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The Casino Syndrome
James Howard Kunstler, Blog
The current mania to expand legalized gambling around the country is a clear symptom of how desperate and crazy this society has become. In a culture where anything goes and nothing matters, it is perhaps hard for the public to understand what’s wrong with it. The gambling “industry” itself has very successfully masked its pernicious nature by putting across the idea that it is just another form of innocent “entertainment,” on a par with pro sports, theme parkery, and Hollywood. In fact, gambling, or “gaming,” as it cynically calls itself, has hijacked elements of all these other activities to conceal its main business, which is the systematic hosing of those who can least afford to be hosed.
What’s wrong with state-sponsored gambling is simple: it promotes the idea — inconsistent with the realities of the universe — that it’s possible to get something for nothing. It is unhealthy to an extreme for a society to make this idea normal because it defeats another idea that a society absolutely depends on for survival — namely that earnest effort matters. It conditions the public to magical thinking — a characteristic of children– and disables their ability to function as adults.
(15 October 2007)
Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
Sharon Begley, Newsweek
Economists and psychologists-and the rest of us-have long wondered if more money would make us happier.
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…”Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness,” writes Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert in his best-selling “Stumbling on Happiness,” “and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter.”
That flies in the face of intuition, not to mention economic theory. According to standard economics, the most important commodity you can buy with additional wealth is choice. If you have $20 in your pocket, you can decide between steak and peanut butter for dinner, but if you have only $1 you’d better hope you already have a jar of jelly at home. Additional wealth also lets you satisfy additional needs and wants, and the more of those you satisfy the happier you are supposed to be.
The trouble is, choice is not all it’s cracked up to be. Studies show that people like selecting from among maybe half a dozen kinds of pasta at the grocery store but find 27 choices overwhelming, leaving them chronically on edge that they could have chosen a better one than they did. And wants, which are nice to be able to afford, have a bad habit of becoming needs (iPod, anyone?), of which an advertising- and media-saturated culture create endless numbers. Satisfying needs brings less emotional well-being than satisfying wants.
…(Curiously, although money doesn’t buy happiness, happiness can buy money. Young people who describe themselves as happy typically earn higher incomes, years later, than those who said they were unhappy. It seems that a sense of well-being can make you more productive and more likely to show initiative and other traits that lead to a higher income. Contented people are also more likely to marry and stay married, as well as to be healthy, both of which increase happiness.)
If more money doesn’t buy more happiness, then the behavior of most Americans looks downright insane, as we work harder and longer, decade after decade, to fatten our W-2s. But what is insane for an individual is crucial for a national economy-that is, ever more growth and consumption. …
(15 October 2007)
Why Are Americans So Fearful?
Dave Eriqat, CounterCurrents
…What might be some possible explanations for our national epidemic of fear?
Financial Insecurity
Financial security has declined sharply in the last three decades, thanks to globalization and the shift away from high paying, secure manufacturing jobs to lower paying, tenuous service jobs. In the last three decades we’ve experienced several powerful financial shocks: double digit inflation as we exited the 1970s and entered the 1980s, severe recessions in the early 1980s and early 1990s, and bursting stock market and housing bubbles in the 2000s. These shocks left people feeling vulnerable and bewildered about how to protect their wealth and safeguard their future.
…Deification of Greed
The deification of greed (“Greed is good,” from the 1980s movie “Wall Street”) has made those who are not “successful” feel inadequate. Such people fear becoming social outcasts by “missing out” on the latest investment boom, whether it be in stocks or houses; or because they don’t drive the fanciest, most powerful car; or because they don’t wear the hippest clothes; or because they aren’t festooned with all the trendiest technological gadgets. The fear of looking like a “failure” in a material sense, which is all that seems to matter anymore, drives people to acquire those phony emblems of success using debt, which then causes financial insecurity, which fuels fear.
…Government and Media
The government and the media have, with seeming relish, sought to instill fear in Americans. The government does so to compel citizens to relinquish their rights, contrary to the prescient advice of Benjamin Franklin. The media enjoys instilling fear to raise their ratings (“If it bleeds, it leads”).
…Urbanization
Urbanization has undermined self-efficacy and made people overly dependent on others and too little dependent on themselves. I grew up as an urbanite, and I still love urban life. Yet a few years ago I moved to rural Kentucky, which I also love. One of the first things I discovered is that out here one has to be self-sufficient. One cannot simply open up the phone book and choose from a plethora of services for hire. So I’ve reluctantly become a roofer, electrician, landscaper, tree trimmer, exterminator, house framer, carpenter,
…Environmental Desecration and Destruction
Environmental desecration and destruction, real or imagined, has long been a source of fear for Americans. Surprisingly, the vast majority of Americans – perhaps 80% – favor protecting the environment, which probably explains why they seem easily threatened by environmental problems. In the 1970s the grave concern was pollution (recall the anti-littering TV commercials featuring the teary-eyed native American). Today it’s the scarier and more nebulous concept of climate change.
I am an environmentalist at heart. I do everything I can to minimize my impact on the environment, to leave as small a footprint as possible. Nevertheless, I don’t buy into the anthropogenic climate change hysteria, and I have nothing to gain by rejecting this mantra.
…Modern Medicine
Modern medicine in America seems paradoxical to me. On the one hand, treatment of disease is far more profitable than prevention, so the former is emphasized and the latter is shunned. On the other hand, the medical system seems to encourage people to be afraid of so many things, so long as it can sell prophylactic medicines to “prevent” whatever it is that people are supposed to be afraid of.
…Political Correctness
Political correctness has made Americans afraid of expressing an opinion. Not only do they fear social ostracism for thinking “differently” from the herd, but they fear the very real prospect of losing their jobs. It’s not just radio or TV hosts whose jobs are at risk for a politically incorrect slip of the tongue.
…What’s worse than embracing the notion of political correctness is our zero tolerance approach to dealing with offenders. Nobody is allowed to redress a mistake anymore. One mistake and the public ghoulishly bellows, “Off with his head.” People are prone to making mistakes, and unless they are given a chance to redress their mistakes and learn from them, they will probably just keep making the same mistakes.
…I suggested a number of times above that people would be better off living in rural communities than suburban or urban communities. Aside from improving our mental and physical well being, moving to a rural community has practical advantages, namely, a much lower cost of living. Young people living in expensive urban areas have few prospects for getting ahead. But rural areas are ripe with opportunity for enterprising young people with creative ideas and abundant energy.
There was a time when it made sense for Americans to migrate from rural areas to industrialized urban centers. Today, in light of our deindustrialization and declining standard of living, a reverse migration is appropriate, all the more so since peak oil will eventually render the current urban-suburban model unsustainable.
(16 October 2007)
Quite a laundry list of fear-producers. More of Dave’s essay are at his website. -BA
