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167 comments on Countdown to $200 oil meets Anglo Disease
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167 comments on Countdown to $200 oil meets Anglo Disease
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Most people don't have the self-confidence in their analytical capabilities to resist the endless drumbeat from the media, from their neighbors, from the government. Many people thought they could not afford their house, but figured they must be wrong because everyone was saying they could.
For obvious reasons, the government & the media do not teach or encourage independent thinking. They want sheeple. They got sheeple. And while I do hold the sheeple accountable, there are mitigating circumstances.
"mitigating circumstances" is exactly what it is. It is ironic that we are in an epoch that claims that individual freedom and responsibility trumps everything, and where there is an incessant drumbeat to make sure that people use their "freedom" in the proscribed way.
It's like "democracy" around the world: a country that "freely" choose to ally itslef with the USA will be labelled a democracy, while one that uses its freedom to be hostile will be denigrated and called a dictature or worse. We have responsibility, and we have the "right" choice. You can't mix and match.
So yes, there are mitigating circumstances - although not for the cheerleaders of "freedom."
Jerome - I really believed all of the stories growing up about the U.S. being the greatest country on earth and the missionary zeal that Americans tried to spread "freedom". I lived abroad in the Philipines for over a year when I was a kid and the fact that the Philipinos had so much less only served as evidence of our obvious superiority.
I was in my second year in college when I had a sociology course and in the testbook was a cartoon of a group of pirates raising the Jolly Roger exclaiming "Aye it's a grand flag". It made me laugh but from then on I started questioning things.
Now when I consider all that we've done to "F" up the planet we really are the easy villains, but unlike the Nazis in old WWII pictures we seemed to have started out with the best of intentions.
Is stupidity a crime?
"called a dictature"
Nah, just socialist, like Yerup is. The Germans, for instance:-)
Cheers from Munique
These comments are all fascinating. I agree that the media, the government, the banking/credit industries, etc. are all partially responsible for the overuse/abuse of consumer credit. What can combat this most successfully is education in the home--kids learn about money and sustainablity as they grow up, mainly from their parents but also other adults, and they tend to keep those habits or adopt new (probably bad) habits in place of no training at all. If parents teach their children to be cautious and feel confident in their decision-making, financial and otherwise--no sheeple! I doubt there was any way our parents could fully forsee the kind of supermarketing for easy credit that the "Anglo Disease" has so disastrously dealt, along with a host of other problems, but parents and their children can no longer afford any lapses in financial reality training. We can't expect some sort of visionary understanding the moment they leave home of what frugality/economy, interest, sustainability and self-sufficiency really mean--it has to be embedded over years of careful teaching moments. (Teenagers heading to college, at least in the US, are offered thousands and thousands of dollars in "student loans" which could strap and stunt them for years. Cost of education skyrocketing? well of course, what will all this "free money" lying around . . . ). Children are not able to train themselves and we can't expect more untrained adults to make any better decisions than what's gone on already. Loads of work for parents like myself! But, it is empowering to realize how important we our to the next generation's quality of living.