Today marks the start of the Christmas buying season. I wanted to write about how this has changed over the years and how a reliance on consumption is simply not going to boost our economy into a Recovery. However, someone beat me to the punch more than two years ago in a somewhat obscure blog. The lesson instead is that the truth is out there in hundreds of blogs contributing to the collective wisdom of our nation and its economic future.
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Yearly Archives: 2010
The Promised Land
First came God’s paradise, Eden, which mankind was kicked out of for not following instructions. After that came floods, slavery, fratricide, and a whole lotta smiting. The three great “Religions of the Book” – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – differ as to when and where it happened, but all agree that at some point God became weary of it all. Those who managed to get through it and somehow achieve Righteousness are given the charter to a Promised Land. To a surprising number of faiths that Promised Land is right here in the USofA, and the delivery of the righteous to a land of great wealth is what Thanksgiving is all about.
Grounding
Life on the ‘net is a new world full of promise to increase the connection between people, create new business opportunities, and develop new ideas. Who can possibly argue with that? I won’t. But as I discuss what this means, online and off, I’ve come to realize that there is often a disconnect between how things are done in real life (IRL) and in this new world that exists in the ether around us.
Bridging that gap is an opportunity to make the online world more relevant – and make a decent living, if I can figure it out. The problem is not an academic one at all. Yet I can’t help but think that the solution can be found in how it is all grounded. For all this new stuff the people who use it are still people. It takes me back to the beginnings of academia itself, or how the Western world came to be what it is.
What is Community?
Nearly all social media activists agree that success in their field requires a sense of community. It’s the “social”, after all, that distinguishes this kind of media from older media. Yet that means different things to different people, colored by their different experiences in life. What does “community” mean to you?
It’s not just an idle question. As different communities form around the ‘net people will expect different things from them following their different visions. I’d like to know what you think “community” means.
Deflation
The ads seem to bring a lot of good news. A local clothing store advertises that if you buy one suit you get two free and a discount on dress shirts – an amazing 2/3 off! Prices on computers and technology continue to fall with some laptops available for as little as $500. This is a great boom for consumers, isn’t it?
The short answer is yes, but the long answer is no. If you take all of this together we’re looking at a serious problem with deflation, something we haven’t seen since the 1930s. It’s far worse than inflation for many reasons, the simplest version of it being that an economy based on credit cannot function if there is no reason to expect rising returns on investments. And there are signs that deflation is going to be the watch phrase for some time to come.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 