Humanity stands at the door of a glorious new era. There are social, medical and technological advances of a nature that not just our parents but even our older siblings could scarcely have dreamed of them. It is even possible that some of these benefits might improve the lot of the billions of wretched and poor throughout the globe if only by accident. Wealth distribution, always popular with those who have none, is taking place if even only in the most rudimentary fashion. Take Somalia's burgeoning pirate industry for example. Did a lack of resources, government or basic civilisation stop these eager go getters from creating a successful business model?
There is a story (which I liked too much to fact check) that a Somali woman was given an RPG launcher as her divorce settlement. Of course she could have buried it secure in the knowledge that when she died she would have one tangible asset to leave but that wasn't enough for this eager entrepreneur. Instead she invested in a couple of likely lads with a speedboat and a dream and pretty soon had a return on investment that would make Wall Street salivate. I understand that Goldman Sachs is already creating pirate derivatives for sale to eager speculators. The Mafia's IPO is only a matter of time.
As I said before we stand on the threshold of a glittering new age but there are still some people whose only comment is "Make sure to wipe your feet". These are the sort of people who look at younger people and moan about how lazy, selfish and cossetted they are. Youth today just doesn't understand what it means to struggle or the difficulties and hardships of earlier times and blithely take hard won benefits for granted. Well of course they do. If you're going to sweat and struggle all your days so your children can have a better life then it would be rather churlish of them to ask for a bowl of gruel and take a job working twelve hours a day up at mill. If your children do have a good idea of the hardships and tribulations of days gone by then you didn't do a very good job of sheltering them from it did you?
I wonder how often people look at their children and say "that's my fault" rather than "you're ungrateful". Let's face it, if you were better at parenting no doubt your children would be hard working, diligent, respectful and self reliant. Although in that case why bother striving to give them a better life anyway, they'll take whatever you give them and be damn grateful. Incidentally your parents said the same thing about your generation. They were probably right and so were their parents. A refusal to squat in a pool of mud and say "this is good enough for me" is one of the principal drivers of civilisation. Another, sad to say, is greed which is why certain parts of our civilisation seem to have driven off a cliff. Ireland is refusing to answer the door when the creditors come knocking and now it looks like Spain is going to hell (again) as well. If banks can be too big to fail how big does a country have to be before it gains the same status.
The worlds current financial crisis can be summed up thus; every financial institution in the world has suddenly discovered that every other financial institution is as incompetent and morally bankrupt as they are. Naturally they are refusing to lend to people so like themselves. For good measure they are refusing to lend to pretty much anyone else either. They would also like all the money they had previously lent back. Trouble is, there isn't any so the financial institutions have gone to various governments and pointed out that the economy will collapse if they don't get help. Governments have obligingly mugged their taxpayers and handed the proceeds over to the financial institutions. The resultant level of government debt has led to savage cost cutting, reduction in services, employment and assistance for those individuals in need. This has led to economic collapse which financial institutions don't seem to have a problem with as long as it doesn't involve them. Don't you yearn for the days when bums would just sit in a pool of their own urine on the street and quietly ask for a few coins towards their next bottle of mouthwash?
In America banks have compounded idiotic mortgage decisions with truly insane foreclosure procedures and the only thing the government can do is to print more money that nobody is spending anyway because they're afraid they are about to lose their job. In fairness there is little the governments can do although I really think they should take some steps towards seizing the assets of the people who caused this mess. Doing so wouldn't actually solve the problem but it would provide a little vicious satisfaction for the taxpayers funding this disaster and reduce the chances of the government being wiped out at the next election or, in the case of the less democratically inclined parts of the world, just wiped out.
This really is a dreadful time to be alive. Let's face it, we're all doomed. Financial ruin stares us in the face, the economy is going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up and it looks as though there are hard times coming for pretty much everybody. So parents sit back and smile quietly to yourselves. Those lazy, cossetted, self indulgent children of yours are about to discover that you didn't actually do a particularly good job of protecting them from the real world after all.
Speaking personally, I have put my superannuation into a hedge fund specialising in Somalia based start ups. I recommend that you do the same.
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