We have turned over the most precious things, and been betrayed. We have turned over our futures, our health, our trust.
We have seen business journalism, Wall Street, the health system, banks, retirement plans, market regulation, and to a degree, representative democracy fail the interests of the common citizen of the US and impact the citizens of the globe. (nod to @evangineer on Twitter)
All of these systems, however, presume that the average citizen could hand over knowledge, responsibilities, and decision-making to people we do not know who are supposed to act in our best interest all the time. So what? Most of our lives is run to some degree by people we don't know.
We haven't just delegated the fiduciary responsibility for the community to "qualified" group of technicians and experts. We have ceded any reasonable ability to watch out for our own interests to people who don't frankly care if we know what they are doing, why they are doing it, or the odds of their success. In other words, we have taken the position of children expecting some strangers to act like our parents...to forgo the standard of competition and self interest that is put forward in society at large, and exercise an altruism that only exists, perhaps, among the closest of relations in our lives.
Why? Why did we do this in the first place? Why should this system work?
We need to do a lot of things right now. Most important, is to grow up. We all need to rethink the idea that we can hand over our net worths, our prospects for the future, our security and our children's welfare to nameless, faceless people. On the evidence, they don't respect us. On the evidence, they don't care what we think.
Are we too busy to take care of our own interests? Too frightened? Too insecure? Pretty immature excuses, if you ask me. You need permission to take back what is yours? Think about it.
How do we structure a new open, fair society of short-tempered, sentimental, trusting, mildly-educated, modestly-disciplined adults? How do we create a society without heroes, saviors, know-it-alls? No one wants to have their brain operated on by someone who is a simply a good neighbor, but the medical model of expertise failed completely in the financial realm. It fails in the governance realm. The financial experts dismantled their own privelege with spectacular success, and taught us all such an expensive lesson that we cannot afford to ignore it.
What, exactly, are we still waiting for?
Posts
