Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

It wasn’t long ago that I was talking to whoever would listen about a world without money. A world after money. I got the blank stares and befuddled looks of a generation that grew up in the Reagan years. Who could even conceive of a world without money? (I could.) Hasn’t there always been money? (There hasn’t.) What are you even talking about?

Apparently, I was talking about 2009.

My third novel (yes, #2 is unwritten, so you can guess about the status of #3) was about the natural outcome of capitalism, or one of them. This, apparently, is another. The outcomes all have one thing in common – ultimately the profit motive (or “greed” as people aware of their souls like to call it) eats the system. Think Cookie Monster eating the plate on which the cookies were served-style eating the system. Nom nom nom, it’s time for greed.

It may take a century or two or three. Proponents of the free market in its purist form don’t realize that it’s all the government regulation that keeps the sham of capitalism going as long as it does in the first place. The market will solve nothing unchecked, because ultimately it becomes about fraud and manipulation and finally out and out theft. The only difference between the free market and the black market is that one is endorsed and one is condemned. Much like the only difference between intoxicants on one or the other. They all produce the same results and they all end in toxicity.

The problem with even regulated markets is that, much like the saga of computer hackers and computer security (or, one could argue, the history of crime in the human era), the crooks are always going to be a half-step ahead of the law. And when there are trillions of dollars on the line, and these trillions can be used to bring the law over to the side of the crooks, that’s pretty much ballgame.

In my lifetime, should I be fortunate enough to live to the life expectancy of my generation in this country, I will live to see younger people write history books ridiculing the philosophies that were Gospel truth in an America hooked on greed. And I’ll be loving every minute, because those philosophies are ridiculous. Capitalism’s only virtue over Stalinist Communism is that it managed to keep itself in check for 17 more years. Congratulations, Capitalism. You get an extra micro-dot on the geologic landscape of the human experience.

To say that I am wide-eyed with the first authentic hope for society at large that I have felt in many years would be an understatement. Again, I must disclaim that I’m not a fan of the suffering that will be associated with this. Watching people actually starve or fight as the absurd fantasies of their faulty assumptions come crashing down around them is no fun. But the end result is necessary and overdue. It’s time to learn to live without money.

It’s early yet (indeed, most of you are blinking at me and saying far too early), but it’s good to think about things before the pundits on TV are talking about it. A few months ago, I was talking (at least in person, probably not on this blog) about the Greatest Depression. And that’s finally on the TV, though I should’ve trademarked the term, since no one’s using it yet. Trademarks, however, will probably be another casualty of said Depression. So it goes. And if not, who wants to be the bastard living high on the hog because he coined the phrase for what we’re all suffering through? Now really, that’s just impolite.

But see, that’s the kind of mentality that even socialists get into in this kind of society. I see in myself so much that needs to be cleansed of the filthy touch of the invisible hand. I play poker, hoping to take others’ money. I played the stock market for a while, mercifully liquidating on Monday morning (if it had been last Monday, but there I go again…). I go to a day job for goodness’ sake, a real sacrifice in the interest of money. I even have advertising on my website. I think of schemes and projects, often with a financial angle in mind.

I attribute two major factors, both of which I’ll forgive myself for (though, like violence, everyone has their own reasons that, in the end, are all unjustifiable, right?). One is the fact that I don’t want a house or multiple cars or really anything out of all these schemes, save the ability to liberate my time on this planet. I don’t feel I was put here for day jobs and as long as I’m anchored to one, I’ll feel the need to find a way to disengage. Though without money, that comes sooner than later. The second factor is probably good old genetics, as I inherit an entrepreneurial streak from my ever-planful father. I grew up in the ’80’s and it was a time for entrepreneurs, but I can’t remember how many conversations led to an angle on a project. And even more amazing are how many we actually pursued.

Ultimately, my father’s curse in entrepreneurship is much like my ultimate curse in poker: making just enough money to have paid for the passage of time. Functionally breaking even.

I’m not going to appeal to some grand karmic restriction on my father making a lasting profit on his projects, but I’m sure he’d argue it’s possible. As for me, I’m still checking into the day job, and still actually finding ways to enjoy it. But yearning to write. This weekend’s crash-project (The Bailout Betrayal Quiz, if you haven’t taken it) reminded me just how quickly I can be creative if I want to. Part of the joys of manic depression.

Hey speaking of which, this article, written as much about David Foster Wallace as about anything else, strikes me much like 1990’s economics will strike people in twenty years. Absurd. Not that thinking there exists a link between creativity and what some label “mood disorders” is absurd, but thinking that they are somehow not inextricably tied and that this might (shock of all shocks) indicate that “mood disorders” are not 100% negative. I mean, come on.

Things this article lists as negative:
-”reflectiveness”
-”kind of ruminating”
-”sensitivity to a large extent”
-”If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again”

That’s my favorite, that last one. Don’t think too much, kids, because the more you think about things, the more depressed you’ll get!

Could this possibly be because, I don’t know, things aren’t good?!?!

No, that couldn’t be the explanation. Thinking must somehow make things bad. Imbalanced mortgages, mountains of debt, and 20-to-1 leveraging aren’t bad. It’s just thinking about them too much that makes them bad.

Good thing no one bothered to do that.

Maybe if “bipolar” (again, I must stress: one is supposed to have two poles, see also planets) people were running financial firms instead of writing books, we could look forward to another century of propped-up capitalism that looked like it functioned better than Stalinism, feudalism, or anything else we’ve tried.

Whew.

Though it looks like I’m down a book idea, unless somehow this thing finds a way to get salvaged. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last 7 years, though, it’s that people’s fear will override any other emotion they could possibly manifest. Even, thankfully, faith in the almighty dollar. Maybe if we hadn’t spent the last two terms of Presidency getting fear beaten into us like an enforced mantra, there’d be an escape hatch for the world of money. It’s almost like someone planned it this way.

But whoever did, if they did, was counting on their money counting for something. Here’s the problem with that – money is just an idea. It’s no more real than hope or fear or depression or joy. It’s a widely held collective agreement to suspend disbelief. We could hand out utility tokens or joy tickets or anything else and start believing in those, refusing to be happy unless we had the requisite joy ticket. It would make just as much sense and have just as much behind it. The willingness of everyone to agree to something.

And while there’s something to be said for a gigantic exercise in collective action, I think this one has done enough harm for now. We can use the same principle to create many new, much better forms of collective action and belief. Seriously, what an opportunity is unfolding before us.

But we’re going to have to learn about choices again. That we all have free will and are not just indentured servants of our mistakes and obligations.

I mean, look:
“Just as heart disease sometimes presents itself for the first time as a fatal heart attack, mental illness sometimes presents itself for the first time as a suicide.”

I’m sorry, but this is the most broken description of suicide in human history. Suicide is not a random side effect of mental illness. It is a choice. One does not have to be mentally ill to commit suicide. One has to make the decision that death outweighs life. This may be a difficult decision, or a sad one, but hardly so illogical in all cases that even those who believe in mental illness would render it universally mentally ill.

Kids, if we’re going to make it as a species, we have to reject this specious notion that we’re not making choices. Every day, you make decisions. You choose how to spend your 24 hours. You. Only you. Everything you do is really, truly, up to you.

Maybe you don’t see it yet. Maybe you’ll see it better when the Dow Jones hits 5,000 points, or 2,000. Maybe you’ll see it better when there’s no more treadmill job to attend. Maybe you’ll see it better when everyone’s eating the same thing every day and it’s all there is. Maybe you’ll see it better when there’s no more internet, no more TV, no more people like me telling you what to think or consider. Just you and your thoughts. To ruminate on. Over and over and over.

Until you… decide.

People, this is an exciting time to be alive.

You’re Adam Schiff,
representing California’s 29th district.
“In two important respects, the bill still has serious flaws: The taxpayer protections need to be much stronger, and the root of the problem – declining home values and a raft of foreclosures – has yet to be meaningfully addressed. The Senate also tacked on a host of unrelated measures to attract support.”
Despite this, you voted for the bailout because of the importance of protecting those with quarter-million-dollar savings accounts.

Take the Bailout Betrayal Quiz
and Hold ‘Em Accountable.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

“He lost his money in a geyser bank,
Ho ho ho ho ho,
First it floated and then it sank,
Ho ho ho ho ho.”
-Traditional Clayton Family Song, c. 1987 trip to Yellowstone

My family used to write songs in the old folk tradition, through oral telling that was created impromptu and then sung and resung. Sometimes the lyrics would change every time and sometimes they would be solidified and codified into one set of lyrics to be passed on through the ages. Occasionally, as with the epic spoof “Santa Shark”, the lyrics were written down entirely for future generations.

Of course, there were only ever two generations (three people total) and they stand today. I did have grandparents then, but they have moved on and probably never would have appreciated songs like “Hooray for U-Haul Trucks”. That may have been my favorite song of the old travels, a telling anthem for an unstable period in our lives that was all the more exciting to me because I didn’t fully understand the financial implications of our nomadic and volatile lifestyle. And yet I was the one who came up with the only lines of the song:

“Hooray for U-Haul trucks,
They take you away from bad places,
Hooray for U-Haul trucks,
They take you into bad places.”

There were many ironies to this song, not the least of which was that we were using our blue Saab that already had close to 100,000 miles on its record as our own “U-Haul truck” to take us from one bad place (Visalia, CA) to another (Washington, DC). The protocol, of course, was that this song was to be sung whenever passing any sort of brand-name moving truck, and adapt to the one being seen on the roadway. “Ryder trucks”, “Hertz-Penske trucks”, and “Mayflower trucks” were most often referred, though U-Hauls were dominant. If we were lucky, they would be the U-Hauls with exciting illustrations of another state that we would visit, had just passed through, or would some day live in.

It’s the geyser bank song (actually one of two – the other was relatively lyric-less and peppy) that sticks in my head of late, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that a Winnebago has decided to spend the last week parked in front of our house, and occasionally in a non-parking-spot down the block on the corner. It perfunctorily moves every 48 hours or so, but it’s clear that life in Berkeley got too expensive for someone, so they decided to “go RVing” in front of the Nation’s by the campus. Parking tickets sure make great rent when compared to an adjustable rate mortgage.

This is particularly poignant for two reasons. One, in a conversation foreshadowing just this kind of reality two months ago, my father and I argued profusely about the legality of just such an RV-type vehicle parking on the streets of Berkeley over even one night without being towed. I predicted that it wouldn’t get towed for ages. Well, Dad (yes he’s blogging again), we’re on day six in the neighborhood and the Winnebago hasn’t gone anywhere (and I’ve only seen one actual ticket). The other poignancy is the titular line of this post, which was another lyric in the somewhat melancholy ode, “He Lost His Money in a Geyser Bank”.

I have spent the entire day writing what will probably be the fastest-written and most completely ad hoc quiz in the history of the Blue Pyramid efforts, tentatively dubbed the Bailout Betrayal Quiz. In it, you’ll get a slightly in-depth look at the 59 Congresspeople who changed their mind between Monday and Friday of last week, plus 5 of our favorite folks who lobbied so hard for the bailout in the first place. I have vacillated greatly on what I want to get out of such a quiz, and how vengeful to make it (especially since I agree with many other stands these people took besides turning their coats on the bailout), and whether I should offer alternatives and promote opponents, many of whom would’ve voted for the bailout even earlier. I am still working out these compromises and the quiz won’t be up till this time tomorrow at the earliest, since I still have 40-some answers to write. But I’ve done nearly everything else that makes up a quiz since about this time yesterday, if you can believe it.

I am sitting here, wired and tired, unshaven and unbathed, overwhelmed and just beginning. I have expended tremendous energy on a project that leaves me ambivalent. Sometimes I think I’m just like the people I’m railing against – taking action because I can, when perhaps inaction would be more sober. Yet at the same time, I can’t just let this moment in history go unmarked. The US is careening, faster than even I imagined, for the Greatest Depression. Everything I ever was concerned about, speculated wildly about, thought may be happening, is beyond true. It’s here, already, and to stay. Everything up till now has just been prelude to what’s upon us.

The decisions we make, going forward, count double. It feels like one of those signs on the highway: “Traffic fines doubled in construction zone.” That’s what we’re in, except it’s a deconstruction zone. Everything’s coming apart and people are grabbing what they can on the way down. Friday’s vote was a public looting of stores that no one was bothering to guard. There will be more and faster and there will never be any bounce or payoff, just more looting.

I am reading Camus’ The Plague this week. I watched “Blindness” on Friday. I can’t imagine two more fitting pieces of media experience for what is coming.

No one can say they weren’t warned. And coming from America, no one can say they don’t deserve it. The world makes remarkably more sense than we give it credit for.

There’s that word, credit. Heh.

“He Lost His Money in a Geyser Bank” was initially the product of a pun, as were so many Clayton family tunes. But on a day that is about to dawn with “real” banks seeming comparably safe to geyser banks, it begs all kinds of questions. Questions whose answers may be in another 64-answer quiz. Or in nothing at all.

What’s your interest?

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.