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April 1, 2009
The Voice of a New Generation
Today I've been looking up from my work periodically to take in the images of protest at the G20 summit in London. Certainly the crowds represent a real demographic mix, but I think that my own sort gross casual empiricism, backed by unimpeachable visual evidence from SkyNews, MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, suggests that the dominant presence in the crowd are really angry young people. They are the great un-washed and un-washed-up voice of an angry new generation of Mastercard Marxists whose sense of entitlement has been unforgivably shaken by recent economic events.
This sign kind of captures the basic handle: for all their rage, these kids have so little to say.*
One of the really unfortunate consequences of the present crisis (which reflects above all policy errors, mostly at the Fed in the case of the US, and not some inherent flaw in the capitalist, market-based approach) is that is has opened the door to a kind of broad-based dismissal of so-called Anglo-Saxon capitalism that is simply intellectually unconvincing. This crisis is not the exclusive fault of the US (the blame is widely, widely shared) and does not in any sense overturn the case for capitalism.
* One group I exclude here are the environmentalists, who have a much more focused and persuasive argument that should give all societies, market and non-market (let's not forget how pollution intensive production was in the old Soviet bloc), pause.
Posted by dag at April 1, 2009 12:43 PM
Comments
Hello Peter - as one who is old enough to remember a few of these cyclical 'corrections' it just seems strange how surprised everyone is. Life isn't an upward infinite trajectory is it?
Fabulous quotes by the way.
Posted by: Kate Lord Brown at April 5, 2009 1:47 PM
Kate,
Thanks. What you say is so true: in life we often circle the block again and again, not realizing how many times we've driven past that same house.
P
Posted by: dag at April 9, 2009 8:33 AM