76 Comments

1. Lifeofthemind:

Now the very people who spent decades undermining the foundations of Western security, the morality, the military and the economy are the people the voers have put in charge. The moths flew into the fire.

Dec 20, 2008 - 2:52 pm 2. Robohobo:

“But will the music stop playing one day?”

I think the music may have stopped and the band gone home while we weren’t looking. The disbelief on the faces of the shepherds of Western Civilization is quite entertaining.

Dec 20, 2008 - 3:19 pm 3. RWE:

So perhaps at its root the Mortgage Meltdown was just another version of the Social Security Dilemma. How do we keep paying out more and more money when there is none to pay out? The Big 3 automakers and the UAW faced the some dilemma with the same answer: keep the ball rolling and maybe something will turn up. Maybe the horse will learn to sing. Or at least we will get to retire first and foist the mess off on someone else.

It occurred to me the other day that the era of “Change” is not just beginning; it is over. Pres G.W. Bush was a radical in DC terms. He did not just try to keep the ball rolling but to fix problems, permanently. The Middle East and Afghanistan: Invade them and convert them to Democracy. Social Security: Develop a privatization system that will supercede it. The Military: Transform it into a force more compatible with the realities of the 21st Century. Space Exploration: Really start to do some rather than just Apollo-era stunts and Shuttle-era jobs programs. The Mortgage Crisis: Stop the worst effects of the Community Reinvestment Act.

But nope – people voted for Change, but it is really the same old same old. 2nd term of the Carter Admin. 3rd term of the Clinton Admin. Trying to accomplish Meaningful Change is over. Now we will have Change: The Sound Bite.

Dec 20, 2008 - 3:50 pm 4. Leo Linbeck III:

Fascinating report.

There is an interesting graph buried on page 23. It shows that as neighborhood income rose, the percentage of speculation actually fell. This is strange, and counter-intuitive. Why should low-income areas attract more speculative home building?

Part of the answer is described in the report. As underwriting standards declined, home builders were able to “grant” the down-payment to prospective buyers, allowing them to qualify for a mortgage. Apparently, the builders simply raised their prices by the amount of the grant. (Imagine that.)

But it makes you wonder if there are not cultural issues at play as well. Why do low-income people buy so many lottery tickets? Why do they flock to riverboat casinos and racetracks? Why would they speculate in residential real estate in low-income neighborhoods?

Perhaps these questions point to another linkage between the two sides of Wretchard’s proverbial coin.

If you grow up in a neighborhood where the state is the principal means of support, either through “nanny state” payments or jobs in the nanny state itself, the link between effort and reward gets broken. You learn that money is not something that’s earned by providing valuable goods and services to others that they’re willing to pay for. Money is something you get just because of who you are. A culture of entitlement.

And a culture of idleness. It is the culture of Flip This House, Bernard Madoff’s Palm Beach Country Club, and the welfare queen. Easy money, easy sex, and easy living. All of which are self-destructive and non-regenerative. After all, why have more kids in such a culture? They cost me money, interfere with sex, and cramp my lifestyle. Why would I wanna do that?

Over the past 40 years, government policies have expanded the size of homes and shrunk the size of families.

How ironic that the same policies had both effects.

L3

Dec 20, 2008 - 4:14 pm 5. Sima Qian:

The “alternate explanation for the decrease in population growth” is unpersuasive. Hong Kong and South Korea, neither of which are welfare states, have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Lower even than Germany and Italy, the fertility laggards of Western Europe, and hovering just above or around ex-eastern bloc countries like Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, and the Czech republic. South Korea’s welfare spending as a percentage of GDP is about half that of the United States, and about a third of the European average. By contrast, Denmark and Sweden — archetypal welfare states — have fertility rates nearing replacement rate.

Dec 20, 2008 - 4:30 pm 6. Alexis:

The nanny state not only undermines incentives to procreate large families, but it also undermines incentives to join fraternal organizations, particularly secret societies.

The Masons, the Oddfellows, et cetera declined partly because of a certain Ponzi scheme called Social Security. One of the reasons why men had joined fraternal orders was because members swore to take care of the wife and children of any member who had died.

Dec 20, 2008 - 4:36 pm 7. Leo Linbeck III:

Sima Qian,

Interesting observations. Any alternative hypotheses?

Cheers.

L3

Dec 20, 2008 - 4:40 pm 8. Alexis:

Sima Qian:

It would be reasonably easy to raise the fertility rate of western countries if there were some form of nationalized child support. (Denmark and Sweden come close to that model, but their system also has the drawback of bureaucratizing the functions of motherhood.) The fact is, many of the same people who decry low fertility rates in the West are those who insist upon resurrecting old-fashioned patriarchy. And resurrecting old-fashioned patriarchy is a non-starter outside of conservative circles. It is the rare critic of low fertility rates who is willing to consider matriarchy or any other alternative to old-fashioned patriarchy. For that matter, most feminists don’t want matriarchy because they would then no longer have any more patriarchs to demonize.

Are real solutions possible? Of course. However, the West generally gets stuck in a rut of why don’t you yes but.

Dec 20, 2008 - 4:54 pm 9. Alexis:

Progressives usually get into a trap where they seek a new reform, not because they actually want to get their way, but rather because they want a pretext to say they are better than everybody else. They want to be in the position of “teacher” who instructs the rest of humanity.

Yet, what if the “teacher” succeeds? What if his class actually learns from him and agrees with him? If he becomes satisfied with victory, he becomes a “conservative” and can no longer call himself a progressive. He is certainly no longer part of any vanguard. A true “progressive”, however, seeks another cause to give him a pretext to flaunt his supposed moral superiority.

That’s the problem with an “ideal” society. Once the “ideal” is achieved, then what? Once people behave themselves according to an ideal, then what? The “teacher” must either reconcile himself to defending the very social order he promoted or keeping his cherished role as a “teacher” and thus marginalizing himself to the edge of society.

Political correctness isn’t so much about any particular stance on an issue as it is about a social system of snobbery that lets a self-appointed vanguard set a political agenda and tell everybody else what is or is not a fashionable opinion to hold. Those who see themselves as a political vanguard absolutely hate getting treated as if they were the stale and unfashionable conservatives. They can’t stand being seen as others see them.

Dec 20, 2008 - 5:17 pm 10. Dave:

L3: With the sense/culture of entitlement also comes the sense/culture of helplessness. The belief that one can do nothing to either better current circumstances or to correct the undesirable.

This explains the various and sundry forms of temper tantrums that we observe from time to time.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:29 pm 11. whiskey:

Alexis, rest assured there WILL be a patriarchy. It will very likely be a Muslim one, but one way or another there will be a Patriarchy.

A female oriented society such as Europe or America simply cannot resist the force of violence that patriarchies, the real ones from Arabia, visit upon them. Are women going to fight against terrorists? Please, let’s be realistic. They’ll form an outreach committee and plan a real big speech right before they all get enslaved or killed.

What people are ignoring is that women, WORLDWIDE, including places like IRAN (1.7 TFR according to the CIA World Factbook), are rejecting more than a few kids, and want mostly single motherhood.

Women PREFER single motherhood, and will choose it at every turn (the way men would choose to have harems if they could do so). The Pill and the Condom, not selfish baby boomers, or socialism, or any other explanation are the reason why the West is collapsing demographically (the technology hit there first, but look at Iran, or Algeria, or Tunisia, hardly enlightened places of feminism or liberalism). Yemen being poorer and more tribal has 8 TFR, but if they get rich enough so that women can afford to live their own lives, they’ll choose single motherhood.

This is why Wretchard or the Pope’s hope of “reforming Islam within” by various special forces, military action, etc. is a pipe dream. Young men simply won’t volunteer in necessary amounts (you only get that with a nuclear family society) and the female dominated body politics won’t support it in any case. So we are left with nuke em all when things really head south. Though I suspect most of the female dominated societies will simply surrender.

The Welfare state was not a Pyramid scheme — it was the natural desire of women exercising their demographic power to enact a society that benefits women: static, stasis oriented, a few hereditary winners (no one loves dynasties and kings and nobility more than women) and a great mass of ordinary men losers.

There is the Durex global sex survey, with # of partners, I have seen another chart somewhere with the # of partners (as a larger or smaller circle) plotted against TFR for each country. The more partners, the less the TFR which sounds intuitively correct. Note that other than Turkey and South Africa, the high-partners societies tend to be Welfare States, though France reports far less partners than the US.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:33 pm 12. Alexis:

Whiskey:

Apparently, you have never heard of the Tuareg. The Tuareg are a matriarchy, and their fighters are known for their ferocity.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:54 pm 13. Brock:

Leo,

Sima Qian actually points to the reason – Singapore and South Korea are not welfare states. The Scandinavian countries (and France) are, and they provide direct support to young families through their social programs. I’m most familiar with France’s system, which makes payments (not just tax rebates like the USA, but actual payments) to young mothers for each child and guarantees that their job will be waiting for them once the kids are all over three years old. There’s also fully funded, 9-5 daycare for toddlers until they reach school age.

In a modern society women can work or raise children. Put another way, they can make money or engage in an expensive hobby that produces no money. In Singapore this logic plays out women don’t have kids. Some EU countries have figured this out and are trying to use social engineering to fix the problem. France is getting good results too, from what I’ve read.

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:30 pm 14. Brock:

Whiskey, if you think women are somehow non-aggressive and inherently peaceful, you’re out of your mind. They are not.

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:33 pm 15. Pay Attention:

–South Korea, neither of which are welfare states, have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world.–

Don’t know about Hong Kong, but South Korea has a draconian birth control policy forced by government. When I was stationed there in the eighties, several times Koreans expressed envy that I could have two children.

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:47 pm 16. programmer:

Alexis offers rebuttal:

The Tuareg are a matriarchy, and their fighters are known for their ferocity.

programmer responds:

I suspect few of the “fierce fighters” are female, if any.

As a practical matter, a trained female soldier with access to modern weapons is a formidable foe. However, in any type of hand to hand combat, generally the smart money is to bet on the male, regardless of the Hollywood mythos. If the challenge is to hump supplies and ordnance over rough terrain on foot, once again, bet on the male. The politically correct BS that passes as entertainment where some nubile young woman, usually scantily clad, defeats a whole roomful of men with bare hands or primitive weapons only serves to distort reality in the minds of young male and female alike. Now, on the other hand, if she has an H&K MP5…..

Dec 20, 2008 - 9:14 pm 17. Alexis:

programmer:

Yes, it is the men among the Tuareg who fight. The women are supposed to get fat and have children. My point is that men in a matriarchy usually fight fiercely to protect their social order.

Dec 20, 2008 - 9:57 pm 18. Alexis:

Contraception should not be considered to be the cause of a low birth rate, but rather its effect. When women don’t want more children, they usually don’t have them. Although a woman needs help to conceive, the woman usually decides how many children she will or will not bear.

Japan and Italy are patriarchies, and yet they have shockingly low birth rates. The reason should be obvious to anybody but a male chauvinist. In those societies, there is no middle ground between a single working woman and a married woman under her husband’s thumb. If a woman has a stark choice between a fulfilling career and a married life filled with frustration and low status, it’s a wonder that some women still get married.

One often-underappreciated cause for both low and high birth rates is rape and wife beating. Under a man’s control, an abused wife can conceive many children. However, once she is no longer under a man’s control, she may prefer no sex at all over ever dealing with a man again. Hard-core feminists may have a death wish, but most women don’t. If faced with a choice between getting beaten every night and not getting married, not getting married is a no-brainer.

If Saudi women were no longer under the thumb of the men, it is doubtful they would have even as many children as Japanese women.

The sexual revolution did not happen in the 1960’s; it was a mere echo of the 1920’s. The 1920’s were an era of the secretarial pool, and such work in the cities meant that single women had legitimate disposable income, income that would bankroll the “Flapper” lifestyle. Even before the 1920’s, it was common for high status women in the West to have few children. Much of the change of the 1920’s came in democratizing an aristocratic lifestyle for women.

If you want to raise the birth rate, try raising the status of women who stay at home and raise their children. If a woman who raises eight sane and intelligent children is praised rather than sneered at, it makes a difference. Beyond this, when a woman feels that she must work for a living rather than stay at home with her children, this lowers the birth rate. If you want to raise the birth rate, women who shunt their children off to the care of imported nannies would be laughed at and sneered at. If you want to raise the birth rate, childcare, preferably by a child’s mother, would be a mark of high status. This would be a far more intelligent approach than expecting women to get enslaved and beaten.

If a woman were to have sufficient financial stability to raise children without the resources of a man, she ought to be seen as sexy. If women had guaranteed income that gave them financial stability to raise families, this would not be bad for men. As it is, good mothers get neither the status nor the press attention of socialites like Paris Hilton and Hillary Clinton. If a wealthy heiress decided to spend her time procreating, raising children, and promoting her lifestyle as a feminine ideal, that might make a difference.

Barring the mass enslavement of women, those who want a higher birth rate ought to consider what would lead women to feel comfortable enough to raise more children.

Dec 20, 2008 - 10:01 pm 19. programmer:

Alexis,

Your #18 post bothers me greatly. I’m not sure how to verbalize my thoughts, but here goes. How did we ever get into the situation where raising a family is all on the mother or father, for that matter. A family, in my mind, is just that. Two adults, mother and father, raising their children to be good adults. Two people, in love (I haven’t seen that word at all in your post), who are friends, cooperating in a joint venture that is perhaps the most important venture in our world, raising our future citizens, and enjoying and taking pride in that effort (and anyone who has raised children, knows it is an effort). I know many couples, besides myself and my best friend (my wife), who meet the criteria I have just spoken about (as much as one can know about another without the ability to read minds).

As a practical matter, most of these couples are Christian, as generally this is the particular demographic where I live. Is that the difference? Surely, any two people, regardless of creed, are capable of love for each other and love for their children. Does a woman who married for love consider herself under the thumb of her husband any more than he considers himself tied down to a single woman for the rest of his life? It always seemed like a grand experiment to me with each bringing strengths to the marriage that the other didn’t have and each helping overcome the other’s weaknesses (and I had many). Why is love missing and disappearing?

Dec 20, 2008 - 10:30 pm 20. Bobal:

Trying to unravel the mystery of the human race in terms of patriarchy, polygamy and condoms is about as meaningful as trying to explain it in terms of the means of production and the relations of production. None of this ever rises to the level where the sound is heard of no two things striking together.

Dec 20, 2008 - 11:28 pm 21. NahnCee:

*snorting in glee at the underused description of “male chauvenist pig” but doubting that whiskey will see it in himself*

No one ever talks about birth rates falling simply because having and raising children is a boring, expensive, frustrating life-style. At least 50% of women *prefer* to work outside the home and have a Real Life interaction with other adults, while the other 50% are screechingly protective of their chosen mommy lifestyles … which everyone sees as being Not Real Work so they have to keep coming up with new ways and guilt trips of defending it.

I would think that it would be obvious that with the advent of The Pill when the choice was there and could be made, that more and more and more people — not just women — are choosing to remain childless. Like a commenter noted, we don’t need children to take care of us in our dotage any more, we don’t need them to till the fields so really — other than biological clocks and being brainwashed to *think* that’s the right thing to do, why have children?

Years ago, I think in the 1970’s pre-Pill, columnist Ann Landers did a survey where she asked, “If you had it to do over again, would you have children.” An astonishing 80% of her respondents said, “no”, that the whole child-bearing thing was a dismal disappoinment. It was a huge scandal at the time, and is still being referenced today. A summation of the survey is this, “The point it makes is very simple. Many people do not enjoy parenthood but they will only admit it under the cover of anonymity.”

http://thebritgirl.com/2006/10/19/

If that is true, why the astonishment that if there is a choice both women AND men will elect not to procreate?

Dec 20, 2008 - 11:42 pm 22. Nomenklatura:

“This is the ultimate legacy of the baby boomers in Europe and to a lesser extent in the US. They overturned all known traditions in the 1960s, then started the accelerated the central power of the state in the decades since. And now we see the results.”

Somehow it seemed natural to the leftist boomers to close off all the exits, ensuring no opt-outs were allowed from their utopian plans such as social security or ‘free’ health care.

Socialism always turns to compulsion as soon as the question arises – “what shall we do with the people who don’t agree with us”. This is how socialists have always jettisoned their moral status within hours of getting access to power.

Dec 20, 2008 - 11:48 pm 23. Pascal:

When I first saw Night of the Living Dead I may yet have been pre-teen. Back then I only thought it campy and not a horror, and certainly not symbolic of what human behavior could become.

Nowadays, long before reading much of the commentary in this thread, I saw many of my contemporaries behaving much like zombies even to the extent they could not understand what I mean. When I first saw Zombietime’s videos of anti-breeder demonstrations in San Francisco I was convinced they saw this too as proven by the name they adopted for their site.

Some people who never chose to have children, and some who tried and failed, somewhere became envious of those who did have them. And they gone on now and have even convinced themselves that somehow they are behaving selflessly heroic in saving the planet. Moronic is more apt, and potentially dangerous too.

When I say zombies I mean some humans who still having every appearance of life, but unmistakeably have no personal DNA invested in the future. And they aim to influence — eat the “brains” to self-preserve that God gave every other living thing — the children of those who did breed from having kids of their own simply because now they realize they have been left out.

I’m sorry folks, but many of you whom I previously thought sensible now seem to be exactly this sort of zombie.

Dec 21, 2008 - 12:21 am 24. Alexis:

programmer:

Love exists despite the social rules of marriage, not because of them.

If there is anything that makes the West different from other societies, it is regarding romantic love as a prerequisite for marriage. Perhaps it comes from the Germanic heritage of requiring a woman’s consent. Perhaps it comes from the revolution in canon law in medieval Christianity that led to favoring romantic marriage over arranged marriage. The fact remains that the West and westernized societies are different from those societies that regard love as an afterthought in marriage, if not downright irrelevant.

When people love each other, they can work together so long as their basic values are the same, or at least similar. When basic values are wildly different, love can turn into hate and fondness can turn into contempt.

There are societies, such as Kyrgyzstan, where rape is exalted as a form of courtship. It is called “marriage by capture”. Love is reported to exist in such marriages, but such a marriage is based upon a foundation of rape, not love. I use such shocking examples to illustrate that barbaric marriage customs do exist elsewhere. Being a Westerner, I think that romantic love should be part of procreation and vice versa. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

An enduring loving marriage is a wonderful thing. Cherish it. It doesn’t happen to everybody. Perhaps one reason why I didn’t write about love when I wrote about birthrates is because love and birthrates have historically had little to do with each other. There are loving marriages with few children. There are loving marriages with many children. There are bad marriages with few children. There are bad marriages with many children. The number of children a couple decides to have is an economic choice, one where love must compete against exhaustion.

Abuse happens in many relationships. Sometimes the woman is abusive. Sometimes the man is abusive. Modern western society has taught people to become averse to abuse, and this abuse aversion leads to miscommunication between men and women, particularly in societies making a transition from a traditional old-fashioned patriarchy to a modern western society. This abuse aversion also means that bad marriages will more likely lead to divorce.

Christians are accustomed to saying “until death do us part”, and yet the very existence of divorce as an option massively shifts the nature of a marriage even where the option of divorce is not exercised. Jews have historically dealt with the option of divorce through the “ketubah” – a very legalistic marriage contract that spelled out the obligations of each side in fine detail. Most Christians are not accustomed to thinking in such a legalistic manner. What typically happens is that a Christian couple will assume they will never divorce because they love one another so deeply. Then, as time passes and each partner comes to take the other for granted, divorce hits like a storm and each partner is emotionally unprepared for the situation. The combination of divorce and Christian expectation creates a consistent pattern of “it could never happen to me” which then happens. In the Christian ideal of marriage, divorce is never considered and remarriage is regarded as a form of adultery. The introduction of divorce in modern western legal systems has effectively brought western marriage codes closer to Judaism than to Christianity.

Governments can set economic policy. Governments can enforce marriage law. Governments can promote healthy behaviors. Governments can make raising children easier. Governments can make raising children more difficult. Governments cannot make people love each other. Governments cannot make marriages work.

Somehow, it feels disrespectful toward love to include it in a discussion of social policy, social expectation, government policy, and government intervention. Yes, love should be involved in bringing new life into the world, a cruel world ruled by economics. Making someone feel appreciated is about basic economics. And as a rule, a nation’s birthrate is about economics. Love? Love may be the glue that keeps people together. In social policy, my concern isn’t with how strong that glue may be. My concern is that our government should not dissolve that glue in that harsh solvent called social engineering.

Dec 21, 2008 - 2:22 am 25. slade:

For those who think that reductionism can ever capture the male-female dynamic, might I suggest the novel “Them” by Joyce Carol Oates. Consider it the antidote to the “Elliott Wave” version – the spectrum connecting rage, temper, and the artifice of deception.

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:10 am 26. Anodyne:

@ 21:

“At least 50% of women *prefer* to work outside the home and have a Real Life interaction with other adults, while the other 50% are screechingly protective of their chosen mommy lifestyles … which everyone sees as being Not Real Work so they have to keep coming up with new ways and guilt trips of defending it.”

So, you’ve at one point actually stayed at home and raised kids and in the process determined that the activity entails no real work? Or does such an opinion rest upon mere Ann Landers polls and/or “Real Life” interactions you’ve had with other adults?

I don’t always agree with Whiskey (and I haven’t dug into what the practice of polygamy does to those cultures in which it is practiced), but he’s absolutely spot on with his comments regarding the feminization of society and the associated hyper-adolescent quest for status: if the end-all of existence is atop the pecking order of a set of childless (yet aging) adults, well, we shouldn’t be surprised if those willing to have families will eventually win out.

Though married and the father of two, I was until fairly recently the poster child for “childlessness.” And then shortly before turning 40 I got married; at 43 my (Japanese) wife (39 at the time) and I had twin daughters. In the two years since our girls were born my wife and I have seen just how much work (of the most real sort) kids are and anyone who claims they aren’t either hasn’t raised them or has selectively chosen data that supports that incorrect claim.

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:41 am 27. programmer:

Alexis concludes:

Love? Love may be the glue that keeps people together. In social policy, my concern isn’t with how strong that glue may be. My concern is that our government should not dissolve that glue in that harsh solvent called social engineering.

programmer says:

First, let me thank you for your most thoughtful discussion.

I would discuss further, my back woodsy, unsophisticated view, however this is probably not the venue to do so. Suffice it to say, your conclusion resonates strongly for me. Well said, well said!!

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:57 am 28. RattlerGator:

Interesting points, Alexis. In America, your #24 has particularly deep resonance in Black America on the confounding issue of Black Male vs. Black Female. There is a quite tangible love/hate vibe that permeates so much of the culture. Much of the literature coming from academia singularly focuses on black males as the culprits. Your comment, however, makes me wonder if that is quite misguided and whether something I presumed to be representative of an African American vibe is seeping out into the larger culture or, perhaps, *originated* there.

Richard, this may be off point and I may have mentioned this on your board before but my wife and I visited Hong Kong a few years ago and were absolutely astonished by the Filipino women gathering on Sunday (I believe) along the public spaces downtown. I will never be able to adequately compose words to express the feeling that swept over us when we were unexpectedly confronted by this. Pain, an odd kinship, shock, pride, bewilderment — man, when I tell you we were dizzy, we.were.dizzy! All of a sudden, we were presented with a visual that our senses could only view through the lens as a black/white racial situation. But it wasn’t.

And it seemed to be all women. Which loops me back to this discussion, particularly as commented on by Alexis. God only knows what mix of emotions my wife experienced at that very moment. Surely they were in some ways similar to mine and in some ways probably quite dissimilar. The greatest challenge of my life has been my wife’s lack of desire for children. No man expects to be presented with such a dilemma. The woman you love or the children you expect. But if a modern woman truly doesn’t desire kids, it is unlikely that she will have them. As NahnCee has suggested, motherhood troubles more women than you might expect. I walked away from that Hong Kong scene but it has stuck in my consciousness. I sometimes wonder if my wife thought: there but for the grace of God go I. If so, my reply/response to her would be — really?

Slade, I’ve not read either book you referenced but I suspect you are correct.

Finally, in your #9 Alexis; final paragraph, final sentence: They can’t stand being seen as others see them. Did you mean to write “They can’t stand being seen as they see others”?

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:17 am 29. slade:

RG – My reference to Elliott Waves contained some insider “attitude” in response to several suggestions in previous threads that I “read more” about econometrics and bubbles to properly understand the technical foundations of “what really happened” in the markets a few months ago. Elliott Waves are a statistical construct, which means they are fully artificial – except when reality defaults to the model. Neither markets nor families can be reduced to Elliott Waves. But Alexis is doing a good job of distinguishing social policy from social engineering.

I have no idea if man can govern himself but right now he’s not very good at it. Maybe “she” would do a better job ::))

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:54 am 30. programmer:

Nahncee suggests:

Like a commenter noted, we don’t need children to take care of us in our dotage any more, we don’t need them to till the fields so really — other than biological clocks and being brainwashed to *think* that’s the right thing to do, why have children?

programmer responds:

To avoid the creeping conclusion that we come from darkness and go to darkness, that this brief moment of existence is all there is, that struggling to survive for one more moment of “I” conciousness is worth the effort. To realize, that if progressive ideology is correct, we go from weakness of childhood to weakness of advance aged and then we die. We will have blinked out like a broken light bulb, never to be “I” again; to have no trace, not even DNA passed on, that we ever existed. To never have experienced the laughter of a child, watching the joy of a child opening Christmas presents on Christmas morn. I could go on, …but then again, as I look at my grandchildren, I realize I will, at least for a some small time continue after I have entered that great unknown.

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:07 am 31. ricpic:

I don’t know why the comments got sidetracked into the female vs. male thing, but if you want to know why we had the mortgage meltdown based on the proliferation of sub-primes the answer is simple: according to the religion of our elites everyone must, must, MUST be equal. It follows that those, who in a sane world, would never be considered home owning capable have been made home owner capable, to hell with the reality that their manifest lack of intelligence, skills and prudence makes it a certainty that they are not and never will be home owning capable. Of course the scheme failed. But have no fear, the minute we have barely emerged from the near catastrophe our liberal overlords have thrown us into they’ll be right back at it — righting the terrible wrong of inequality.

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:31 am 32. X3NA:

Whiskey: A female oriented society such as Europe or America simply cannot resist the force of violence that patriarchies, the real ones from Arabia, visit upon them

Oh please. The violence visited upon us from Arabia was a sucker punch using our own technology (public air travel) against us. If you don’t believe we can resist patriarchal violence, review the 100 hour First Gulf War, or the 2003 Iraq campaign that toppled Saddam at a cost of only 140 US lives. And if that’s still not enough to convince you, go molest some bear cubs when their mother is around and see what happens.

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:44 am 33. SunSword:

I suggest that in the USA at least, a certain percentage of males live with a state of controlled violence — as in, they deliberately choose not to kick the c@%p of those who regularly richly deserve it. When the USA gets kicked in the nadgers (Pearl Harbor, 9/11) these guys get the opportunity to take the leash off.

So — I don’t worry in the slightest about the “decline of the West” or the metro weenies. After all, only a small percentage of men are ever fighters anyway — the rest make up the big fat logistical “tail”.

Dec 21, 2008 - 10:45 am 34. NahnCee:

I remember reading a story in the days immeditely following 9/11 that described how the “manly men” — the cops, and firefighters, and iron workers — who were normally looked down upon by society (yes, the story really said that) were walking (marching) together towards their job of cleaning up the WTC (and looking for bodies).

And the civiilian onlookers spontaneously broke into applause of appreciation.

It was the story’s hypothesis that part of the appreciation was to celebrate the newly-rediscovered virture of being manly men who were actually going to go into that smoking heap and *do* something about the atrocity that had been committed.

I have to believe that some of those applauders were Wall Street Masters of the Universe, and dot-com techies, as well as Whiskey’s never-ending females seeking control.

It also came as a shock to me to read that according to this particular “journalist”, cops, firefighters and iron workers had been looked down upon by society because of excess testosterone … or some dumb damn thing.

Dec 21, 2008 - 11:07 am 35. RattlerGator:

Sorry, ricpic. I plead guilty. I thought the male-female thing at least tangentially touched upon the sub-prime mortgate and social security points; both relating to intentions of firming up society (where children had previously played a heavy role; first being a burden and then, later in life, providing support) but both intentions, perhaps, manifesting dire unintended consequences.

Dec 21, 2008 - 11:41 am 36. Leo Linbeck III:

I recall reading a NYT article about an opinion poll which asked adults whether they were happy, and the results showed that adults with no children were happier than those with children. The article’s message was: Wanna maximize your happiness? Don’t breed.

The problem with the poll, however, was that they asked parents who were currently raising kids. This is akin to asking a marathon runner in the 20th mile “How are you feeling?” or the soldier in the middle of a decisive battle “Are you happy?” or a composer working on the third draft of the second movement of a symphony “Howzit goin’?”

Great achievements are very, very difficult, and exact a toll on those who undertake them. There is an anxiety and fear which is part of every great initiative, a sense that I may not reach the end, and even if I do, the result will not be worth the blood, toil, sweat, and tears spent in its pursuit.

But I can say that the happiest people I know are those who are justifiably proud of their children. They have taken on the responsibility to shape and direct the development of another human soul and have done it well, and they know (consciously or unconsciously) that what they have achieved has a unique kind of permanence.

Hard work? Yes. But results that last an eternity.

It is possible, then, that the core reason for low birth rates is the abandonment of belief in the immortality of the human soul.

Just a thought.

L3

Dec 21, 2008 - 1:59 pm 37. Alexis:

Rattlergator:

Finally, in your #9 Alexis; final paragraph, final sentence: They can’t stand being seen as others see them. Did you mean to write “They can’t stand being seen as they see others”?

I stand corrected. I didn’t phrase that properly. Thanks.

Dec 21, 2008 - 2:39 pm 38. Pascal:

Thank you Leo. It’s good to know there are some who still understand, God bless ‘em all.

Dec 21, 2008 - 3:26 pm 39. NahnCee:

“Hard work? Yes. But results that last an eternity.”

So sayeth Mrs. bin Laden, Mrs. Manson, and Mrs. Oswald.

Dec 21, 2008 - 4:37 pm 40. comatus:

“And the civilian onlookers spontaneously broke into applause of appreciation.”

Just for a second there, I thought I heard Nelson Eddy singing “Stout-Hearted Men”…
with no irony.

Dec 21, 2008 - 5:16 pm 41. Bobal:

Meanwhile, as all this discussion of procreation and lack of same takes place, the Dugger Family continues to quietly take over the world, welcoming #18 off the conveyor belt. And, they all look healthy to me, God Bless ‘Em, even the mom.

Dec 21, 2008 - 6:04 pm 42. Bobal:

Jordyn-Grace, Joshua (who married Anna Keller in September and says he is looking forward to the “blessing of children” of his own), twins John-David and Jana, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, twins Jeremiah and Jedidiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah and Jennifer.

Joshua (who married Anna Keller in September and says he is looking forward to the “blessing of children” of his own)

Dec 21, 2008 - 6:11 pm 43. twobyfour:

@ 41. Bobal

Amazing. How they pulled that off, economically, is beyond my pay grade, but apparently, they did and they are likely to “inherit the word”. Long live Duggerica!

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:52 pm 44. SPA:

L3,

I share your experience: most of the happy people I know (including myself) find their greatest joy in their children, and are proud of their accomplishments.

Agenda-driven surveys are always flawed. I can say with authority that if Ann Landers or the NYT interviewer were to have asked me in any moment (or my wife especially) if I was happy, the answer would, on average, have been no. Raising 5 kids is very, very difficult. Consequently, the occasional success and its attendant joy are magnified and the effect multiplied. And at the end, after the adversity and trials of raising a family, paradoxically, I am happy, and so is my wife, probably even more so.

And then there are the grandchildren!

With this model and its fraught difficulty as an example, and scorn and ridicule in the media and the press for this path, what young person would choose to procreate, let alone have a family with multiple children?

This calculus changes in a significant way only when individuals (couples really) see the value of a family as something greater than themselves, an increasingly uncommon occasion.

Dec 21, 2008 - 10:56 pm 45. Doug:

NYT SUNDAY: BUSH TO BLAME FOR HOUSING NIGHTMARE, MORTGAGE BONFIRE…

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:47 am 46. Doug:

Leo, Pascal:

Really sad how many “right-wing conservatives” w/college educations are childless, or sub-replacement breeders such as myself.

…carrying out a Marxist Plan, care of the “Education System.”

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:57 am 47. Doug:

Median Home Price in California Takes Dive

RUSH:
“The median home price in California dived 38% in November from a year earlier as foreclosures propped up sales but eroded prices. The median home price dropped to $258,000 last month from $414,000 in November. ‘Indicators of market distress continue to move in different directions,’” said DataQuick. They’re out of San Diego. They did the survey. “Foreclosure activity is at or near record levels, financing with adjustable-rate mortgages is near the all-time low.” Okay, so he’s going to veto the budget for now. “California Home Prices Dive 38%.” There’s a companion story: “California Posts 8.4% Jobless Rate, the Third Highest in US.”

And all of this coming on the heels of a Schwarzenegger op-ed in Newsweek where he wants us to follow his lead on infrastructure spending and so forth. So home prices down 38%, budget vetoed, 8.4% jobless rate. Why does Arnold want to keep people in their homes? Why does he want relief? Very simple, ladies and gentlemen. So they can’t leave. The lower the home prices go, the less likely it is existing homeowners can sell and split for Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, more reasonable places to live. They can’t leave. He doesn’t want them to leave ’cause he needs their tax money!

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:16 am 48. slade:

The gender divide in politics and policy exists at the level of myth, ala Joseph Campbell. Witness the unresolved debate over hard power versus soft power. Everyone knows and understands that in a fundamental way except those anxious to tut-tut the dilution of substance by referencing the subject at the level of mythical dichotomies, which is still valid, but a disputative reminder of what may or may not exist in reality. We’re beyond that. So I’m told.

Dec 22, 2008 - 7:49 am 49. slade:

I think it would be instructive to ask who supports this.

Dec 22, 2008 - 9:08 am 50. frankhagan.com » Housing Meltdown: Who do we blame?:

[...] based on prices rising and interest rates falling. The Belmont Club quotes a report on this at The March of Folly: This report concludes that, in an attempt to increase home ownership, particularly by minorities [...]

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:14 am 51. HawkeyeHavoc:

L2 #36.

Bravo…Magnificent. As one with two boys under 3 years old, this really struck home. Perfect analogy that gets to the indescribable mix of frustration and joy that is raising a ‘new’ human being to adulthood.

Dec 22, 2008 - 11:36 am 52. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"Part of the answer is described in the report. As underwriting standards declined, home builders were able to “grant” the down-payment to prospective buyers, allowing them to qualify for a mortgage. Apparently, the builders simply raised their prices by the amount of the grant. (Imagine that.)”"”"”"”"”"”

Before there was “mortgage entitlement” there was Section 8 housing — the apportioning of higher-income rentals to poor people, or people of marginal income, in any case.

The whole phenomenon has to do with providing middle-class trappings for people with working class or poverty-level incomes.

Dec 22, 2008 - 12:42 pm 53. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"The Masons, the Oddfellows, et cetera declined partly because of a certain Ponzi scheme called Social Security. One of the reasons why men had joined fraternal orders was because members swore to take care of the wife and children of any member who had died.”"”"”"”"

And it provided a social and job networking system before the term “networking” was coined. Such social cohesion is shattered by government interference, and then government tries to substitute those entities with government-sponsored “volunteer” and make-work programs.

Dec 22, 2008 - 12:45 pm 54. Alexis:

The standards of western civilization have come a long way since The Rape of the Sabine Women.

Dec 22, 2008 - 12:46 pm 55. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"Whiskey, if you think women are somehow non-aggressive and inherently peaceful, you’re out of your mind. They are not.”"”"”"”

No, Whiskey is correct in the broadest, most general sense. Women’s “aggression” is not directed the same way as Men’s.

Dec 22, 2008 - 12:55 pm 56. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”"Whiskey:

Apparently, you have never heard of the Tuareg. The Tuareg are a matriarchy, and their fighters are known for their ferocity.”"”"”"”"

The Tuareg? They are a cultural backwater. Whiskey is talking about those demographic and geographical groups that matter.

Dec 22, 2008 - 12:56 pm 57. Fiddle Around:

The downward spike in mortgage rates began in 2002, and can be directly tied to Bush de-regulation. When will you losers lift the veil off that reckless jackass? Maybe when you see him kissing Saudi ass as a private citizen?

I can’t wait to see more right wing goofs go bankrupt. Buildings that cost $20 million to build are being sold for $5 million, thus, lower income people are getting more for their money. Obama saw you Bush doormats coming. Smack yourselves on the head.

Dec 22, 2008 - 1:11 pm 58. slade:

RE: we’ve come a long way

It strikes me that the (post-)modern challenge is how to approach the “hard-core” subset of societal dysfunction – that demographic that remains stubbornly fixed as a percentage. It also strikes me that sexual deviancy remains quite large. A $10B business isn’t peanuts.

Dec 22, 2008 - 1:40 pm 59. slade:

The current financial crisis will either be defined as a lower-class or a middle class crisis, when in fact it has rapidly become both, with tentacles reaching into Madoff’s wealthy investors and international sovereign funds. The impact is deep across the spectrum, yet another reason to resist the label of “classic” and yet another reason to remain skeptical about the relative effect of the proposed government response.**

**To add to the list of reasons against the infrastructure stimulus is the fact that the “problem areas” are not roads/bridges (some but not the majority) but old urban water and sewage piping. And those bridges can be replaced in a New York minute with new packaged designs. Construction engineering ain’t rocket science.

Dec 22, 2008 - 1:52 pm 60. Nine-of-Diamonds:

“The Tuareg? They are a cultural backwater. Whiskey is talking about those demographic and geographical groups that matter.”

Correct. To understand what he’s talking about, you only need to look at Britain. There, the emasculated native population has embraced many of the social structures that are hallmarks of “matriarchal” government – bureaucratic micromanagement, restrictions on free speech to protect “oppressed” minority groups (including known terror supporters), abundant welfare benefits, largesse distributed to single mothers, and so on. Menawhile, elements of the patriarchy are either stamped out or infected with the same creeping Tranzi-Progressive virus we’ve seen time and time again. The head of the Anglican Church, a “patriarchal” institution in the past, now muses that Shari’a law might be a good thing for his country. The Royal Navy is shackled with “enlightened” operational constraints so severe that it blunders into a humiliating hostage situation.

Lest anyone accuse me of anti-British prejudice, IMO most of the United States is a mere decade or two behind the UK. The majority of American elites seem convinced that a shrinking body of productive citizens will work harder and harder to subsidize more beneficiaries of the matriarchal nanny state – illegals, single mothers, tort lawyers, lifetime bureaucrats. Interestingly, the coming demographic crunches in Europe and North America will likely benefit Latin American and Middle Eastern cultures that, in my opinion, are decidedly un-matriarchal.

And what of the traditional Western Nuclear Family? It’s been placed under siege by the same matriarchal bureaucratic aparatus. An expansive bureaucratic state can tolerate no challenges to its authority – stable Nuclear families must be undermined at every turn.

Compare the tax burden on married middle-class couples with that on single mothers. Witness the efforts in California and other states to restrict home schooling & corporal punishment. The whole pedophilia/child abuse moral panic discussed on the front page of PJM is also part of the same trend. On another blog I recall one lady describing how a disgruntled neighbor claimed she had broken her daughter’s arm. This touched off a nightmarish, months-long witch hunt instigated by CPS agents and other bureaucratic busy-bodies. For every person who undergoes a similar experience there are thousands of others whose behavior is subtly reshaped by governments hostile to married family life. In an age when the matriarchal nanny-state has perverted nearly every incentive to raise children in a stable environment, small wonder people in their 20’s and early 30’s end up taking the extended adolescence route.

Dec 22, 2008 - 2:36 pm 61. Jay:

The happiest time in my life was the early years after our daughter was born. My wife did most of the work and liked it. I took care of the baby on Sunday mornings. As she got older I took her to our apartment complex pool. We would have had another child or more but my wife got ill.
Our daughter has two girls. She pushes them in education and only had two because she was concerned about college costs. If she had not had that college bent she would have had more children.
she also did not have the type of mother self confidence that my wife had.
The two happiest families that I have gotten know had lots of children.

Dec 22, 2008 - 2:48 pm 62. Mario Sanchez:

The underlying phenomenon for the past 15 years has been an underlying inflation, creeping into the ares of least resistance due to the policy problems well elaborated elsewhere on this post, and undetected because of a failure of policy-makers to appropriately retrieve information for the flow of data.

There is no unique measure – whether it’s CPI-U including or excluding food & fuel, PCE, PPI, ECI, or any single aggregating index – that is a consistently complete and accurate measure of price stability. As a matter of fact, focus on stabilization of any one measure increases the likelihood of asset bubble inflation and subsequent deflation – a real-life manifestation of the Lucas critique. In his Dec 1996 “irrational exhuberance” speech, Greenspan phrased it this way:

“A central mission of the Federal Reserve, [is] to maintain financial stability and reduce and contain systemic risks… In this regard, the successes that most please us are not so much the visible problems that we solve, but rather all the potential crises that could have happened, but didn’t.”

“At different times in our history a varying set of simple indicators seemed successfully to summarize the state of monetary policy and its relationship to the economy. Thus, during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, trends in money supply, first M1, then M2, were useful guides… Unfortunately, money supply trends veered off path several years ago as a useful summary of the overall economy… We can not in the future expect to rely a great deal on money supply in making monetary policy…”

“As we seek price stability and maximum sustainable growth, the changing economic structures constantly present more analytic challenges… One factor that will continue to complicate that task is the increasing difficulty of pinning down the notion of what constitutes a stable general price level… As the century draws to a close, the simple notion of price has turned decidedly ambiguous. What is the price of a unit of software or a legal opinion? How does one evaluate the price change of a cataract operation over a ten-year period when the nature of the procedure and its impact on the patient changes so radically. Indeed, how will we measure inflation, and the associated financial and real implications, in the twenty-first century when our data–using current techniques–could become increasingly less adequate to trace price trends over time?…”

“Doubtless, we will develop new techniques of price measurement to unearth them as the years go on. It is crucial that we do, for inflation can destabilize an economy even if faulty price indexes fail to reveal it…”

“How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy?… We should not underestimate or become complacent about the complexity of the interactions of asset markets and the economy. Thus, evaluating shifts in balance sheets generally, and in asset prices particularly, must be an integral part of the development of monetary policy. ”

The Fed has had a incredible difficult job over the past several decades, so we should not personalize blame for any failures. However, we should identify those failures.

In the 12 years since that speech, we have had an equities bubble, a housing bubble, a financial derivatives bubble, a second equities bubble, an unprecendented deflationary shock, and potentially now a liquidity trap. Obviously Greenspan’s Fed did not succeed in its goal to “maintain financial stability and reduce and contain systemic risks.”

In the 12 years since that speech, Greenspan’s Fed has also failed to devise “new techniques of price measurement” that allow us to move closer to (or confidently predict if we are acheiving) financial stability.

Dec 22, 2008 - 3:28 pm 63. Pascal:

Mario, (or anyone really), regarding your term “Greenspan’s Fed.”

Greenspan is the most widely known student of Ayn Rand. Isn’t this a failure of her philosophy of Objectivism? She was never a believer in the downside to human success; i.e., the opportunity for hubris and accompanying corruption to arise.

Dec 22, 2008 - 3:42 pm 64. slade:

The majority of American elites seem convinced that a shrinking body of productive citizens will work harder and harder to subsidize more beneficiaries of the matriarchal nanny state – Nine-of-Diamonds

I have read that labor productivity is the slim thread that kept the American economy in the black for this long. This tells me that technological advantage – particularly in the old industrial sectors such as Detroit – has been maxed out, to the point that technological innovation has peaked in these industries. That obviously wasn’t the (direct) point of the statement, but it is worth noting. Productivity increases are a spent horse. The pending economic stagnation requires intellectual capital – unconstrained by regulation, redistribution, and the rigidity of political orthodoxy.

On another note, it is interesting how gender, at a mythical or representational level, sparks the more existential, but subdued, reality of a race divided by biology.

Dec 22, 2008 - 3:57 pm 65. Marcus Aurelius:

The problem is really quite simple — an over-constructed building market. In fact, as things started to unwind it was the mid to upper mid level range housing market that started to collapse. High end housing seemed to be okay and so too low level housing. What many people tend to forget is a lot of builders were building specs – spec homes, spec condos, spec offices etc.

I worked in home building back in the early ’90s and my boss told me how bad and slow things were. Heck, our warehouse was full of windows and I was trucking out three-five orders per week. Now he is about to shut the business down. Even the few orders he does get are on low margin commodity vinyl windows.

In any event, I agree it is not solely the sub-prime market to be blamed, without an oversupply of housing, those trapped in the sub-prime mess may have had enough equity to save their bacon.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:04 pm 66. Alexis:

Massive government bureaucracy should not be confused with matriarchy. If anything, massive government bureaucracy has historically been a means to enforce patriarchy as the social norm.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:15 pm 67. twobyfour:

@ #66
Alexis, true. In the modern context, the patriarchy and matriarchy are not as relevant, the paradigm shifted to a not-a-fish, nor-a-crowdad, chimeric metrosexarchy, an ideological and philanderical creature endowed with free-flowing estrogen and pinhead sized balls, a narcissit wuss to behold.

Luckily, it reproductive abilities are severely restricted and it is slated for a dustbin of history. Only unpleasant thing is that our kids would have to deal with the manure this creature produced before dying out.

Dec 22, 2008 - 7:16 pm 68. Unsk:

Marcus A.,
In LA County, the foreclosure capital of the US, the cause of the mortgage meltdown was definitely not overbuilding. From 1990 to 2006, LA County issued permits for housing units that would house at most 400,000 people, (without accounting for housing demolished) but the County grew officially by 800,000, and unofficially by at least 2 million people. ( Most were illegal aliens who are very difficult to count.)

In fact according to I believe the Urban Land Institute, the mortgage crisis was most severe in those metropolitan areas that had the most restrictive housing, zoning and planning policies.

Let me explain the situation in LA County. There is very little land zoned for development that has not been developed already. The vast majority of development is second and third generation development, where a house or units are torn down for either a larger house or a lot more units. The County and LA City have down zoned most residential property so growth is limited to just a few areas, often near public transit facilities, ( that don’t work well).

The result is a huge lack of supply of housing for the demand, and so as a consequence, a huge rise in housing prices and rents occurred over the last 15 years. This lack of supply created a speculative bubble. Many low income areas that were previously thought to be very undesirable became fairly expensive places to live.

In addition to the lack of supply, the more and more restrictive and demanding building and planning codes, environmental laws limiting manufacturing of building products, the longer and longer periods of time required for development, the increased risk in development, and the international building boom and resultant shortage of many building materials led to a huge rise in construction costs. Approximately 250% from 1998 to 2006. Prices were really crazy in 2005. Bids were absurd. A contractor I know who was willing to construct a nice house in 1998 for $117 sf, was asking for almost a thousand dollars a square foot in 2005 for similar construction.

Furthermore to get the big multi unit complexes built, developers often had to indulge the politicians ( most likely Democrats) fantasies. One very popular fantasy was that there was all of a sudden this huge market of young professionals willing and able to pay $600-750,000 for gritty, grungy, deconstructivist tiny urban loft condominiums and apartments in scary urban areas that were truly unsuitable for family living.

The democrats pushed this fantasy for two reasons: First, they could look ‘progressive” and hip for endorsing such hip solutions .
Secondly, they could avoid the ire of the single family communities and environmentalists that hate growth and particularly more traffic.

So now, LA has the worst of all worlds. Thousands of condo’s few people want at anything near the price they were built for. A devastated condo market, a devastated lower income housing market, and a market where still most people cannot afford to buy and also increasingly can’t afford to rent.

LA , the harbinger of many trends, went in exactly the opposite direction that most of the country the last few decades. 30 years ago it was primarily a city of homeowners. Now it is primarily a city of renters.

Many economist think that the housing market needs to return to historical affordability standards to repair the mortgage meltdown crisis. From what I know, I don’t see how replacement or new housing cost is going to allow a return to historical affordability. Costs even in these desperate times are way to high.

Dec 23, 2008 - 1:11 am 69. RattlerGator:

Very interesting perspective on L.A., Unsk.

Slade: “On another note, it is interesting how gender, at a mythical or representational level, sparks the more existential, but subdued, reality of a race divided by biology.”

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Dec 23, 2008 - 3:52 am 70. slade:

Rattler -

I meant “a species divided by biology” but the black race in this country has unique issues as you noted. That wasn’t were I was going. I was more concerned about rectifying the lovey dovey ideal of the family with the reality of what I consider a serious level of sexual dysfunction in the modern world. It’s shuttled off the main screen as “deviant” behavior but I wonder about that – $10B business is serious money. At any rate the decline of the family is more than single women seeking alpha males as they backslide into “sub-replacement breeders.” Extending that paradigm to include “matriarchal” policies that feminize geopolitical interaction to the detriment of national security is a bridge too far. Element of truth? Yes. But it’s not the central player.

Dec 23, 2008 - 5:49 am 71. RattlerGator:

For whatever its worth, slade, species is what I presumed you meant.

Dec 23, 2008 - 5:36 pm 72. Derek:

Korea is hardly a generation into prosperity. That would account for the difference in the societies.

Bubbles are pernicious beasts especially when they go on as long as this one did. People get convinced that what they saw was real.

Back in the tech bubble times, an acquaintance purchased Nortel stock at around $95. A great deal, it was $145 only a month ago. It promptly went down to $2 or something. The company is almost gone, the only sizable thing it has is a $3 billion pension fund to keep up.

Another friend called me last year and said he made more money on his house than he did working.

Ahh, if only money grew on trees every day.

Derek

Dec 24, 2008 - 6:40 am 73. Mario Sanchez:

Pascal,
I’m not an Objectivist, although I am a small-L libertarian, so I can’t address how much this is a failure of Randianism.

However, I take objection to this being labeled a failure of de-regulation. The issue in not the quantity of regulation any more than the number of lines of code define a good or bad peice of software. The number of regulations and mandates on the financial system did not shrink during the past 10-20 years. Instead, bad regulation was introduced and good regulation removed.

Dec 24, 2008 - 8:51 am 74. Old School:

This is organization design and systems again being blamed for the meltdown. A system can’t be accountable for things. What can be held accountable are people. The speculators who walked away from their contractual obligations. The banker who did not have to lend money on the bare minimum standards allowed by regulations, but did so anyway. The legislator who wrote the regulations. Individuals who wrote a contract and signed their name to it. We have the accountable documents and contracts. The question now is do leaders do something about it or are they just corks in the ocean?

Dec 24, 2008 - 1:32 pm 75. RattlerGator:

slade, I presumed you meant species but thanks for the clarification.

Dec 24, 2008 - 1:45 pm 76. slade:

Rattler – I had a hunch that my meaning was clear but the blog medium is dicey. Have a good holiday. We’re all gonna need it for 2009.

Dec 24, 2008 - 5:19 pm

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