Counting, Budge style

From Dave Budge:

For example, if the Fed and the Treasury had not offered a doctrine of too-big-to-fail since the late 1970s financial institutions would, in part, not engage in risky behavior that results in private gains/public losses. That’s not to say that certain other aspects of the finance sector don’t deserve strict regulation (although I’m not in the mood to debate what those are right now) but certain “self-policing” has all the incentive necessary to protect the public from wide-spread abuse.

I guess we’ll have to wait until he’s in a better mood for clarification, but his counting system apparently goes like this: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010… *
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On a less snarky note, one might ask why people are not swayed by physical evidence? We nearly imploded in 2007-09, and even Greenspan admitted to being surprised that markets actors would act in a self-destructive manner. I don’t know where he’s at now, but he did have a lucid interval.

Some time last year I tuned in to C-SPAN to hear what was meant to be a debate between Ralph Nader and Ted Turner and some other guy, only Turner did not know that it was to be a debate. Ralph had more or less trapped him into coming on false pretenses, but Turner is resilient and smart. I roughly quote Turner, who told Nader right off that he had tried kicking the system, and all he got was a broken toe. He asked Ralph what he had accomplished in his presidential runs besides a broken foot?

That was it for me. I knew that Turner was right. The two men are similar and different – in the face of futility, Turner moved on to other pursuits, while Nader keeps kicking, kicking, kicking.

But Nader is over, and I realized it that moment. The man had one hell of a run. As a young man he forced remarkable changes on our society. Just one small example: He was waiting to board an airline one time years ago, and got bumped. He sued, and as a result, airlines now have to compensate us when we are bumped. In other words, don’t bump Ralph.

And that was true right through the year 2000, when Al Gore would have been well-advised not to bump Ralph. He might have survived. Gore went down, to my amusement, but Ralph had finally kicked too hard, and the Democratic apparatchiks took him out.

So back to the subject at hand: Budge is faced with massive evidence that his belief system leads to chaos, but he keeps on kicking. Democrats are faced with plenty of evidence that their people are carrying out the same agenda as the other party, and still support their candidates with great fervor, even having night sweats about the other guys. They are so easily manipulated by fear.

It’s about futility. Budge’s philosophy, to our immense benefit, will never be implemented in full. Democrats will not become a progressive party in the face of private financial power. Change is slow, progress in our own lives is an illusion. The question is, how do we deal with futility? How do we come to grips with the fact that we don’t matter?

I don’t have a problem not mattering. Maybe it is being the youngest in a family of super-brains, not measuring up to my brother’s accomplishments, that gave me the inner strength to realize that the world is soaking wet, so that even if I am a struck match, nothing changes. And then to live with modest achievements, failures, tragedies, and my own strengths and flaws, multitudinous. And to be happy.

I am not debating philosophy with anyone, ever. I know what would be nice if we all agreed on it – socialized medicine, publicly financed elections, and military defeat convincing that the US indutrsial complex to leave the rest of the world alone. That’s not some deep gem of reasoning – it is utterly pragmatic.

What I deal with are mindsets, and I am in constant wonderment that, when faced with full frontal evidence that they are wrong, people do not change their minds. And then I realize that here am I, given plenty of evidence that people simply don’t change their minds, and I keep debating. I have sore toes now and then, but nothing is broken yet. But there should come a time when I come to grips with the simple fact that no one will change.

As my brother learned early on, to deal effectively with people, you get in their mindsets, but do not change them. You merely maneuver through life that way. All the while, he had his own opinions, much like my own, and kept them to himself.

And that’s nice in terms of getting buildings built or helping people in bad situations, which is what he accomplished in his brief and remarkable life. But my brother had a bit of Ted Turner in him too. He avoided politics, knowing it to be futile.

Were I that wise, I would do so as well. But I’m not wise, and have way too much fun hearing the dogs bark as I drag my stick across the cages. I am deeply defective.
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*I hasten to add: Budge is saying that reining in the beast in the 1970’s, allowing large institutions to fail, would create an environment in which they self-regulate for fear of perishing by their own device. What he fails to understand is the power of concentrated wealth prevents not only external regulation and self-regulation, but also the circumstances by which his ideal world can come about. He suffers from deep internal contradiction. To be wispy about what could have been done four decades ago is remarkable blindness to the fact that his own philosophy brings about the environment where institutions become too big to fail – that is, concentrations of wealth that take control of the regulating mechanism as surely as the little lamb followed Mary.