Picky, Picky!

 
One of the reasons I chose to write a blog is to unravel my thinking process about many common topics. The media provides sights, sounds and print matter by the ton. The noisy discussions that follow are often rancorous. They delight in picking apart someone’s statement or idea. This turns to sport rather than clarification. It’s ill-humored bullying trying to score ‘points’ rather than intellectual clarity.

I wanted to observe these moments and identify the important elements; not the sport of demeaning a person with an opinion. Is the opinion sound? That’s what we should be looking at.

Example: Chef Mario Batali was a recent guest panelist discussing Time Magazine’s Man of the Year selection. Time has chosen groups of persons in the past rather than one individual. Mario commented on bankers overall as having had a major impact on the world this past year. And he made it quite clear that the impact was a negative one. He made a metaphor mentioning Hitler and Stalin-era evil as scale descriptor. Then all hell broke loose on Batali!

Here’s what Forbe’s Magazine reported as having been said:

I would have to say that who has had the largest effect on the whole planet without us really paying attention across the board and everywhere is the entire banking industry and their disregard for the people that are supposed to be working for them…. So the ways the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys…[T]heir evil has had a huge effect on the world.

Batali was focused on the effect of actions taken by the banking industry. Income distribution and financial chaos for consumers in general, and multiple national economies as well. Seems to me this is a true statement. Does the size of the problem approach global disruption similar to the impact Stalin and Hitler had on the world?

Seems to me that’s a fair statement, a metaphor if you will.

Does this mean Batali labeled bankers as Hitlers and Stalins? No. Only if you wish to make a political point based on absurdity.

The bankers have a lot to answer for. They live off the profits of other people’s money and for their own benefit. Oh sure, there is a broader social benefit shared with the rest of the society and economy, but lately that benefit has been zeroed out, even deducted from the value of our combined treasure.

Of course the bankers didn’t do this intentionally, but when they faced problems they made them worse rather than fixing them. Then, when it was too big a problem, they asked for help from the federal government, then the world economies. The problem still isn’t repaired, and won’t be until politicians focus solely on the fix without ideological obstacles clouding the compromises needed to install a fix.

So, government policy is a contributor to the debacle in the financial markets. But anyone saying the blame rests solely on government is flat out wrong. Part of the blame yes, but not all. That’s where the political process makes a mess of the situation.

The problem is not the fault of an ideology. It is a fault of policy set up with counterbalancing ideologies in which compromises were ill-suited. In that environment greedy people act in their own self-interest and worsened the problem.

While bankers dither and politicians sling mud and sound bites, the consumers of the world are going broke. Some are dying from this. Lack of food, medicine and medical care have caused catastrophes in low income neighborhoods, retirement communities, and people with medical disabilities. Also dying is a spirit of self reliance that once was so present in our social make-up.

Time’s Man of the Year should go to that person or group of persons who have had the largest effect on the planet whether for good or ill. Batali made a good point. Bankers have had a major effect on the planet whether for good or ill, or in fact, whether it was intentional.

Let’s get back on track. Batali’s use of the Hitler/Stalin metaphor was simply a way of saying the effect of the problem is of huge consequence.

Or are we not to use Hitler and Stalin as comparisons of evil? Really? Who made that rule?

November 12, 2011