Look, I'm an actor, so I make no claims to understanding economics. By and large, performers are exempt from trends in the market and unemployment, because we're always broke and our job market always sucks. In a way, it's sort of freeing. It gives me a lot more time to focus on more important things, like comic books. But in the latest downward trend, I've started to notice some things that really concern me.
Everyone keeps talking about "confidence." Consumer confidence, market confidence, whatever. If people's confidence level in our country's economy sinks, then the economy sinks. Since when has our savings been at the mercy of an intangible set of ideas with the temperament of a pregnant woman in her third trimester? "The economy" gets depressed about its fat ankles, Lehman Brothers collapses and we as a nation have to spend the next year convincing the economy that it does not actually resemble a Macy's parade float.
The economy is man-made, yet we are completely at its mercy. In the few hundred years of capitalism, we have yet to figure out the nuances. This thing that we have put on a pedestal as one of the engines of man's progress is completely dependent on the trust of literally the most irrational creature in the known universe. It is dependent on a species with members who will not travel because that specific day has a number assigned to it that they don't like, who won't pick up a coin because it's laying on the wrong side, who throw a crystallization of sodium and chlorine over their shoulder because they spilled some on the table. Because of this very same sort of behavior, people are losing their houses, they can't finish college, they're getting rid of their pets because they can't afford them.
Why have we put ourselves in this position?
No comments:
Post a Comment