Yes he is a borderline pompous prick - but he's bloody good at visualising his message - and more importantly - he's one of the few academics in the world with enough balls to go up against the US theocracy...
In a post recessionary environment, the interests of the rich and the middle class often align, on one critical issue - inflation.
Both tacitly accept an inflationary environment on the basis that creating real value is never going to be a realistic way of jump starting a stalled economy (it rarely is in the boom years so it sure as shit ain't going to work when the power's out!).
Inflation becomes the lesser of 2 evils.
But this time things are different. For the first time, pretty much since the emergence of a middle class, they have no savings. They have less to lose in a hyper inflationary environment.
Money in the past that was squirreled away (and then partially eroded by a prolonged period of inflation) simply isn't there. Those rainy day stores our parents or grandparents might have had, have long been spent on foreign holidays, school fees and new bathrooms. Forget the pension crisis of people like me in their mid 30s. Its the near future I'm worried about!
Without savings a shift occurs. The interests of the middle class become decoupled from those of the rich. Inflation is the friend of the indebted and will be greeted as such this time, not just by the poor, but by the middle classes as well.
Frankly, the middling classes have little to lose. The school systems in the funky urban hotspots they moved to, turn out to be zoos and as unemployment rises, the crime rate ain't looking too pretty either. We're not going anywhere. We may as make the debt we're in smaller....
My prediction is by caging their demands in altruistic terms, morally insulated from the cries of feathering their own nests, we'll see middle class commentators increasingly calling for hikes in interest rates to be postponed.
Unfortunately - the rich, who at least finished this crisis off, are likely to avoid a long overdue comeuppance - they have little political mandate to counter this drive - but their money is mobile - we may well see the effects of a downturn magnified as they move what's left of their capital east.
At the very least, we must assume an inflationary environment in the west is not an impossibility now.
The cynic in me is hearing the words but barely able to believe it. Bush has to NATIONALIZE a financial institution - WTF???
The US state. The home of the "free" market whose central tenant is the belief the market can solve all ills has to nationalize a bank.
Tee, hee....
Anyway, we digress.
Driving away from one of the most bone crushingly awful christenings I've yet to have the displeasure of attending. Complete with music on CD introduction and a call to renounce the devil (for thoughts on organised religion Richard Dawkins pretty much covers it here.) a random and wandering thought struck me.
Does the relative speed at which the religion "brand" blew up, have any implications for the online world today?
Premise 1: Organized religion is a brand. Not a new idea, but one that bears repeating. In a nutshell - a lot of people spent a lot of money (and time, nearly 2000 years) associating the image of a cross with meaning to convince people to swap their hard earned cash for forgiveness.
Premise 2: Religion brand was chugging along very nicely for most of its 2000 year period, "saving" souls and generally doing (cough) good works - and making a tidy pile of $$ by the by, when a young, biologist called Darwin (or rather Spencer - lets not go there) pulls the pieces of a very ancient jigsaw puzzle together and points out (in the absence on Mendelian genetics - which in itself is extraordinary) that it looks very much like a gradual evolution of species might have occurred, and this could possibly have taken place without "you know who" - with the beard - upstairs.
Premise 3: Religion brand, within the space of 200 years (10% of its overall lifetime) collapses. Almost overnight organized god bothering goes into terminal decline and is reduced to absurd, toe curlingly embarrassing rituals like the one I just attended.
The relative speed with which the wheels came off the religious brand cart is in itself surprising.
Even more interesting. As the wheels flew off, the disintegration process seems to have accelerated. Can we learn anything from this?
For as long as modern brands have been around we (brand) tell you (the consumer) what messages and concepts to associate with our name.
But now, and only just very recently, that concept has been turned on its head. Now we (consumers) are telling you (brand) what messages and concepts we'll associate with your brand. We’ll let you participate in the conversation, you can direct and suggest, but ultimately we're going to make the decision.
My sense is that we're reaching a tipping point. A point where ideas of community, free thinking and participation that were bubbling in the online world for 15 years, start to coalesce and take shape.
The birth of the Internet was the Darwin moment for brands where overnight, the status quo blew up. In relative terms then brands might need to change very fast, very soon.
Of course large, abrupt change isn't always welcome. If we draw on another 18th century political theorists Edmund Burke would be worried. He was all about gradual change. Darwin could be seen to harness some of his thoughts in his own theory. For Burke only gradual, non cataclysmic, calm, measured change would do.
Are more turbulent times around the corner for brands?
Feels like it and I guess at heart I'm with Edmund, that's probably why I am so fascinated by what is happening with them online and why I probably shouldn't be laughing as Bush Nationalizes banks.....
