SHORTER David Brooks: the Market is perfect, it's the people who keep fucking it up.
Look: isn't it time some Republican tried to pull the plug on Brooks, for the same reason that the Koch Brothers want to stop the Cato charade?
The GOP doesn't need the cover anymore. The Republican party needs some smarty-pants quoting "experts" like a Baptist picnic needs margarita glasses.
Sure, sure, for some reason Brooks seems to need the Republican party more than it needs him. But if that "there are no moderates in the Republican party" piece a couple weeks ago was the strangled cry of a man who just found out his girlfriend dumped him four years ago, this--pseudo-science intended to show that the Bronze Age fertility superstitions his party can no longer keep hidden are really quite sound, if you squint hard enough--is the work of a man who picked himself up, admitted that she changed her phone number, email addy, and her locks, that it's just never meant to be, and who promptly went to the florist and ordered her flowers.
Y'know, assuming the worst, that I was a member of a political party, and my short-range goals were that it either a) come to its senses or b) prove to be not quite the disaster it almost surely will be, I think I'd be examining other options.
It's interesting, ain't it, that the only time Republican economic "thinkers" believe Malthus is when the subject is Social Security? Our reliance on fossil fuels, global climate change, * an insane healthcare system, * our ever-increasing reliance on a vulnerable communications system that's one Chinese bottle rocket away from being space junk, even the results of galloping anti-immigrant insanity on our food crops, will all be solved automatically by the Market. Projected deficit in twenty years in the Social Security system, unless the Congress pays back the money it swiped from the till? Cosmically insurmountable. Dismantling the system is the only way to solve it.
But we'll still have the most rapidly aging billion-dollar military gizmos. And old people can't get out of the way so quickly.
For fuck's sake, was it only people who "saw population growth as a problem" who took economic growth for granted? It's not the way I remember it. Could that be just another passive-aggressive snipe at environmentalists? Hmmm? Maybe Brooks should try applying his dilettante's mind to their literature for a change.
Here's an idea; it doesn't come from an economist writing a sociology treatise, but from the plumber I had paint my house: we don't need more people. We don't even need smarter people. We need you fucks to stop filling everybody's head with bullshit designed to make yourselves wealthier no matter what.
___________
* assuming they admit it.
It's interesting, ain't it, that the only time Republican economic "thinkers" believe Malthus is when the subject is Social Security? Our reliance on fossil fuels, global climate change, * an insane healthcare system, * our ever-increasing reliance on a vulnerable communications system that's one Chinese bottle rocket away from being space junk, even the results of galloping anti-immigrant insanity on our food crops, will all be solved automatically by the Market. Projected deficit in twenty years in the Social Security system, unless the Congress pays back the money it swiped from the till? Cosmically insurmountable. Dismantling the system is the only way to solve it.
For decades, people took dynamism and economic growth for granted and saw population growth as a problem. Now we’ve gone to the other extreme, and it’s clear that young people are the scarce resource. In the 21st century, the U.S. could be the slowly aging leader of a rapidly aging world.
But we'll still have the most rapidly aging billion-dollar military gizmos. And old people can't get out of the way so quickly.
For fuck's sake, was it only people who "saw population growth as a problem" who took economic growth for granted? It's not the way I remember it. Could that be just another passive-aggressive snipe at environmentalists? Hmmm? Maybe Brooks should try applying his dilettante's mind to their literature for a change.
Here's an idea; it doesn't come from an economist writing a sociology treatise, but from the plumber I had paint my house: we don't need more people. We don't even need smarter people. We need you fucks to stop filling everybody's head with bullshit designed to make yourselves wealthier no matter what.
___________
* assuming they admit it.
It's very weird to me that you can have an article implying that continuous population growth is necessary to the world economy and not have to address the fact that the Earth can only support a finite amount of people.
ReplyDeleteI mean, at the very least we'll eventually run out of space on the planet.
It seems to me that maybe its a bad thing when you're relying on the continuous consumption of a finite natural resource, and that we should maybe look for ways to stop before we're all being pushed around by Soylent Green bulldozers.
David Brooks should be beaten with red-tipped staves, stuffed in a leather sack with a monkey, a dog, a rooster, and a poisonous snake, and thrown into the Hudson.
ReplyDeleteGOP delenda est!
Yeah, the population is 7 billion and growing 40 years after Ehrlich's Population Bomb (and the US was getting its ass handed to it in Viet Nam). Guess that is proof enough in conservative minds that they were so so right about Malthus and the dirty hippies being so wrong. 2 billion + more, no problem! Just like the conservatives (OK a lot of libs too) were so right about the US "winning" the cold war.
ReplyDeleteJesus fucking christ. How could we have built such a fucking delusional existence on this earth?
But hey, stocks are up. Be happy.
My poor wife II.
I'm not going to read Brooks but let me guess that he's talking about not enough White Republicans being born.
ReplyDeleteYes, we need more young people so badly that we've employed half of them!
ReplyDelete"...plumber I had paint my house:"
ReplyDeletePriceless!