Month: January 2014
is that people in democratic countries have some responsibility for what their countries do.
The horizon is as far as we can see. A time horizon is as far as we plan for, as far as we care about. The ancient Greeks had a proverb which runs as follows: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.”
The middle aged and old run society. They make up the bulk of senior executives and the bulk of powerful politicians.
The men and women who lived through the Great Depression always planned for the future. They built power plants which produced more power than needed, bridges which could handle more traffic, water purification plants which produced more water. They made sure infrastructure would last for decades, and then built it so well it outlasted even their specifications.
Their heirs, the Silents and the Boomers, thought this was absurd. Why not party now, and let the future take care of itself?
Call this the “death bet”. In it’s pure form, the death bet is just that, a bet that when the bill comes due, you’ll be dead. If you live a good life and die owing millions, well, what do you care?
But someone will pay that bill. Maybe it will be your creditors, who might even go out of business, unable to collect what they are owed. Perhaps it will be your heirs, if the millions adhere to property. Perhaps it will be someone you don’t even know.
But someone will pay. The good life, bought by debt, is always paid for.
The death bet is why we are not dealing with climate change, even though we know that it is coming and we know it will kill hundreds of millions and might even destroy our entire society. The death bet is why our governments make huge tax cuts today knowing that either taxes will have to be increased in the future or spending will have to be drastically cut. But in the meantime the government can borrow, or print money, so who cares? The politicians who make the tax cuts won’t be in power, and many of the people who receive the cuts will be dead, so what do they care?
The death bet is why America had a 2.4 trillion dollar infrastructure deficit as of 2009. It is why Californians voted in 1978 to disallow property tax increases of more than 2% per year. And it is why tuition rates have increased by hundreds of percentage points more than inflation in many countries.
A death bet always come due. It just isn’t always paid by those who made it. The GI generation who voted Reagan in are mostly dead, they won the death bet. Most of the Silents will win as well.
Only about half of Boomers are going to win the bet, though, and if you’re a Gen-X’er or below, unless you die young, you might want to stop taking death bets.
No society will remain prosperous if the time horizon is only so far as our grasp. rather than so far as we can see. The future always arrives, and the bill we’ve put off is always paid by someone.
I hope my readers had a good holiday season, and that your 2014 is better than 2013 was for you. Unless you were heavily invested in the stock market, or German, 2013 was a generally lousy year for most people in the Western world.
In the new year I’ll be making some decisions about how much, and what, to blog in 2014. The last few months of 2013 saw some major pieces on ideology, global warming and the history of our devolution to the semi-permanent crisis we’re in and the response to those articles was excellent, but they are a great deal of work.
On a personal level, 2013 was mostly about improving my health, and it’s quite a bit better than it was this time last year, so I’m grateful for that.
Take care of yourselves, and may the Fates be kind.