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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

Where Economics Fails

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Economics is nothing more nor less than the study of the primary way in which people connect with society and get on with their lives.

In everyday life, you may interact with a few people – family, colleagues, and friends. But through the process of eating and paying the mortgage you interact, at some distance, with hundreds more. Because this interaction is entirely through something called “money,” a way of keeping score, it’s very tempting to look at it entirely through numbers. The dizzying details of tens of millions of exchanges every day makes a top-view in bulk the most desired method of analyzing how things are going.

Yet this process has proven wrong over and over again. The failure of economics, particularly macro-economics, is the primary reason why the only true study of an economy has to be a People’s Economics.

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Empires of Advancement

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Alexander the Great is one of those rare figures in world history who genuinely deserves the accolades given by the “Great Man Theory” of history. From his base in Greece, he conquered most of Eurasia in just a few years, extending the reach of Hellenistic (Greek) culture and thought which already dominated the Mediterranean.

Yet his empire died with him in 323 BCE. An empire that large simply could not last at that time, at least without intense leadership and the sharp edge of a sword.

Fast forward a mere three hundred years, and Eurasia was dominated by four great, permanent empires which included as much as three quarters of the 300 million or so people on this planet. They were largely at peace with each other, too. What happened? What made this possible? More to the point, what can we learn from this incredible change in how people were organized and lived their everyday lives?

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Individualism or Interdependence?

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Long ago, most Americans lived as Laura Ingalls Wilder chronicled in the “Little House” series.  Pa Ingalls and family were out in the wilderness, living with the rhythm of the land and putting away what they could to survive long winters and perhaps beyond.  The family’s net worth was what they had around them.

That life has been replaced with interdependence based on a dollar value assigned to absolutely everything.  We all get by with any extra scratch, should there be some, not stored up to get through the winter but properly invested in convertible assets.  This means everyone is subject to  the “free market”, which determines the value of all assets including experience, talent, and work.

That interdependence has changed our world to one with much less hard work or struggles against nature, and yet to many it has become as hostile as any winter on the Great Plains.
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The Vastness of America

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For the first time in the 12 years of Barataria, a week went by without a post. I was busy, driving a Budget rent-a-truck with everything Raquel and I owned, along with August the westie and Tony the tiger-cat, to San Francisco. But that’s not as important as what we saw or how it is consecrated on Memorial Day.

In South San Francisco. Where I actually live, there is a Chinese cemetery. It was started at a time when Chinese could not be buried with “white” people, but kept up as such long after the racism abated. Today, it flutters with red, white, and blue like any other hallowed ground.

How big is America? It it as big as Wyoming, measured out by Interstate 80? Is it as big as a new start, a new career with a new wife in a new city? It is all of that and more, so much more. It is as big as the hearts that imagined and created and defended it, despite rejection and scorn. America is bigger than any of us can imagine.

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A New Life

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Life has a way of happening. Sometimes, you can make it happen, despite what the inertia of the world is hurdling you towards.

This is about the start of a personal journey. I am now married to a wonderful woman, Raquel, who is from Shenyang, China. We will be moving together to San Francisco next week. I do not want to dwell on personal details, especially given that Raquel is even more private than I am.

But it’s a great adventure all the same. And there are some aspects of it that I think the world might be interested in.

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