Some things are important. Google's social conscience is not one of them

 

"Discover Woolaroo: preserving global languages"
"Celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month"
"Learn about entrepreneurship, equity, and style in YouTube's first ever #BeautyFest"
(Every day we care about something different)

-- https://www.google.com/

 

 
I don't know why I write. I just know I have to write.

Micro is about each of us. Macro is about all of us. What's always good for each of us is not always good for all of us. The worse things get, the less it matters (to each of us) and the more it matters (to all of us). And the decline of society accelerates. 

"Civilizations die from suicide."

My conservative friend Richie once told me he had a simple rule: If it lowers his taxes, he's for it.

Richie was short-sighted: What's best in the short run may be costly in the long run. Henry Hazlitt warned of this; I don't have Economics in One Lesson handy, but Hazlitt said the greatest flaw in economic thought is the failure to think through the consequences.

Found it. Mises has it:

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

 Hazlitt reduces it to "a single sentence":

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Seems about right.

Mare is good. Way better than I expected. Mare of Easttown. Some of the characters get a little too caught-up in their own troubles, but there's not much of that. Kate Winslett's Mare is believable.

I like shows where the economy sucks and you can tell because of the effect it has on life. I fell in love with Hinterland for exactly that. Mare of Easttown presents it well, too. So does Nomadland, come to think of it -- extremely well. 

I dunno if people get that about these shows, that showing how bad the economy is is kind of the main point. Coping with it as best you can, that's what makes the story. But the overriding, underlying problem in these stories is the bad economy.

The story is always told from the "each of us" side. Never from the "all of us" side. Yeah, sure, in Nomadland we see a tenuous group of people, a group that could perhaps evolve over time into one of those survivor enclaves like we saw in the old Mad Max movies. 

But those are old now, the Mad Max movies. Time has passed. Our economy has deteriorated further. We are closer to the edge, where zip codes are retired and life as we know it is over. The stories these days no longer look beyond that precipice and toward recovery.

We're closer to the edge today, and the stories peer over the edge and down upon the troubles below.

If you don't understand the point of stories like Nomadland and Mare, it's because you don't realize just how close we are to the edge.

To realize that -- that's what's important.