When Economics Fails

Posted on 4 June 2018 by Erik Hare | 2 Comments

I have been working on this, now what feels like a year overdue. Look for more this week.

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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Memorial Day

Posted on 28 May 2018 by Erik Hare | 2 Comments

Memorial Day is a special holiday, and not just because it honors those who gave their lives for our nation. It was a spontaneous holiday that came about because it seemed necessary more than politically expedient. There was little official about it until long after it was part of our national calendar.

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Bread & Circuses

Posted on 18 May 2018 by Erik Hare | 4 Comments

Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things – bread and circuses!

– Juvenal, Satire X, “Wrong Desire is the Source of Suffering”

The “Fall of Rome” trope has always been an easy one to dismiss. After all, we’re stronger and more connected than they ever were, yes? The public is more literate, our history is stronger, and times are simply different than they were back so very long ago.

Aren’t they?

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Reason as a Journey

Posted on 16 May 2018 by Erik Hare | Leave a comment

“Conventional Wisdom” isn’t.

Everyday life is the process of understanding and using key facts about the world around us. The sky is blue, red means stop, the 94 bus leaves at 7:53, and coffee will wake you up. Most of the important things in life are obvious enough, based on immediate observation or past experiences strung together.

However, the presence of technology and a growing interconnectedness impinges critical “facts” onto our lives which reach far beyond our senses and sensibilities. Cell phones work because they just work, this thing called “money” in our bank account is extremely important, people who live in distant lands are motivated by something akin to demonic possession, et cetera.

This is where it all breaks down. Or, more importantly, where things breaking down accelerates as reason itself fails.

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Globalism Isn’t Failing. Industrialism Is.

Posted on 14 May 2018 by Erik Hare | 1 Comment

The process of the world coming together has been irregular at best. It seems reasonable that through it all there would be winners and losers, as we have seen. What is remarkable is how globalism, as a concept and a reality, has divided the developed world. Working people with less access not only feel left behind, in many cases their standard of living is actually slipping.

It seems as though there is a fundamental flaw in globalism. Yet the flaw may be in how we approach not just globalism, but the forces which created it in the first place. What if the process of the world coming together, driven by market forces, is fatally flawed because of our inadequate understanding of marketism?

In short, what if the transition from an industrial world to a market based world is not as seamless as we want to believe?

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