Courtesy of Metafilter.com for bringing it to attention, here is a Vanity Fair article which chimes very strongly with my own thoughts on American wealth. Called "Of the 1%, for the 1%, by the 1%" (you can see where this is going) it very succinctly explores the time bomb which is the social inequality of America. It is a time bomb because what the 1% who take nearly 1/4 of the nations wealth in America have forgotten (despite ample lessons from history) is that their wealth and the stability of the society which helped create it depends on the other 99% of the population. What happens when the 99% get sick of such significant inequality?
My personal sense is that a population is happy to sublimate a host of negative aspects about their country while they feel rich in comparison to their neighbours. It is a self reinforcing tenant that you must right if you are wealthier than others. When this situation changes and you no longer feel wealthy compared to other countries (China, India, etc) you must begin to question why you are no longer king of the world, it is at this point that the 1% gets called to account.
Thank you Vanity Fair for funding comprehensive quality journalism which is well written and insightful. Thank you for making it freely available online. I also think that Harpers (see previous post) and Slate are also doing great work.
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Monday, 4 April 2011
The power to get it wrong
This is an interesting little discourse (in Harpers magazine) examining the idea that people in positions of power are more likely to have errors in their world view, and therefore in the decisions that they make than a given powerless person making the same choices.
Whereas power has recourse to its own resources, the weak must draw on reason. Therefore those that govern have opinions which are just a little less sane and impartial than the powerless.
It could help explain all sorts of catastrophes of governance. At this moment a majority of the British population are at a loss to explain why Brittan is involved in Libya. One can be sure that the people in charge of the nation know things that we do not and that these are part of the calculus of war. However, I cannot help but feel that that this is at least in part a good example of the powerful collectively talking themselves into a position influenced by the views of each other which has become abstracted from reality due to the closed nature of their intercourse and calculus inputs.
The counter argument could be made that those in power have access to a greater range resources on which to base decisions, and are usually more highly educated than those not in power. So I suspect this articles observation is a mere corner of the oft proved cliché that "power corrupts". Despite the advantages that power brings to decision making, overall the rarefied and abstracted nature of power erodes these advantages such that the quality of perception and the decisions flowing from it are not as good as they might otherwise be.
Whereas power has recourse to its own resources, the weak must draw on reason. Therefore those that govern have opinions which are just a little less sane and impartial than the powerless.
It could help explain all sorts of catastrophes of governance. At this moment a majority of the British population are at a loss to explain why Brittan is involved in Libya. One can be sure that the people in charge of the nation know things that we do not and that these are part of the calculus of war. However, I cannot help but feel that that this is at least in part a good example of the powerful collectively talking themselves into a position influenced by the views of each other which has become abstracted from reality due to the closed nature of their intercourse and calculus inputs.
The counter argument could be made that those in power have access to a greater range resources on which to base decisions, and are usually more highly educated than those not in power. So I suspect this articles observation is a mere corner of the oft proved cliché that "power corrupts". Despite the advantages that power brings to decision making, overall the rarefied and abstracted nature of power erodes these advantages such that the quality of perception and the decisions flowing from it are not as good as they might otherwise be.
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