunt walruses for the ivory, because they were so prized in Europe, and could be traded for jewels and other vanities. Generally, in that situation, the prize for the richest was being the last to starve to death as their agricultural system collapsed beyond repair. Actually, I think that at the end of it all, the rest of the starving farmers raided and ate the brood stock of the richest and subsequently no one survived, but I don’t have the book at hand, so feel free to correct any faulty memories.
Jon’s word choice, “Inerregnum”, looks the more prescient every week. It feels to me like we’re going through a global economic sea change, possibly even a clean break from long-established monetary policy. But my old textbooks are in storage and already I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Jon’s word choice, “Inerregnum”, looks the more prescient every week. It feels to me like we’re going through a global economic sea change, possibly even a clean break from long-established monetary policy. But my old textbooks are in storage and already I have no idea what I’m talking about.
This morning’s immediate, uninvited image was “The Pit and the Pendiulum”.
Really ought to work harder at getting more sleep.
This morning’s immediate, uninvited image was “The Pit and the Pendiulum”.
Really ought to work harder at getting more sleep.
‘Don’t look behind the curtain!’ Mr. Bush pleaded, then cautioned, then threatened. I’m always amazed at how those who feel their way of looking at the world is simultaneously so robust and resilient that it cannot fail, and so fragile and weak that it cannot be questioned. Mr. Bush is the epitome of failed ideas, their high priest, their water boy. Game on.
‘Don’t look behind the curtain!’ Mr. Bush pleaded, then cautioned, then threatened. I’m always amazed at how those who feel their way of looking at the world is simultaneously so robust and resilient that it cannot fail, and so fragile and weak that it cannot be questioned. Mr. Bush is the epitome of failed ideas, their high priest, their water boy. Game on.
OK, I submit the following as a candidate for “bold new thinking”:
Our enormous trade deficit is rightly of growing concern to Americans. Since leading the global drive toward trade liberalization by signing the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, America has been transformed from the weathiest nation on earth – its preeminent industrial power – into a skid row bum, literally begging the rest of the world for cash to keep us afloat. It’s a disgusting spectacle. Our cumulative trade deficit since 1976, financed by a sell-off of American assets, is now approaching $9 trillion. What will happen when those assets are depleted? Today’s recession may be just a preview of what’s to come.
Why? The American work force is the most productive on earth. Our product quality, though it may have fallen short at one time, is now on a par with the Japanese. Our workers have labored tirelessly to improve our competitiveness. Yet our deficit continues to grow. Our median wages and net worth have declined for decades. Our debt has soared.
Clearly, there is something amiss with “free trade.” The concept of free trade is rooted in Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage. In 1817 Ricardo hypothesized that every nation benefits when it trades what it makes best for products made best by other nations. On the surface, it seems to make sense. But is it possible that this theory is flawed in some way? Is there something that Ricardo didn’t consider?
At this point, I should introduce myself. I am author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” My theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption begins to decline. This occurs because, as people are forced to crowd together and conserve space, it becomes ever more impractical to own many products. Falling per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge ramifications for U.S. policy toward population management (especially immigration policy) and trade. The implications for population policy may be obvious, but why trade? It’s because these effects of an excessive population density – rising unemployment and poverty – are actually imported when we attempt to engage in free trade in manufactured goods with a nation that is much more densely populated. Our economies combine. The work of manufacturing is spread evenly across the combined labor force. But, while the more densely populated nation gets free access to a healthy market, all we get in return is access to a market emaciated by over-crowding and low per capita consumption. The result is an automatic, irreversible trade deficit and loss of jobs, tantamount to economic suicide.
One need look no further than the U.S.’s trade data for proof of this effect. Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
Our trade deficit with China is getting all of the attention these days. But, when expressed in per capita terms, our deficit with China in manufactured goods is rather unremarkable – nineteenth on the list. Our per capita deficit with other nations such as Japan, Germany, Mexico, Korea and others (all much more densely populated than the U.S.) is worse. My point is not that our deficit with China isn’t a problem, but rather that it’s exactly what we should have expected when we suddenly applied a trade policy that was a proven failure around the world to a country with one fifth of the world’s population.
Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage is overly simplistic and flawed because it does not take into consideration this population density effect and what happens when two nations grossly disparate in population density attempt to trade freely in manufactured goods. While free trade in natural resources and free trade in manufactured goods between nations of roughly equal population density is indeed beneficial, just as Ricardo predicts, it’s a sure-fire loser when attempting to trade freely in manufactured goods with a nation with an excessive population density.
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Please forgive me for the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph, but I don’t know how else to inject this new theory into the debate about trade without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
OK, I submit the following as a candidate for “bold new thinking”:
Our enormous trade deficit is rightly of growing concern to Americans. Since leading the global drive toward trade liberalization by signing the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, America has been transformed from the weathiest nation on earth – its preeminent industrial power – into a skid row bum, literally begging the rest of the world for cash to keep us afloat. It’s a disgusting spectacle. Our cumulative trade deficit since 1976, financed by a sell-off of American assets, is now approaching $9 trillion. What will happen when those assets are depleted? Today’s recession may be just a preview of what’s to come.
Why? The American work force is the most productive on earth. Our product quality, though it may have fallen short at one time, is now on a par with the Japanese. Our workers have labored tirelessly to improve our competitiveness. Yet our deficit continues to grow. Our median wages and net worth have declined for decades. Our debt has soared.
Clearly, there is something amiss with “free trade.” The concept of free trade is rooted in Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage. In 1817 Ricardo hypothesized that every nation benefits when it trades what it makes best for products made best by other nations. On the surface, it seems to make sense. But is it possible that this theory is flawed in some way? Is there something that Ricardo didn’t consider?
At this point, I should introduce myself. I am author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” My theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption begins to decline. This occurs because, as people are forced to crowd together and conserve space, it becomes ever more impractical to own many products. Falling per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge ramifications for U.S. policy toward population management (especially immigration policy) and trade. The implications for population policy may be obvious, but why trade? It’s because these effects of an excessive population density – rising unemployment and poverty – are actually imported when we attempt to engage in free trade in manufactured goods with a nation that is much more densely populated. Our economies combine. The work of manufacturing is spread evenly across the combined labor force. But, while the more densely populated nation gets free access to a healthy market, all we get in return is access to a market emaciated by over-crowding and low per capita consumption. The result is an automatic, irreversible trade deficit and loss of jobs, tantamount to economic suicide.
One need look no further than the U.S.’s trade data for proof of this effect. Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
Our trade deficit with China is getting all of the attention these days. But, when expressed in per capita terms, our deficit with China in manufactured goods is rather unremarkable – nineteenth on the list. Our per capita deficit with other nations such as Japan, Germany, Mexico, Korea and others (all much more densely populated than the U.S.) is worse. My point is not that our deficit with China isn’t a problem, but rather that it’s exactly what we should have expected when we suddenly applied a trade policy that was a proven failure around the world to a country with one fifth of the world’s population.
Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage is overly simplistic and flawed because it does not take into consideration this population density effect and what happens when two nations grossly disparate in population density attempt to trade freely in manufactured goods. While free trade in natural resources and free trade in manufactured goods between nations of roughly equal population density is indeed beneficial, just as Ricardo predicts, it’s a sure-fire loser when attempting to trade freely in manufactured goods with a nation with an excessive population density.
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Please forgive me for the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph, but I don’t know how else to inject this new theory into the debate about trade without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
I’d say that anyone who makes such a long post outlining his ideas has no need to apologize for a short pitch for his book.
I’d say that anyone who makes such a long post outlining his ideas has no need to apologize for a short pitch for his book.
I’d say that anyone who makes such a long post outlining his ideas has no need to apologize for a short pitch for his book.
So, as density rises, consumption declines.
1. Is the rate of decline affected by the size of the country (density relative to sparsity of population over land mass)?
2. Do the Japanese who do live in a dense population over land mass provide an example of your theory?
3. Are other variables coupled to the deficit such as relative value of the goods traded in terms of lifecycle (beads for land) and are these coupled to new and more precise marketing techniques (artificial stimulation of buying habits)?
If one finds or trains a culture to value beads, they’ll trade New York for them.
So, as density rises, consumption declines.
1. Is the rate of decline affected by the size of the country (density relative to sparsity of population over land mass)?
2. Do the Japanese who do live in a dense population over land mass provide an example of your theory?
3. Are other variables coupled to the deficit such as relative value of the goods traded in terms of lifecycle (beads for land) and are these coupled to new and more precise marketing techniques (artificial stimulation of buying habits)?
If one finds or trains a culture to value beads, they’ll trade New York for them.
At least those beads were made out of pretty permanent stuff. Today’s “beads”, as made in China and sold at Walmart, have a half life of about one year.
At least those beads were made out of pretty permanent stuff. Today’s “beads”, as made in China and sold at Walmart, have a half life of about one year.
Pete Murphy- Interesting theory. What are the solutions to the conundrum you pose?
Pete Murphy- Interesting theory. What are the solutions to the conundrum you pose?
Yes Rick.
Esteban is selling a $599 value for $189 on the cable. Is it a good deal? Doubtful. A cheap guitar is a cheap experience. Cheap shoes, cheap clothes, all of the other ‘be trendy now’ memes are the fast food syndrome. Starter kits, yes, but then get the good stuff.
My first fiance gave me a good piece of advice. When buying shoes or clothes, buy on the high end of classic quality. Classics don’t go out of style and they last.
The scary thing about what Bush and now Friedmann are saying is their viewpoint of the economy is it exists for its own sake and we service it. That doesn’t work for me.
Go buy? Buy what?
Yes Rick.
Esteban is selling a $599 value for $189 on the cable. Is it a good deal? Doubtful. A cheap guitar is a cheap experience. Cheap shoes, cheap clothes, all of the other ‘be trendy now’ memes are the fast food syndrome. Starter kits, yes, but then get the good stuff.
My first fiance gave me a good piece of advice. When buying shoes or clothes, buy on the high end of classic quality. Classics don’t go out of style and they last.
The scary thing about what Bush and now Friedmann are saying is their viewpoint of the economy is it exists for its own sake and we service it. That doesn’t work for me.
Go buy? Buy what?
Yeah, we work to consume disposables…what a mess. It’s a form of psychological slavery.
Yeah, we work to consume disposables…what a mess. It’s a form of psychological slavery.
Yeah, we work to consume disposables…what a mess. It’s a form of psychological slavery.
Yes, and it takes discipline to break habits.
It is one of the eastern religion’s big thoughts: the power of habits and the need for the greater power to break them and form better ones. It is hard enough to name them rightly.
I like what you said about the architecture that lasts. There are levels of that two from the buildings you mention to the 100 year old three bedroom that has been renovated dozens of times by dozens of families that live there, raise a family, pass it on and because it was sturdy to begin with, lasts.
Yesterday I performed old folk songs because they can be remembered. In a few weeks, Gounod because his Ave Maria derived from the Well Tempered Clavier did and it is always welcome at Christmas.
Quality really matters. It may be complex and stately or simply and plain, but it has to have a place in the culture, a giving nature, it has to matter to mind, body and spirit. There is something wonderful about that not found among the slavers.
Yes, and it takes discipline to break habits.
It is one of the eastern religion’s big thoughts: the power of habits and the need for the greater power to break them and form better ones. It is hard enough to name them rightly.
I like what you said about the architecture that lasts. There are levels of that two from the buildings you mention to the 100 year old three bedroom that has been renovated dozens of times by dozens of families that live there, raise a family, pass it on and because it was sturdy to begin with, lasts.
Yesterday I performed old folk songs because they can be remembered. In a few weeks, Gounod because his Ave Maria derived from the Well Tempered Clavier did and it is always welcome at Christmas.
Quality really matters. It may be complex and stately or simply and plain, but it has to have a place in the culture, a giving nature, it has to matter to mind, body and spirit. There is something wonderful about that not found among the slavers.
If you’re hardcore into the American Educational Experience, as I am, then you have to steep yourself into Professor Dewey, our premier Pragmatist. Barack Obama, whose beautiful daughters attend The Lab School that Dewey founded at U. of C., calls himself a pragmatist, and I believe he means “Pragmatist”, with a capital “C”. John Kennedy, after all, meant the same self-description the same way — just as earnestly.
John Dewey, for his part was unfriendly to American Protestantism (as was, later, the Deweyan Jos. Campbell, and as was the monstously brilliant Margaret Mead before). But still Dewey thought he’d taken the measure of American religion, and thought he’d appreciated it generously.
In any event Dewey believed that education was all about habits: engendering them, disabusing them, sublimating them. He said for half a century that education consisted precisely in the acclimation of the young democrat to a life defined by beneficial (and often beneficent) “habitudes” and the disinclination to hold or adopt useless “habitudes”. Anyone who has tried to teach a skill — a discrete skill of any kind — knows the challenge of disabusing someone of old, bad habits and of introducing to the student, preferable habits, or “habitudes” (habitual ways of being; the shifting from the Cerebrum to the Cerebellum, etc.) It’s tough to teach, and tougher, at the receiving end of the teaching, to do.
Dewey was convinced that neo-Athenian Democracy positively demanded nothing less.
May someone bless that man…
If you’re hardcore into the American Educational Experience, as I am, then you have to steep yourself into Professor Dewey, our premier Pragmatist. Barack Obama, whose beautiful daughters attend The Lab School that Dewey founded at U. of C., calls himself a pragmatist, and I believe he means “Pragmatist”, with a capital “C”. John Kennedy, after all, meant the same self-description the same way — just as earnestly.
John Dewey, for his part was unfriendly to American Protestantism (as was, later, the Deweyan Jos. Campbell, and as was the monstously brilliant Margaret Mead before). But still Dewey thought he’d taken the measure of American religion, and thought he’d appreciated it generously.
In any event Dewey believed that education was all about habits: engendering them, disabusing them, sublimating them. He said for half a century that education consisted precisely in the acclimation of the young democrat to a life defined by beneficial (and often beneficent) “habitudes” and the disinclination to hold or adopt useless “habitudes”. Anyone who has tried to teach a skill — a discrete skill of any kind — knows the challenge of disabusing someone of old, bad habits and of introducing to the student, preferable habits, or “habitudes” (habitual ways of being; the shifting from the Cerebrum to the Cerebellum, etc.) It’s tough to teach, and tougher, at the receiving end of the teaching, to do.
Dewey was convinced that neo-Athenian Democracy positively demanded nothing less.
May someone bless that man…
If you’re hardcore into the American Educational Experience, as I am, then you have to steep yourself into Professor Dewey, our premier Pragmatist. Barack Obama, whose beautiful daughters attend The Lab School that Dewey founded at U. of C., calls himself a pragmatist, and I believe he means “Pragmatist”, with a capital “C”. John Kennedy, after all, meant the same self-description the same way — just as earnestly.
John Dewey, for his part was unfriendly to American Protestantism (as was, later, the Deweyan Jos. Campbell, and as was the monstously brilliant Margaret Mead before). But still Dewey thought he’d taken the measure of American religion, and thought he’d appreciated it generously.
In any event Dewey believed that education was all about habits: engendering them, disabusing them, sublimating them. He said for half a century that education consisted precisely in the acclimation of the young democrat to a life defined by beneficial (and often beneficent) “habitudes” and the disinclination to hold or adopt useless “habitudes”. Anyone who has tried to teach a skill — a discrete skill of any kind — knows the challenge of disabusing someone of old, bad habits and of introducing to the student, preferable habits, or “habitudes” (habitual ways of being; the shifting from the Cerebrum to the Cerebellum, etc.) It’s tough to teach, and tougher, at the receiving end of the teaching, to do.
Dewey was convinced that neo-Athenian Democracy positively demanded nothing less.
May someone bless that man…
Yet, personally, I think the girls should attend St. Albans and be done with it…
Yet, personally, I think the girls should attend St. Albans and be done with it…
Yet, personally, I think the girls should attend St. Albans and be done with it…
Circa 1982 the Postal Service asked the AIA, the American Institute of Architects, to nominate five great examples of American architecture for a proposed stamp series. AIA could agree on only four: Monticello, Dulles Airport’s great Main Terminal, Falling Water, and the Palace of Fine Arts, in San Francisco.
Not bad at all…
Circa 1982 the Postal Service asked the AIA, the American Institute of Architects, to nominate five great examples of American architecture for a proposed stamp series. AIA could agree on only four: Monticello, Dulles Airport’s great Main Terminal, Falling Water, and the Palace of Fine Arts, in San Francisco.
Not bad at all…
Excuse me: “Fallingwater”. One word. That would be Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright.
And while we’re at it, the others were, for the unitiated, Mr. Thomas Jefferson; Aero Saarinen: and Cal’s Prof. Bernard Maybeck, the mentor of America’s (and France’s) first great female architect, Julia Morgan…
Excuse me: “Fallingwater”. One word. That would be Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright.
And while we’re at it, the others were, for the unitiated, Mr. Thomas Jefferson; Aero Saarinen: and Cal’s Prof. Bernard Maybeck, the mentor of America’s (and France’s) first great female architect, Julia Morgan…
While reading the post and comments it occurred to me that there is a need to, as Akira frequently says, lift the game. I am sure this subject has been approached endlessly for millennium but it is a persistent question.
To life the game humans not only have to overcome the educational resistances Hugo mentioned and the economic piracy that was the overall subject of this post, it means theories and ideas must be transformed into a blueprint and that blueprint must be transformed into some kind of real structure. Structures have purpose; they fulfill a human purpose or need. To the degree that purpose or need is met can be measured the success of the structure.
The success of any structure is dependent on design, materials and workmanship. This principle seems to apply to any and every human endeavor, including the design, materials and workmanship of people themselves, and no, I am not suggesting in any way a sort of nazi-ish building of a super race (hybrid vigor puts the lie to that idea immediately).
I am suggesting is that it may be necessary to start consciously fighting ancient anthropological imperatives and begin to think of other people’s children as valuable as our own, giving up ideas like ‘what’s in it for me?’ and curing the disease of greed.
While reading the post and comments it occurred to me that there is a need to, as Akira frequently says, lift the game. I am sure this subject has been approached endlessly for millennium but it is a persistent question.
To life the game humans not only have to overcome the educational resistances Hugo mentioned and the economic piracy that was the overall subject of this post, it means theories and ideas must be transformed into a blueprint and that blueprint must be transformed into some kind of real structure. Structures have purpose; they fulfill a human purpose or need. To the degree that purpose or need is met can be measured the success of the structure.
The success of any structure is dependent on design, materials and workmanship. This principle seems to apply to any and every human endeavor, including the design, materials and workmanship of people themselves, and no, I am not suggesting in any way a sort of nazi-ish building of a super race (hybrid vigor puts the lie to that idea immediately).
I am suggesting is that it may be necessary to start consciously fighting ancient anthropological imperatives and begin to think of other people’s children as valuable as our own, giving up ideas like ‘what’s in it for me?’ and curing the disease of greed.
Great point JT,
My thought has been that the very last thing we want is a recovery.
Seriously, a recovery of what? Something that conspicuously and spectacularly failed?
Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather see us in a place we’ve never been. I disagree that we can ‘cure’ greed. After all, greed, like the other deadly sins, is simply an excess or a deficancy of some vital instinct.
What I’m hoping for is a society that doesn’t expect people to push themselves into these extremes as a condition of membership. That’s where we seem to have really gotten ourselves in trouble.
Great point JT,
My thought has been that the very last thing we want is a recovery.
Seriously, a recovery of what? Something that conspicuously and spectacularly failed?
Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather see us in a place we’ve never been. I disagree that we can ‘cure’ greed. After all, greed, like the other deadly sins, is simply an excess or a deficancy of some vital instinct.
What I’m hoping for is a society that doesn’t expect people to push themselves into these extremes as a condition of membership. That’s where we seem to have really gotten ourselves in trouble.
Great point JT,
My thought has been that the very last thing we want is a recovery.
Seriously, a recovery of what? Something that conspicuously and spectacularly failed?
Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather see us in a place we’ve never been. I disagree that we can ‘cure’ greed. After all, greed, like the other deadly sins, is simply an excess or a deficancy of some vital instinct.
What I’m hoping for is a society that doesn’t expect people to push themselves into these extremes as a condition of membership. That’s where we seem to have really gotten ourselves in trouble.
Great point JT,
My thought has been that the very last thing we want is a recovery.
Seriously, a recovery of what? Something that conspicuously and spectacularly failed?
Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather see us in a place we’ve never been. I disagree that we can ‘cure’ greed. After all, greed, like the other deadly sins, is simply an excess or a deficancy of some vital instinct.
What I’m hoping for is a society that doesn’t expect people to push themselves into these extremes as a condition of membership. That’s where we seem to have really gotten ourselves in trouble.
Hugo, Fallingwater was falling down.
How about Gamble House?
Hugo, Fallingwater was falling down.
How about Gamble House?