Living Car Free - P.J. O’Rourke - The End of Our Love Affair With the Car

Here's some red meat for the forum: P.J. O'Rourke - The End of the Affair. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203771904574173401767415892.html)

An excerpt: "We became sick and tired of our cars and even angry at them. Pointy-headed busybodies of the environmentalist, new urbanist, utopian communitarian ilk blamed the victim. They claimed the car had forced us to live in widely scattered settlements in the great wasteland of big-box stores and the Olive Garden. If we would all just get on our Schwinns or hop a trolley, they said, America could become an archipelago of cozy gulags on the Portland, Ore., model with everyone nestled together in the most sustainably carbon-neutral, diverse and ecologically unimpactful way.

But cars didn’t shape our existence; cars let us escape with our lives. We’re way the heck out here in Valley Bottom Heights and Trout Antler Estates because we were at war with the cities. We fought rotten public schools, idiot municipal bureaucracies, corrupt political machines, rampant criminality and the pointy-headed busybodies. Cars gave us our dragoons and hussars, lent us speed and mobility, let us scout the terrain and probe the enemy’s lines. And thanks to our cars, when we lost the cities we weren’t forced to surrender, we were able to retreat.

...

I don’t believe the pointy-heads give a damn about climate change or gas mileage, much less about whether I survive a head-on with one of their tax-sucking mass-transit projects. All they want to is to make me hate my car. How proud and handsome would Bucephalas look, or Traveler or Rachel Alexandra, with seat and shoulder belts, air bags, 5-mph bumpers and a maze of pollution-control equipment under the tail?

And there’s the end of the American automobile industry. When it comes to dull, practical, ugly things that bore and annoy me, Japanese things cost less and the cup holders are more conveniently located."

Poor Mr. O'Rourke seems to want to blame everyone not like him for the demise of GM. Yes, it must be nice to come from a family that owned a car in the 1950's. It was a romantic time for escaping the city when it began to go downhill (forget that it went downhill partly because so many sought to "escape" it).

It is sad to see an American icon such as GM go under, but to pin that on those evil "pointy-headed" liberals is much too simplistic. There are other companies who are making better products. GM didn't evolve, so it is dying. Chryser almost died too. I believe Ford will recover and begin being profitable again soon.

Business and nostalgia don't mix.

NPR interviewed a GM plant worker and asked who he blamed for the GM debacle. He listed off the usual list-politicans, management, bankers etc.-then blamed Americans for not buying American.

NPR interviewed a GM plant worker and asked who he blamed for the GM debacle. He listed off the usual list-politicans, management, bankers etc.-then blamed Americans for not buying American.

Hard to buy American when Chevy was running a parts list that was among the lowest of truly American made components. The last time I checked a Honda Accord had more American made parts in it than most Chevrolets. GM had a serious QC problem along with a less than stellar management style. I have owned vehicles from just about ALL manufacturers US and otherwise and Chevy always came out on the bottom. Coravair, Vega, Citation, Cavalier and the list goes on. Every one of those vehicles had issues and Chevy never admitted to the issues or fixed the problem, they just introduced a new model. I find it interesting that GM requires a bailout, but Ford is not.

Aaron:)

Not to mention failing to recognize a growing market (ie. small, efficent cars) and adjusting production to meet demand and gain market share.

Hard to buy American when Chevy was running a parts list that was among the lowest of truly American made components. The last time I checked a Honda Accord had more American made parts in it than most Chevrolets. GM had a serious QC problem along with a less than stellar management style. I have owned vehicles from just about ALL manufacturers US and otherwise and Chevy always came out on the bottom. Coravair, Vega, Citation, Cavalier and the list goes on. Every one of those vehicles had issues and Chevy never admitted to the issues or fixed the problem, they just introduced a new model. I find it interesting that GM requires a bailout, but Ford is not.
Aaron:)
Ford had the foresight to see what was coming in late 2007 so Bill Ford Jr and Alan Mullaly mortgaged the house and all the furniture - basically all of their assets, at the end of 2007, to build up cash reserves of $30-40B. That's the primary reason they haven't had to ask for money yet. Their burn rate is not that much better than GM and they are drawing down those reserves pretty fast. That said, I do feel some of their products, especially the cars, are superior to those from GM. The Focus is a strong running small car and the Fusion has been getting better reviews (and mpg) than Camry, even hybrid against hybrid. But the rest of them - Edge, Taurus, and that huge wagon-thing - are still too large and heavy.

Oh yeah, P.J. O'Rourke has been a total Libertarian dikhead since I can remember - nothing new there.

I've enjoyed and admired O'Rourke's columns in the past, but not this one. This column looks a lot like the rantings of a person who has failed to pay attention to what's gone on since the Reagan administration; that is, PJ has become increasingly irrelevant as time has gone on, and he's responded by becoming ever more strident about things that most people don't even think about.

I don't get why people are blaming people other than GM for the failure of GM. It's just a company, just like any other company. If the bookstore down the street goes out of business because the bookstore next door out-competed them, then so be it, it is the way of business. The American car manufacturers built a lesser vehicle and wanted to charge the same amount for it...its a no brainer. If they wanted to keep up...in the 60s, 70s and 80s the Quality Control Guru's who were American, and had gone to Japan to help rebuild industry there, they came back in the 60s and tried to get the American car companies to litsen to them about improving their QC processes, but the car companies sent them packing. GM and Crysler did it to themselves and there is nobody to blame but them. You cannot blame the UAW...the car companies could have just hired all non-union workers or relocated to places like the southeast where unions are frowned upon.
The technology that the Prius uses...Ford invented it then sold the design to Toyota because they did not see a market for it...seriously, just really bad planning and decision making.

Poor PJ. He will never know the joy of riding a bike, which can at least match the thrill of bombing around in a Corvette, at a fraction of the cost.


I myself have something old-school under a tarp in the basement garage. I bet when my will has been probated, some child of mine will yank the dust cover and use the proceeds of the eBay sale to buy a mountain bike. Four things greater than all things are, and I’m pretty sure one of them isn’t bicycles. There are those of us who have had the good fortune to meet with strength and beauty, with majestic force in which we were willing to trust our lives. Then a day comes, that strength and beauty fails, and a man does what a man has to do. I’m going downstairs to put a bullet in a V-8.

The technology that the Prius uses...Ford invented it then sold the design to Toyota because they did not see a market for it...seriously, just really bad planning and decision making.
Toyota loses money on every Prius it sells. They make it up with 300 hp Lexuses and SUVs.

Just like GM.

That is standard in any industry...you lose money on a newly introduced product that you want to make an industry standard and make up for it by selling flashy stuff or raising the prices on commodity goods.
Apple lost money on every mac-book it sells and makes up for it by jacking up the price of the mac-book pro, for that matter they lost money on the iPhone after they did the first price drop, and made up for it elsewhere.
Toyota is attempting to make the Hybrid Synergy Drive technology an industry commodity or standard, thereby being able to reap huge profits in the future by selling the rights to use the design. Its good business, and very long range planning. they are looking 20 years down the road rather than just 5. Thats the difference between Japanese and American business philosophies.

That is standard in any industry...you lose money on a newly introduced product that you want to make an industry standard and make up for it by selling flashy stuff or raising the prices on commodity goods.
Apple lost money on every mac-book it sells and makes up for it by jacking up the price of the mac-book pro, for that matter they lost money on the iPhone after they did the first price drop, and made up for it elsewhere.
Toyota is attempting to make the Hybrid Synergy Drive technology an industry commodity or standard, thereby being able to reap huge profits in the future by selling the rights to use the design. Its good business, and very long range planning. they are looking 20 years down the road rather than just 5. Thats the difference between Japanese and American business philosophies.

And GM has been working on electric cars for more than 20 years. We'll see if the new GM has enough leverage to lose money on the Volt for a few years before they become profitable. And you know that credit and leverage are the real problems in the auto industry, don't you? This has always been true, and always will be.

I'm starting to think that the chemical realities of batteries will never allow for true plug-in cars with an acceptable range. Of course it would help if consumers weren't stuck on the notion that even a "small" car has to weigh more than two tons. And they're also stuck on the notion that they need a 400 mile range even though 99% of trips are less than 20 miles, and they "need" to go from zero to 60 in less than 6 seconds.

Hard to understand how you "free market" advocates can fault companies for providing a product that consumers want, namely huge gas guzzling SUVs and 300 hp sedans.

I am not a free market advocate, Im actually a Marxist and Socialist, but I understand that the free market is the reality of the preferred global economy that we live in. I do not live in a Marxist society, so regardless of my personal beliefs I have to go along with what 99% of the population wants. Ive been out-voted.
The automotive industry as a whole has some very serious problems that may in fact be impossible to overcome, in fact any industry that provides a product that the economy requires to continue to function currently will have serious difficulties...just think about if Exxon and Chevron and BP all announced that they were shutting down operations in the US. Think the government would not find a way to require them to continue operations?

I think he's correct in concluding this goes way beyond GM. We have fallen out of love with cars over the past twenty years. Gridlock has gone from being a phenom of NY and LA to every small town and suburb. The open road is a fading memory. The cars reflect this reality, and as he notes they've become more and more boxy and utilitarian. Replacing the engines with something that's ALLEGEDLY more enviro friendly is no solution at all. We'll still be on the same crowded highways pushing and shoving our way, only we'll be doing it with electricity. Electricity primarily from coal and hydro. Not a big improvement.

The power of the auto is illusory, transitory and distancing. The power of the bike is real, it's your own power translated through gears and wheels. The distinction is thrown into sharp relief when the little man in the big pickup revs his engine behind me waiting for a light. His strength ends when he steps out of the truck. Mine does not.

i might be wrong but at my grocery store management is always trying to cut workers hours because it really makes a dent in profits. so labor costs must be a big factor in a companies survival. don't those auto workers make 85 dollars an hour or so with benefits. seems like they get paid an awful lot compared to other workers.
also saw on tv that in 1979 the auto industries in america employed 700,000 workers and now only 70,000 seems like a big stink about a very small segment of the working population if you ask me.

Toyota loses money on every Prius it sells. They make it up with 300 hp Lexuses and SUVs.

Just like GM.

I think Toyota now makes a small profit on the Prius but for years you were correct.

I do believe the article was mostly hyperbole but there is always just a tinge of truth even in the most off base rant. We did flee the big cities and rightly so. To this day many of us are not willing to join the fight of trying to survive the crime of the big cities. It is bad enough when the scourge comes to the suburbs or urban sprawl and yes sometimes to the rural areas. But to survive the big cities we have to be far too aware of our surroundings.

What we don’t know is just why the crime rate so much higher in big cities. It seems we simply are not designed to live close together without setting off the predator and prey function between people.

At least when you look at government statistics on our major large cities you see personal crime is much higher than is suburbia and urban sprawl areas and almost always higher than rural areas. I happened to chicken out and move to a rural area, ex farming town, that has turned into a small town of less than 40k.

85 dollars an hour translates to $176,800 per year, well more than most doctors and lawyers make. Auto worker wages actually are around $40,000 (mid career)-80,000 (supervisory/plant management) per year so about 19-38 dollars an hour.

Humans evolved living in small "social bubbles" of 50-75 people. This idea of congregating in big cities or even big societies is an extremely recent development, and I cannot help but think it just grates at raises the crime rate cause living like that is just not in our nature

Oh yeah, P.J. O'Rourke has been a total Libertarian dikhead since I can remember - nothing new there.

being a libertarian does not, however, equal being a dickhead.

in fact, i would submit that mr. o'rourke is more accurately described as a reactionary (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=reactionary)

Im actually a Marxist and Socialist

Wow, that's retro. Do you wear one of those newsboy caps too?

Wow, that's retro. Do you wear one of those newsboy caps too?

Hey now, he is not the only one hanging around.

jim

Hard to understand how you "free market" advocates can fault companies for providing a product that consumers want, namely huge gas guzzling SUVs and 300 hp sedans.

I don't think GM has actually provided a product that very many consumers want, at least not recently; that's one of the reasons they're going down. In fact, I think it's safe to say that GM is a case study in how to run a gigantic, bombproof money machine into the ground through the thoughtful application of a couple of decades of stupidity, arrogance, and short-sighted greed.

Don't those auto workers make 85 dollars an hour or so with benefits? seems like they get paid an awful lot compared to other workers.

It depends on your point of view. $85/hour seems really good to me, almost excessive, but banks have been very resistant to efforts by the Feds to curtail bonuses paid to their top managers, because, in the words of one banking executive, "$500,000 is not a lot of money." (Quoted by David Sirota in the NYT) Personally, I'd just as soon see auto workers get paid $80/hour, and have the bankers lined up against the nearest wall.

But the thing is, pay is all about how much value you add. If a banker adds 500K of monetary value to a deal, and does this ten times in a year, the provide their company 5 million in value per year and someone that adds that kind of value probably takes home 300K a year.
An auto worker adds perhaps 300 dollars in value to an auto company per hour. There are 2080 standard work hours in a year, so an auto worker adds 624,000 dollars in value to the company per year. They make, lets figure 65K a year.
So a banker takes home 6% of the value they add to the company.
An auto worker takes home a bit over 10% of the value they add to the company.
It aint the bankers or the auto workers who are getting screwed, its the executives who run them. As far as the value the employee adds to the company, the banker is the one getting the shaft.
My company charges $200 per hour for my services (consulting company). I see about $40 per hour before taxes, hence I am trying to start my own business, so I can be the one making the dough.

This is not about ethics, it is about how the business world works. Everybody is always jockeying to take home a bigger share of the value added by their work. The UAW actually has done very well by the auto workers. If the auto companies had their way the workers would only take home 3% or less of the value added.
You see this a lot in construction. I work in construction management for renewable energy projects and LEED building, and back home in Georgia where there are no unions, being a carpenter means you will always struggle financially. Out here in California (unionized state), the carpenters who work for me all live in bigger houses than me and make a fair bit more money than me.
Sometimes it can be a kick in the nads when your employees make so much more money than you.
But it is the beauty of unions. Without them we would be a nation of the working class being much more opressed by the executive class than we are now, and we are still pretty bad.

Hey now, he is not the only one hanging around.

and it's possible to be bother a libertarian and a socialist.

Humans evolved living in small "social bubbles" of 50-75 people. This idea of congregating in big cities or even big societies is an extremely recent development, and I cannot help but think it just grates at raises the crime rate cause living like that is just not in our nature

We've been living in groups of a thousand or more for quite some time.

Damascus has been continuously inhabited for 10-12 thousand years.

But the thing is, pay is all about how much value you add. If a banker adds 500K of monetary value to a deal, and does this ten times in a year, the provide their company 5 million in value per year and someone that adds that kind of value probably takes home 300K a year.
An auto worker adds perhaps 300 dollars in value to an auto company per hour. There are 2080 standard work hours in a year, so an auto worker adds 624,000 dollars in value to the company per year. They make, lets figure 65K a year.
So a banker takes home 6% of the value they add to the company.
An auto worker takes home a bit over 10% of the value they add to the company.
It aint the bankers or the auto workers who are getting screwed, its the executives who run them. As far as the value the employee adds to the company, the banker is the one getting the shaft.
My company charges $200 per hour for my services (consulting company). I see about $40 per hour before taxes, hence I am trying to start my own business, so I can be the one making the dough.

I agree with you that pay should reflect the value you add to the product or service. However, I cannot imagine that investment bankers' labors add enough value to the economy to even begin to justify their grotesque compensation, especially when they devise strategies that send the rest of the economy into a tailspin. It actually makes me very angry when I consider that the small group of people who helped to create a near-depression are the same people who are now grumbling that their bonuses are only 10 times greater than the entire income of even those workers who are fortunate enough to still be employed. The sheer arrogance of this attitude, all by itself, is enough to turn me into a Bolshevik. Shoot the Bourgeois b*stards. Shoot them all.

Bragi, I think you and I are at a disconnect as to which bankers, exactly, we are talking about. The 500K a year Harvard Business School Grads 5 years out of school (27 years old) or those same people thirty years down the line (57 years old) who are making 20 Million a year?
Either way, yeah they should be shot. I agree there.
But those 500K A YEAR folks, they don't even make that important decisions. They are actually considered "entry level" but when it comes to money its a matter of scale. If a deal involves a 30 Billion transaction, but you have some entry level person handle a tiny section of it, it translates to 5 million for that person. It is scary the amount of money these people move per day. truly insane. Some of these banks transact more dollars per day than all of the national governments in the world combined.
In a world run by money, that makes you wonder who is in charge

I think Toyota now makes a small profit on the Prius but for years you were correct.



What we don’t know is just why the crime rate so much higher in big cities. It seems we simply are not designed to live close together without setting off the predator and prey function between people.

At least when you look at government statistics on our major large cities you see personal crime is much higher than is suburbia and urban sprawl areas and almost always higher than rural areas. I happened to chicken out and move to a rural area, ex farming town, that has turned into a small town of less than 40k.

I am currently living in one of the most population dense countries in the world, South Korea. There is hardly any crime here. People leave their 5,000 dollar road bikes out with no locks or small tiny cable locks. There is no organized crime to speak of, no gangs, maffia. The biggest illegal thing that takes place here is the downloading of illegal music... but its not illegal here. Seoul itself has the highest population density of any city in the world except for Tokyo.... and its not far off either. If you mean "we" as Americans, are simply not designed to live in dense populations then maybe I could agree with you. However, human beings are capable and adaptable to almost any sort of living situation. It is culture and not "human nature" that creates crime.

It is scary the amount of money these people move per day. truly insane. Some of these banks transact more dollars per day than all of the national governments in the world combined.
In a world run by money, that makes you wonder who is in charge

Even more reason to shoot them.

It depends on your point of view. $85/hour seems really good to me, almost excessive, but banks have been very resistant to efforts by the Feds to curtail bonuses paid to their top managers, because, in the words of one banking executive, "$500,000 is not a lot of money." (Quoted by David Sirota in the NYT) Personally, I'd just as soon see auto workers get paid $80/hour, and have the bankers lined up against the nearest wall.

No, the autoworkers never got anywhere near 85$/hour. That figure includes not only benefits (health care, pension), but also the health care and pension of retired workers. My recollection is that someone just added up all of the costs that GM had, and then dividing by the number of hours that were worked by all of the workers.

AllenG, 10-12 thousand years is a blip on the radar screen of human evolution, considering hominids seperated from chimps 6 million years ago, and were fully modern humans 150-200 thousand years ago.
10 thousand years is plenty of time for our social norms and behaviors to evolve, but not enough time for the underlying biology of our instincts to change.

Allen G, and also, in terms of the entire human population of the planet, a city here or there is more of an exception than a rule.
Most of the human population of the world lived in tiny hunter gatherer bands or very small farming villages right up until two or three thousand years ago, and it could be argued that realistically, we, as a whole, did not start urbanizing large scale until the industrial revolution.

However, I cannot imagine that investment bankers' labors add enough value to the economy to even begin to justify their grotesque compensation, especially when they devise strategies that send the rest of the economy into a tailspin.

Actually, since the Reagan Revolution, it's ONLY the investment bankers who have adding value to the economy. Unfortunately, it has been a phoney self-enriching value that threatens to destroy the workers and entrepeneurs who are the only ones who can add TRUE value.

Allen G, and also, in terms of the entire human population of the planet, a city here or there is more of an exception than a rule.
Most of the human population of the world lived in tiny hunter gatherer bands or very small farming villages right up until two or three thousand years ago, and it could be argued that realistically, we, as a whole, did not start urbanizing large scale until the industrial revolution.

And for thousands of years, the lifestyle and prosperity of ordinary people didn't change at all. It was only with the rise of cities that prosperity began to rise for most people in the world.

Science, industry, art, religion, politics, medicine--all arose in cities, and couldn't have happened anywhere else.

Roody, This is true. All of those things do come from cities, and the concentration of labor and collaboration that cities allow.
The question is not whether cities are postive or negative for society, but whether we are biologically and instictinctfully geared towards living in such concentrated society...not individuals, but the human species as a whole.

And for thousands of years, the lifestyle and prosperity of ordinary people didn't change at all. It was only with the rise of cities that prosperity began to rise for most people in the world.

Science, industry, art, religion, politics, medicine--all arose in cities, and couldn't have happened anywhere else.

One might ask how the Hopi, Zuni and Navajo might feel about art, religion and even to a degree medicine. And then ask everyone else if politics is advancement. Because some would argue it was city politics that caused Urban flight.

and it's possible to be bother a libertarian and a socialist.

No, it's not. Not if words have actual meanings.

I agree with you that pay should reflect the value you add to the product or service. However, I cannot imagine that investment bankers' labors add enough value to the economy to even begin to justify their grotesque compensation, especially when they devise strategies that send the rest of the economy into a tailspin. It actually makes me very angry when I consider that the small group of people who helped to create a near-depression are the same people who are now grumbling that their bonuses are only 10 times greater than the entire income of even those workers who are fortunate enough to still be employed. The sheer arrogance of this attitude, all by itself, is enough to turn me into a Bolshevik. Shoot the Bourgeois b*stards. Shoot them all.

What strategies were those that drove the economy into a tailspin? Your statement is an incredible, gross oversimplification of a very complex set of circumstances that led to the latest recession. Of course the largest factor in this recession, the business cycle, is always ignored by those wishing to score points by demonizing politicians or business people or someone else for every blip. Recessions are a normal part of life; we've been having them every few years for thousands of years.

"Workers who are fotunate enough to still be employed"? You mean like the 91% or 92% of the populace of the U.S. that are still gainfully employed. Yes, the fortunate few.


"Shoot the...b*stards"? Really? I would have dismissed this as a bit of hyperbole but you made like statements in at least one other post so you must be at least somewhat serious. Unbelievable.

Fact is KurtAV is right. The global economy is a vastly complicated thing that none of us here understands, in fact no reputable economist would even say that they understand the global economy. We were all at fault for what happened. The banks for offering such easy mortgages, the people who took those mortgages for not educating themselves on what they were getting into, the govt for so much deregulation, the banks for being, well, the scumbags that they are and always have been, and on and on. There were hundreds of variables involved, and all of those variables cooperated to screw us over.
But I have to disagree with the unemployment statement. 91% employed is a huge unemployment rate, especially when you factor that the rate is calculated by who files for unemployment benefits, so it neglects to count the people who wont file because of pride, who are "underemployed" (people with MBA pouring coffee at Starbucks for example) of which there is a huge amount, and also the people who have been unemployed for awhile and their benefits wear out.
Judging from just talking to people, and that I work in a very socially active industry so I am meeting and talking to new people every day, things are really, really rough, and I would suspect that the actual rate of unemployment plus underemployment could easily be closer to 20%, which is really bad. At the height of the Great Depression the rate was "only" 25 percent, which still means 75% of the population was "employed" but what does that really mean?

What strategies were those that drove the economy into a tailspin? Your statement is an incredible, gross oversimplification of a very complex set of circumstances that led to the latest recession. Of course the largest factor in this recession, the business cycle, is always ignored by those wishing to score points by demonizing politicians or business people or someone else for every blip. Recessions are a normal part of life; we've been having them every few years for thousands of years.

"Workers who are fotunate enough to still be employed"? You mean like the 91% or 92% of the populace of the U.S. that are still gainfully employed. Yes, the fortunate few.


"Shoot the...b*stards"? Really? I would have dismissed this as a bit of hyperbole but you made like statements in at least one other post so you must be at least somewhat serious. Unbelievable.

I probably shouldn't even bother, because you're just trolling, but I'll bite, just this one last time:

What were the strategies that drove the economy into a tailspin? It is complicated, as you say, but, like many complicated issues, it can be reduced to terms that anyone can understand, much like a math problem. For example, this current crisis can be summarized this way: People discovered that bundling up millions of bad loans into tradeable products on Wall Street was a really good way to make a lot of money in a very short period of time. The ability of people to pay the loans was not a consideration. The profits were huge, if unsustainable in the long run, and a lot of people knew it, but continued to do it, because, for them personally, the profits were worth the risk, especially since they didn't actually have any personal risk. The risk was borne by their clients. Eventually, people began to notice that a lot of the loans were going into default, which made their products almost worthless, everyone freaked out, tried to pull their money out all at once, and we ended up with the sh*tfest that we all currently enjoy.

See: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom?tid=true

In case you've failed to notice, this "downturn" is not a normal part of the business cycle. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are going away every month, and many of them will never come back. If you're one of the 9% of the adult population that is looking for gainful employment, which is millions of people, you're in very deep trouble. Your lack of concern for these people places you firmly in the ranks of the new GOP. (Tell Rush, Dick and Karl hi for me; in a few years, you four will be the only ones left in the party.)

My anger at the people who created this mess is sincere. Through no fault of my own, my 401K is worth less than half of what it once was, and it wasn't worth that much to begin with. Many, if not most, of the parents I work with are concerned about their jobs, and a good number of them are now unemployed. Meanwhile, the only consequence that awaits a large number of investment bankers is the dire possibility that they might be forced into early retirement with a paltry nest egg of only 20 million or so. Given the facts that they either directly contributed to me having to work an extra 10-15 years, or would have eagerly done so had they been old enough, of course I want to shoot them. I won't, of course; but it's a bit of a comfort to imagine it.

You can respond to this post if you want, but don't expect me to respond in kind. You may be a wonderful human being in person, but your posts lead me to believe that you're not.

"People discovered that bundling up millions of bad loans into tradeable products on Wall Street was a really good way to make a lot of money in a very short period of time. The ability of people to pay the loans was not a consideration. The profits were huge, if unsustainable in the long run, and a lot of people knew it, but continued to do it, because, for them personally, the profits were worth the risk, especially since they didn't actually have any personal risk. The risk was borne by their clients. ""

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. It was hubris...and just living in the moment and not looking five or ten years down the road

Roody, This is true. All of those things do come from cities, and the concentration of labor and collaboration that cities allow.
The question is not whether cities are postive or negative for society, but whether we are biologically and instictinctfully geared towards living in such concentrated society...not individuals, but the human species as a whole.

You talk as if Humans have a high degree of instincts at all. The fact is that humans have long ago given up many of their instincts and instead traded it for culture. Yes when our belleis ache we have an instinct to eat but too much beyond that and you are just blaming all of peoples behaviour on biology. There is abolutley nothing in our evolutionary biology that says that we can not live long comfortable lives in cities without significant crime. Humans have not evolved to live in cities OR in small bands. Human beings have evolved to be adaptable to living in almost any situation and that adaptation is cultural. Actually there is currently a dig in eastern Ethiopa of a settlment where several different species of proto humans lived TOGETHER! Did we evolve to do that? No, human evolution has little if anything to do with crime in cities.

You talk as if Humans have a high degree of instincts at all. The fact is that humans have long ago given up many of their instincts and instead traded it for culture.

I don't buy this. You honestly haven't been able to identify certain human motivations and behavioral tendencies that persist across cultural lines? Status-seeking behavior would be the most obvious one. Different cultures have different status indicators and different methods of pursuing it, but I have yet to see a society where people don't desire to maintain some sort of advantage in position -- or at least parity -- in relation to their peers.

[QUOTE=zeppinger;9041146]You talk as if Humans have a high degree of instincts at all. The fact is that humans have long ago given up many of their instincts and instead traded it for culture. Yes when our belleis ache we have an instinct to eat but too much beyond that and you are just blaming all of peoples behaviour on biology. QUOTE]

Incorrect. Humans are highly insticntual, just like any other intelligent animal. Think about food preferences...why do we so enjoy fatty and sweet foods..its insticnt because they are the most calorie dense foods...sex insticnts, insticnt to learn language at an early age, you could go on and on. If I could learn to spell insticnt correctly I would sound more intelligent though.

Incorrect. Humans are highly insticntual, just like any other intelligent animal. Think about food preferences...why do we so enjoy fatty and sweet foods..its insticnt because they are the most calorie dense foods...sex insticnts, insticnt to learn language at an early age, you could go on and on. If I could learn to spell insticnt correctly I would sound more intelligent though.

Definitely. Humans everywhere desire status, sexual gratification, various forms of mental stimulation (in other words, boredom-avoidance), intoxication by means of various substances, some level of social interaction, the taste of the same basic food flavors, the sight of beauty (which does have certain qualities that are appreciated cross-culturally), the avoidance of burdensome work (which is moderated by desire for status), and the enjoyment of base-level physical comforts (higher-levels of wealth being desired more for the purpose of status-signaling than for their own sake). A subset of humans consciously desire to reproduce, while most of those who don't are still likely to do so, given their desire for sex.

What else is there, really?

One might ask how the Hopi, Zuni and Navajo might feel about art, religion and even to a degree medicine. And then ask everyone else if politics is advancement. Because some would argue it was city politics that caused Urban flight.

pueblo = city

What strategies were those that drove the economy into a tailspin? Your statement is an incredible, gross oversimplification of a very complex set of circumstances that led to the latest recession. Of course the largest factor in this recession, the business cycle, is always ignored by those wishing to score points by demonizing politicians or business people or someone else for every blip. Recessions are a normal part of life; we've been having them every few years for thousands of years.

"Workers who are fotunate enough to still be employed"? You mean like the 91% or 92% of the populace of the U.S. that are still gainfully employed. Yes, the fortunate few.


"Shoot the...b*stards"? Really? I would have dismissed this as a bit of hyperbole but you made like statements in at least one other post so you must be at least somewhat serious. Unbelievable.
Every economist I've read--left, right or center--agrees that the current economic disaster was caused by much more than the business cycle. This is definitely not a normal recession. You are ignoring the housing bubble, credit crisis, monetary instability, and collapse of the banking system.

You also have a very poor understanding of employment figures. Unemployment rates are only one indicator of the current weakness of the job market. You also have to consider total number of jobs, discouraged workers, underemployed workers and other data to get a picture of the employment situation. And believe me, it doesn't look very good right now. We're very lucky to be working.