The Golden Rule Just Can't Cut It Anymore

Blog surfing today I found the following entry. Tried to leave a comment but couldn't unless I shared more than my blogger ID. So I brought his entry to my site. It's an interesting entry--but long. I didn't want to slice and dice it running the risk of editorializing by selection, so here's the whole thing, following the response I wanted to leave. Apologies for any oversights--there are many more things I wanted to say but didn't in the interest of some kind of brevity. (I can talk, as you know if this isn't your first visit.) If you want to read Econotech's entry first, you'll need to scoll downward or click through to the original on his site.

Hairpinandarrow's response:

Your post is interesting and thought-provoking. I don't quite understand why you can't hold Silicon Valley types accountable though for being seduced into following the "quick buck." Do you suggest the money was just too tempting for otherwise ethical idealists? The same goes for the Muslims who are "trying" to come to grips with modernity. I don't think there's a Muslim alive in the Middle East who will admit wanting to become "modern" or "Western." Isn't that the basis for their hating the Infidels and the main fear their "manifesto" fights against?

Everyone has a choice of standards by which they elect to live. Embracing a value system that allows--actually encourages--emphasis on short term results (gains) as well as putting fiscal returns ahead of every other value, is a recipe for short term success and long term decay of your system.

Most of the US's problems stem from the fact that many in the USA (individuals, but companies particularly) are making choices focusing on the wrong values during the transition to the global economy. Where and how you invest, like everything else, has a predictable outcome. If you throw money at stocks that will benefit you and your culture long term, good. If you don't, well, what do you expect? You'll need your book of "standards to live by" to wade through making these decisions.

We need to develop a long term survival instinct. And a healthy sense of nationalism (uniquely American culture) should dictate just how far we should go and in which direction. For instance, I too believe we've allowed ourselves to become overly dependent on foreign investments propping up our economy--no disagreement on that. Here comes the "but."

But, a culture that sees no right or wrong, one that lives by no specific unified set of agreed rules, and wants to reinvent the meaning of the standards on which it was based (including documents created by our forefathers" with benefit of Judean-Christian values), has little chance of surviving over the long haul.

Yes, I'm talking about moral relativism (or at least moral relativism as I understand its meaning). Whether you are Jewish or Christian does not matter. It is a fact that these values were at the core of our birth as a country and, if we are going to honor any of them, we need to honor them all. Do not panic knee-jerk style, freedom of religion is in there. However, freedom from being "offended" is NOT. So maybe, a knee-jerk panic is not out of the question for you, after all.

The fact that Americans aren't polite to others who are propping up our economy is somewhat humorous. If Americans aren't polite, what do you call worldwide demonstrations against us? A faux pax? If most Americans are ignorant of the situation as you suggest, why chastise them? See, to me, it's understandable. I haven't noticed much gratitude for all the propping up the US does around the world, disaster after disaster and World War after World War, either.

Can you hold American citizens accountable for the media's misguided coverage of facts? Can you hold the Islamic Thais accountable for hating the Americans who came to help after the tsunami and for sending them away?

We can blame people for superficiality of their interests, though they have been "carefully taught" that these are the things that will "work" for them: Hollywood (yuk!), sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But we'd have to look at ourselves and what value system we gave them during their formative years, wouldn't we? Or, we could just blame someone else.... (That dang media again!)

The coming together of value systems isn't going to work if each side is battling for dominance. One side wants nothing to be wrong: everything is just fine, anything goes, we just agree to disagree. Rules are restrictive, grades are prejudicial, kindness is passe, gay couples adoptions just give children "normal" homelives, murder the incapacitated and unborn, but save the murderers, child molesters, and rapists. Oh yes, and cash is king.

And the other side wants cause and effect consequences for actions. They want the population to first try to take care of itself. To respect the laws handed down by our forefathers. To obey traffic laws and criminal laws and to face the music if one does illegal things. They also want punishment for crimes and for people to understand that they have to actually do something impressive to earn respect instead of wallowing in an entitlement you-have-more-than-I-and-you-need-to-share-it-with-me mode. These twains are not doomed to meet anytime soon.

By the way, Americans who want to live by the historical standards I'm describing, do not insist on other countries living by them, too. But, they also do not want to have to publicly celebrate Muslim (for example) holidays while Jewish and Christian holidays are under attack and de-emphasized.

Americans who feel this way do not want a program to spring up that will reward people from other countries who have illegally set down roots on our homeland. They would welcome a law-abiding person who comes here legally. But, why would anyone in his right mind want to pay the additional cost burdens on freebie health care, education, and the extra strains on law enforcement caused by people who do not even honor the laws of this country--the one they say they want to live in? I'd say that the best way you can tell what a person will do in the future is to see what they've done in the past.

I do not think I owe a portion of my meager income to government programs to pay for benefits for someone who doesn't respect my country's culture or laws. I just don't. Think badly of me if you will. But I think I'm describing "survival instinct." And that there's a price for everything of value, including US citizenship.

I want us to enforce our laws, and to levy a heavy price on those who deliberately ignore the laws set in place by our legislators. I also want a common decency to return to our culture. Moral relativism has tried to do away with that too. If anything goes, then rudeness, coarseness, me-first, lawlessness, and chaos become the norm.

We're heading there head over tin cups if we go the route you suggest: the global worldview route. We need more than the "Golden Rule" to live by in the USA today. We need strong laws that protect the majority's best interests, manners when dealing with others, enough common sense to be able to identify right and wrong, a survival instinct, self-respect for what we have accomplished in our short history, and enough backbone to defend ourselves when engaged by pompous blow hards in an American-hating conversation or an attack on our soil.

As a Post Script: We're in agreement about the presentation of "news." I'm thinking we might not recognize actual news without the "breaking news" music and graphics anymore. Well, I'd like to see a pure News network too. Not 24 hours a day news. Not opinion news. Just the facts about events that take place, reported in an organized fashion for not one minute longer than it actually takes to report it--the way actual journalism used to be taught in j-school.

Perhaps news shows could be titled by the country's name and the hard facts could be reported without benefit of slant. Maybe C-Span could just add some channels. I just hope the people who undertake this venture (no candidate from Silicone Valley need apply) are not looking for a big short-term return on investment. The sizzle is the only thing they're buying these days. Much moral relativism damage has been done. And looking at facts still isn't, "like, omg, popular."


Photo Credit: http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm

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Original Post

Monday, February 27, 2006
The New, Old Thing: Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Madison Ave—Oscar, Emmy, “Amateur Night at the Apollo”
2181 words
“You might as well do some social stuff because that is where the big problems are.” “If a lot of people come out of poverty that is a tremendous business opportunity.” Larry Page, Google’s co-founder, 2006 World Economic Forum, “Financial Times,” Jan 31, 2006

What is the Oscar-nominated movie “Brokeback Mountain” about? Who won “American Idol” last year? What’s happening on “CSI” and “24”? Who are the two current holders of highest political office in China?

Many Americans know the first three, but I would guess less than 5% could answer the last, fewer if you exclude international business people. (A far higher percentage of Chinese would know who are Bush and Cheney.)

So what, one might ask, why does it matter? At minimum, look at some of the compelling stories Americans are missing due to the negligence of the corporate mass media:

In the past few decades, more people, many hundreds of millions, mainly in East Asia, have uplifted themselves out of poverty than has ever happened in such a short time in world history. Surely this could be the stuff of inspiring personal and family stories of perseverance and success?

Over the same period, an entire continent of nearly seven hundred million people, Africa, has been devastated, by wars, disease, famine, etc. Sadly the nearly incomprehensible suffering of this huge human tragedy begs to be told.

An entire religion of more than one billion people, Islam, is in the midst of a struggle to interpret its heritage whilst coming to grips with the modernity of a globalized world. Needless to say, understanding this is in the interests of all of us.

Yet these stories are hardly ever told by the corporate mainstream media, especially in films and television. Mainstream journalism seems to do a somewhat better job, often under difficult editorial constraints (e.g. see the links section of this blog), but has come up sorely lacking at critical points, most especially leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Mine is not a new “elitist” criticism of the corporate mass media, it has been made by cranky social critics and hopeless idealists since the beginning of television and surely long before that. But perhaps it takes on a greater urgency now.

Generally, the global economy obviously is more interconnected than ever before, so it is more important that the disparate regions of the world understand each other much better. More specifically, the U.S. now heavily relies on foreign savings/capital to maintain its living standards.

Yet the average American, whose home value is ultimately heavily dependent on savings not from its local S&L, as was the case thirty years ago, but now from mortgage-backed securities held all over the globe, is blissfully unaware of the lives of his creditors.

There is an implicit global deal, what some economists have misleadingly labeled Bretton Woods II, which links the U.S. with other nations, especially those in East Asia. This deal assumes a viable, mutually beneficial creditor-debtor arrangement between vastly different societies, mediated through the supposedly rational global capital markets.

But behind these capital flows are very real human beings organized into sovereign nations with potentially very different notions of the fairness and justice of these implicit deals on which they have not been consulted and with which they ultimately might not be very happy with, much to the surprise of American debtors.

I.e. since Americans now owe foreigners a lot of money, it might at least be polite to know how they live and what they’re like.

Related to this, as indicated by numerous public opinion polls, to much of the rest of the world, the current U.S. government hubristically has come to believe that as the self-proclaimed sole “super power,” it alone has the unique right, historical mission, and even godly duty to tell the rest of the world what to do, regardless of national sovereignty.

Thus, it would be more than a little helpful if the American population in whose name this government is acting had a better understanding of how the rest of the world lives, and how it perceives the self-interested actions of the U.S.

Alas, thanks to the corporate media, the vast majority of Americans have virtually no such understanding of the rest of the world, as verified over and over again in public opinion polls. And, the rest of the world knows this, and doesn’t like it. It’s easy to see how this situation could degenerate from current serious misunderstandings into something worse, perhaps much worse.

This of course is not lost on the international business community, which is far more aware of global linkages and foreign cultures than the average American. But like a lot of other things that need changing, the business elite is not doing much about this, hoping it can continue to slide by.

Yes, things are much better than before (the very crude national chauvinism preceding major wars of the past is hopefully unthinkable nowadays). The Internet has made many more people far more aware of far more things.

But unfortunately, that seems limited to a small minority of the population. The rest, which is highly dependent on the corporate mass media, still seems relatively uninformed about global interdependencies.

Finally, the corporate mass media continues to be an unabashed cheerleader for all sorts of financial speculative excesses, only slightly toned done from the TMT bubble days, making it very difficult for the American population to get a better grip on economic reality.

Is Silicon Valley’s current love affair with media helping to change this potentially very dangerous situation?

For many decades, Silicon Valley made itself the coolest, hippest, most relevant place on earth by supplying the electronic infrastructure tools to greatly increase organizational and personal productivity, effectiveness and innovation.

In the 1980’s, Silicon Valley made possible the PC revolution. In the 1990s, it led the profound changes associated with the Internet and wireless, with everything linked to everything else, including databases, 24/7.

With the help of Silicon Valley, the transition over the last few decades to a highly productive America is by and large now complete, if for no other reason than there are now no more hours in the day in which to spin one’s wheels keeping busy.

In the 2000’s, the “new new thing” has been Silicon Valley’s love affair with digital media and advertising. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be working nearly as well as the previous major transformations. On the contrary, it comes across as amateur night at the Apollo, with little meaningful impact so far, with perhaps a few exceptions.

Rather than helping Americans become truly informed about the world, Silicon Valley seems pre-occupied with the rather mundane but more profitable pursuits of supplying digital movies and music, web searches for the latest on Lindsay Lohan and Angelina Jolie, the nonstop adolescent gossip on MySpace.com, etc

Yet, despite this chase after the quick buck, Silicon Valley seems to think it is once again at the forefront of earth-shattering change to overturn the established corporate order. But Silicon Valley is not immune to speculative global market forces.

In the 1990’s it allied with Wall Street to create the TMT bubble (infamously called “the greatest legal creation of wealth in history” by top vc John Doerr). A lot of vc’s got very wealthy pushing extremely shoddy deals, and most of them did not suffer any serious consequences for doing so when the bubble popped and $8 trillion in market cap went up in smoke.

Wall Street, meanwhile, simply moved on, replacing over-priced, fraudulent but legal IPO’s with mortgage-backed securities, emerging market debt and private equity and m&a deals. In the 2000s, with the government and big banks orchestrating a global consumer/real estate boom, Silicon Valley found media, advertising and consumer electronics after the TMT bust.

E.g., as recounted in the book, “The Search,” when the author, Wired’s John Battelle, first talked to Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt about advertising, Schmidt “didn’t see the point of starting a media business. Google was a technology business, he told me…’We’re looking for the next billion-dollar market in technology’….A year later I met with Eric again. Among his first words: ‘Isn’t the media business great.’”

Similar words could have been said by Steve Jobs as he re-vitalized Apple with the iPod, and sold Pixar to Disney. And in the sale of myspace.com to Murdoch’s News Corp. At the end of the day, nothing really changes, the oligopolistic corporate media still controls what the majority of Americans see and hear, and Wall Street moves from bubble to bubble without a pause.

Silicon Valley’s regional economy, once the dynamic model for the world, is now, like the rest of the U.S., mainly dependent on rampant real estate and stock market speculation. Meanwhile, the main action has moved five hundred miles southeast, to the epicenter of American social excesses and rampant real estate speculation of this decade, Las Vegas.

Of course Silicon Valley companies can not be held responsible for fixing the world’s problems. But we should not pretend that those problems do not exist by ignoring them, or by uncritically reporting and accepting often misleading, at very best, solutions, as the mainstream corporate media does.

No amount of amateur-hour blogging and adolescent social networking is changing that potentially dangerous reality, despite the delusions of those in Silicon Valley to the contrary.

If Silicon Valley really thinks it is having a profound impact on the media business, then I suggest two "reality checks" over the coming year, based on the principle of "fool be once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."

First, at this point, with no income gains (average weekly earnings of U.S. workers are down 17% from 1972 and flat since 2000, see Table B-47, pg 338, 2006 "Economic Report of the President" available on-line), most of the American middle class is heavily dependent on speculation, particularly in real estate, and hence can no longer distinguish paper "wealth creation" from the real thing. That inability will most likely cause severe problems at some point down the road. (See previous two articles posted on this blog.)

The corporate mass media was fully complicit in the creation of the largest financial bubble in history up until that time, the TMT equity bubble ("irrational exuberance" was simply a "plausible denial" cover story for the gullible).

It is not clear if the global real estate boom will turn out to have been an even larger bubble. If it is, then the corporate mass media will have been complicit with Wall Street in grossly distorting global capital flows for the benefit of the financial elite twice in the past decade.

Thanks to the corporate mass media, the average middle-class American homeowner has now fully adopted Wall Street's "power of myth" re the benefits of so-called "free markets," which don't actually exist. Rather "independent" central banks operate largely outside out of democratic control mainly for the benefit of the global speculative financial system.

Second, in international affairs, will the free pass that was granted the Bush Administration by the corporate mass media in Iraq be repeated, with Iran, China and others.

E.g., here are a couple of quotes made on March 16, 2003, three days before the U.S. invaded Iraq, by Vice President Cheney on “Meet the Press”: "And we believe he [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong." “We know he’s [Saddam] out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization.”

Cheney was never held accountable by the corporate mass media for this and similar statements of alleged “fact,” under the same standards the media used when Pres. Clinton was impeached over lying about sex. Such blatant double standards are not bought by the rest of the world, to the detriment of the international standing of the U.S.

We want to make it very clear that we don’t “blame” Silicon Valley or hold it primarily responsible for its potential slide. Like the rest of America, Silicon Valley clearly has been seduced to go for the quick buck in its business models, product developments, etc. by greatly distorted market signals from the global speculative financial system that benefits Wall Street and its own venture capitalists.

Could things be different? Some of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs still seem to have the right instincts about who really creates real wealth, as Google’s founders did in their relationship with Wall Street during its IPO and their earlier relationship with their vc’s. Google’s corporate mission is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and its corporate dna is “do no evil.”

If Silicon Valley really wants to change the media industry, how about funding a new television network that actually tells honest news and holds our leaders accountable for their statements and acts? Wouldn’t that be a real “new new thing”? Isn't it time that Silicon Valley grew up and stopped being led around by the nose by its big brothers, Wall Street and Hollywood?

Next: Innovation and Silicon Valley’s Horizontal, Asset-light, Slice-and-Dice Business Model
posted by econotech @ 2:32 PM 0 comments

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