Hold the Mayo

April 17, 2009

Economics is Not Rocket Science

I love movies. They are a great way to put aside the world for an hour or so and get wrapped up in a good story. Hell, even if the movie stinks and the story is awful, the escape is still welcome.

I particularly like great movie lines. That one bit of dialog that can evoke the entire film. Clint Eastwood has a quite a few of those lines in his career. "Do you feel lucky, punk?" "A man's got to know his limitations." And most recently, "Get off my lawn."

Sometimes a line can have a significant cultural impact. George H.W. Bush famously appropriated another Eastwood classic "Read my lips." It didn't work out to well.

One movie line seems to have been taken to heart by our culture in a very misinterpreted way with disastrous results. It sort of lays the blame for the whole economic and bailout mess in the lap of one man. Ed Harris.

It seems to me we have taken this to heart far too deeply and seriously. Failure may not have been an option for those trying to save the Apollo 13 astronauts, but there are situations in life where failure is not only an option it is a necessity.

Companies go bankrupt. They go out of business. They fail. When that happens they liquidate their assets and they are acquired by someone who can more effectively put them to productive use.

We should have let that happen with a few more banks, but we decided "Failure is not an option."

We should have let that happen to AIG but we decided that "Failure is not an option."

We should have let that happen to General Motors and Chrysler but we have apparently once again that "Failure is not an option."

Failure is good. Failure tells us where we screwed up so we don't do it again. But it seems that we have become a culture that has perverted the thought that "Failure is not an option." In its original sense it meant that those involved should do everything possible to achieve success. That they should push themselves and strive to come out on top. Today in our culture it seems to mean "Don't expect me to succeed. But don't allow me to fail."

The urge to be parented and cushioned from the blows of our own inadequacies had reached such frightening levels that this was written by a journalist - and was not intended as satire:

Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off or bail out, leaving us with nothing in our newspapers but ads, entertainment features and crossword puzzles.

Rosa Brooks has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and that quote came from her farewell column. She is leaving the Times to take a job with the Obama administration.

Hat Tip: T.F. Stern

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 08:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment

1 I like the line from the Star Wars movie where Yoda is teaching the young Jedi, Luke Skywalker. He asks about being afraid and then says, "You will be."

With things going like they are in DC, if you're not afraid of what is going on, "You will be."

Oh, yea, thanks for the link.

Posted by: T F Stern at April 18, 2009 01:08 PM (Ruh11)

2 What goes up, must come down and eventually it will all come tumbling down one way or another...

Posted by: Miraj Patel at April 19, 2009 02:25 AM (3UimR)

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