KWPro.net

My mom recently got her hours cut to 15 per week as a result of her company losing a major contract.  She sits now on the couch utterly depressed, nearly sleepless, obviously destroyed.  I feel as though many people in this country are in a similar predicament and slowly losing faith in the system (whereas I've completely lost my faith in the system).

But what happened?  How is it that in 12 years the country has gone from a super power to a super emo?

Many people immediately point the finger at George W. Bush, but I find this path too easy and obvious.

What isn't obvious is that the country has been destroying itself internally from the decadence sprouted from the dot com age.  And I believe that some people want to return to that stage, leading us into a further downward spiral.

The dot com period brought a tremendous amount of wealth to privileged few, but instigating a great deal of greed for the nation.  I remember for myself as a young tech worker how, after posting my resume to dice.com, my inbox and answering were flooded by recruiters trying to vie for my attention.  Each one had different promises from benefits, to work environments, to hours and prestige.  You felt like a rock star in that brief period.  More importantly, the wages were quite good, even for a kid with less than a year's worth of experience.

Of course, the big carrot back in those days was the stock option package.  With all these paper millionaires being made, you wanted to become a part of that wave.

Then it crashed.

I know first hand of a friend's friend who put his mortgage up using some equity from his Lucent stock.  Around that time he was about to get married (to what appeared to be a high maintenance girl).  When the stock tumbled to around $2, he was certainly screwed, especially since his annual was mediocre compared to what he was expected to pay on his monthly loan.

Of course, I left after 9/11 to Japan and came back twice after both elections (now, looking at each case as a HUGE mistake on my part).  But each time I could sense that people were eager to get back to that 1999-2000 period.  With Google on the rise and numerous start ups getting bought out, you had a new generation of wealthy people getting on top.  I missed the 2006-2008 growth spurts, but came back after Obama got elected, feeling that America had the opportunity to grow again, despite the impending recession.

Was I wrong.

Again, getting back to work here, I found the same mentality.  Everyone wanted to get rich.  I worked at a fairly high profile start up with a good leader and team of hard workers.  The sentiment in the office was about going IPO and making it big.  I pulled in long hours that exceeded what I was doing in Japan.  I started to sense something wrong about this over ambition.

And of course, my sixth sense is never wrong.

What my sixth sense detected was greed.  A deadly, self-destructive greed.  It's the greed that has been killing America since the dot com crash.  Since I wasn't employed prior to that period, I can't say for certain if we had gone through a similar period.  But having been through roughly three recessions, I could say for certain that these boom-bust cycles are results of what I call America's Poker Dilemma.

The thing is that America has a huge gambling problem.  Everyone here wants that age old American dream.  The golden dream of making it rich.  The World Poker Tournament said that anyone could become a millionaire, which reflected well with how Wallstreet's inherent demeanor and love to convert investments into bets are.  Here, everyone has become high risk with huge payoffs, but only for the select few.

In being infected with this gambling mentality, everything has started to revolve around money, numbers and statistics.  You don't see good Hollywood movies anymore; instead, they're driven by board room meetings after figuring out research from market data.  The music and movie industries seem more concerned about protecting their precious assets rather than showing them as works of art.  Companies no longer invest in their employees by providing training programs nor mentoring.  Instead, you see companies look exclusively at quarterly revenues and make layoffs based on those numbers.  The list goes on.

However, the thing is that no long term planning is involved anymore for people, except for the select privileged few.  With the country living off hedge bets (like hedge firms which has managed to sneak under the radar of financial watch dogs), we lack stability for real growth.  Even after the collapse of some financial institutions, there were already plans in the work to find the next big scheme. Hey, I thought that the idea of investment was to help prop some companies up to build their infrastructure and grow, not gamble with peoples' livelihoods.

This money/gambling/wealth scheme that propped up has also fed what I feel is the anti-culture of entitlement.  People, especially younger ones in their 20's (and earlier) are growing up with the mentality that they deserve things without earning them.  It's kinda like how everyone thinks that they should be a dot com millionaire still or can be because they work for one.  Well, with companies like Goldman Sachs helping themselves into taxpayers' coffers, it's no wonder why you have this sentiment; they essentially validated that it's okay to steal.

What's interesting to examine is the music during these periods.  In the 80's, you had two major sides (from my viewpoint): the pop scene and the heavy metal scene.  The pop scene exemplified the socially ignorant yuppies who accepted materialism (as exemplified by the lyrics to Madonna's "Material Girl") while heavy metal stood against it (not every band, but bands like Anthrax, Megadeth, etc.)  Around that time heavy metal gained a lot of mainstream acceptance, but I think the darker tones turned graver when the grunge scene emerged in the 90's.  Nirvana exploded with their more simplistic teenage angst that seem more focused on the anger of the self and being cool in associating oneself with that anger. 

When I got to college, somewhere around 94-96 you had a switch in this sentiment from complete anti-materialism to a widespread acceptance and desire for it.  For instance, after Metallica sold out, they themselves had a parody of their song "Nothing Else Matters" with "Only Money Matters."  Or you had Everclear talking about being poor and saying money is a great thing.  Once 98 hit, materialism and the dot com scene were in full swing.  The money was flowing and tasting a bit of it made you desire more.

Now when you look around and listen, people say things such as FTW (or Fuck the World for those not in the know).  It's all about me.  Generation ME is now!  You don't have people fighting for rights; it's more of demanding more privileges.  Girls in a tea shop sound like the latest Top Model episode with their constant whining.  Every little indignity a minority can spot will be brought up as being racist.

Well, to me it's all noise and all bullshit.

What you're really seeing is decadence in this society.  A friend of mine pointed out the historical relation of how societies go from growth to decadence in terms of civilization.  And it's easy to extrapolate examples.  Take Japan for instance.  Post-war Japan showed a devastated country, with a people who desired to rebuild the country and make itself great.  And great it became up until their bubble burst.  The country grew too greedy, people made bad investments.  However, for the past 20 years, I would say, the mentality of that bubble period has not been forgotten.  You still have people who work late, this time without overtime benefits because companies no longer can pay them.  People stay in companies for long periods, even though the concept of lifetime employment is practically dead. Young girls buy name brands thoughtlessly, even though they eat poorly and have sad living conditions.

I see America in Japan, minus 5-7 years.  Japan just slipped into the #3 economic position, as China climbed up the ranks.  Japan is able to survive mostly due to the capital it accumulated.  However, the population is decreasing and you hear people not wanting to have children out of fear of cost. 

Here, I feel as though America has hit it's Japan's 1990's period.  I've tasted the overtime without extra pay.  I feel the hopeless despair of an impotent government, unable to salvage the economy, by constantly bailing out the banking systems.  I see the collapse of lifetime employment over quarterly revenues.  I still see materialism overvalued by an entitlement crazed youth.

Japan probably is not the only model that serves as a clear warning, but certainly it's a good indicator as a recent model that is very close to what America is becoming.

However, I have pinpointed two clear culprits in this mess: 1) lawyers; 2) accountants.

Yes, lawyers receive my scathing attention constantly.  They are a prime reason why this country does not move forward.  They hold too much power and are viewed akin to the clergy.  However, what people don't realize is that accountants too are at fault.  Going back to the notion that numbers are a primary driving force behind America's slow downfall, consider how CFOs are now held responsible along with CEOs for publicly traded companies that fail in a manner similar to Enron.  Perhaps numbers don't lie, but they shouldn't be the only thing driving the hand of a CEO, company or country.

I have a quick and easy solution to this: disempower lawyers and accountants in companies from making any decisions.  Stop just looking at the bottom line and attempting to protect assets of a company.  Allow people to compete with the freedom that they deserve and start investing back into people, not just companies.

Now, the problem with decadence is more of a mental state than anything.  It's first realizing that you're decaying/wasting away; kinda like being part of Motley Crue and finally growing up.  The second thing is to find a real goal for rebuilding oneself.  In the case of America, here's a simple one: give true equal opportunity to people by supporting any hardworking citizen.  They should have equal access to basic needs; that is, shelter, food, water, energy, information, education, communication, community, help, transportation and medicine.  This access should be provided by the government on a fair, non-competitive level.  That is, prices should not fluctuate.  Prices should fluctuate on excess (i.e. non-necessary) goods, where competition can reign free.

Next eliminate the bureaucracy to obtain these essentials.  If a person has a birth certificate and is not a criminal, they deserve to have access to these essentials.  People do NOT need to wade through 5 million incomprehensible documents of legal fluff to get food or a place to live.  Also, people do NOT need to be intimidated by such documents as a result of legal gibberish.

If America wants to retain it's perceived #1 spot as a world leader, it should first start taking care of its own, not disabling its own.