Monday :: Mar 28, 2011
Joe Bageant has Gone Deer Hunting With Jesus
by Oly Mike Joe Bageant died yesterday. He fought a good fight against cancer the past 4 months and kept writing and posting.
Here is part of a piece he wrote not too long ago:
AMERICA: Y UR PEEPS B SO DUM?
Ignorance and courage in the age of Lady GagaBy Joe Bageant
Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico
If you hang out much with thinking people, conversation eventually turns to the serious political and cultural questions of our times. Such as: How can the Americans remain so consistently brain-fucked? Much of the world, including plenty of Americans, asks that question as they watch U.S. culture go down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit.
One explanation might be the effect of 40 years of deep fried industrial chicken pulp, and 44 ounce Big Gulp soft drinks. Another might be pop culture, which is not culture at all of course, but marketing. Or we could blame it on digital autism: Ever watch commuter monkeys on the subway poking at digital devices, stroking the touch screen for hours on end? That wrinkled Neolithic brows above the squinting red eyes?
But a more reasonable explanation is that, (A) we don't even know we are doing it, and (B) we cling to institutions dedicated to making sure we never find out.
As William Edwards Deming famously demonstrated, no system can understand itself, and why it does what it does, including the American social system. Not knowing shit about why your society does what it makes for a pretty nasty case of existential unease. So we create institutions whose function is to pretend to know, which makes everyone feel better. Unfortunately, it also makes the savviest among us -- those elites who run the institutions -- very rich, or safe from the vicissitudes that buffet the rest of us.
I will miss the guy.
Open Thread
by Mary
The Dutch are upset with their bailed out bankers and their bonuses, and are not at all impressed with the threat that the banks can't find the right talent without bonuses.
The bankers' response that high remuneration is vital to retain talent and prevent Dutch financiers from defecting to overseas banks is given short shrift by Polhout. He says: "Let them go abroad if they don't like it her;, there are plenty of clever people who will take their place and work for less. Good riddance, as far as I am concerned."
Moderate opinion in Holland seems united in its belief that banks which received state aid should not be shelling out bonuses. And Dutch parliamentarians are saying the same thing, demanding the government take immediate action. ING may have made a net profit last year of more than €3bn, but it still owes the taxpayer €5bn.
So how did the Dutch win the day? They threatened to move their money from ING which forced the bank to reconsider the bonuses.
How nice it would be if we could create the same outrage and results here.
