I am brutal when it comes to describing failed leadership. Society deserves no less from me – and from them. And occasionally you see a leader doing the absolutely right thing with passion and zeal. Watch Lieutenant General David Morrison of the Australian Army deliver a message to his army and the public regarding a sexual assault scandal.

“Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army… If that does not suit you, then GET OUT… There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters.”

No legalisms. No weak language. Standards set high and maintained higher. Don’t like high standards? GET OUT.

This is tops.

The post What a real leader sounds like during a scandal is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

Always set on outdoing herself, my colleague Sarah Kendzior is hacking the culture of fancy degrees and “prestigious” unpaid internships to bits, putting the bits in a 55 gallon drum, pouring gasoline in the drum, lighting the whole thing on fire – then firing nukes at everything within a 100 mile…

anyhow DIG THIS:

Success does not matter because, in a prestige economy, success has nothing to do with employability. Achievements are irrelevant in a system that rewards money over merit, brand over skill. You can do everything right and the door will not open unless you hold it open with money. That is the way the prestige economy is designed. That is why we now require years of unpaid internships and exorbitant advanced degrees. But the irony of the prestige economy is that even those who can pay to play cannot find a job that pays them.

Prestige rewards prestige, but older prestige has realized that younger prestige will work for more prestige — that is, for free. Even the winners are losing.

Even the “winners” are losing now – because the game is made to lose.

The post Death of the “prestige economy” is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

The post The fragility of the security state is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting WTF Is Up with the Economy in the belly of the beast – Washington DC. A couple dozen intellectual confederates piled into a beautiful venue – The Gibson Speakeasy – and enjoyed a rich mix of chicken & waffles, macroeconomic data, and booze.

I finally whipped my slides into a format that I hope brings more sense of the show’s narrative. There are more mullets, extra economic data – and surprise happy ending with inspirational music by Elton John.

Feel free to steal this presentation.

The post WTF is up with the economy – now with extra mullets is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

The financial media is having the time of its life telling all the hourly workers, temps and free interns of America how Fundamentals Are Strong! and if you don’t think the recovery didn’t happen, then you’re a loser who needs to refill their Prozac prescription.

Hey guys, it’s TOTALLY NOT A BUBBLE AGAIN even though the policy from Washington and New York is to create exactly the same conditions for a housing bubble! This time it’s different!!!1!!!one! 

Well, here are the results of this policy. Guess what? According to Business Insider, house flipping in California is at an all time high.

Here’s an incredible stat from DataQuick: the rate of flipping activity in California hit an all-time high in February and remains well above pre-recession levels.

In May, Southern California’s rate hit 5.9%, the Bay Area notched 4.1% and the state averaged 5.3%.

The boom peak for all three was about 4.3%, reached in January 2005.

The post House Flipping: they are partying in California like it’s 2005 is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

It’s the End of Free, my friends. The notion that free labor is anything but a corrupt hustle is emerging – and this legal precedent will speed that emergence considerably.

A Federal District Court judge in Manhattan ruled on Tuesday that Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying production interns, a case that could upend the long-held practice of the film industry and other businesses that rely heavily on unpaid internships.

In the decision, Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that Fox Searchlight should have paid two interns on the movie “Black Swan,” because they were essentially regular employees

The judge noted that these internships did not foster an educational environment and that the studio received the benefits of the work. The case could have broad implications. Young people have flocked to internships, especially against the backdrop of a weak job market.

I think back on those I have seen attempt to defend this practice, and I believe that they will ultimately appear to have been obsequious at best and dishonest at worst.

The post Judge rules that Fox Searchlight interns should have been paid is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

This is my latest article for a new digital magazine called Medium, founded by the guys who started Twitter.

In my opening remarks, I take on the conflict between the Intelligence Community and leakers. The arguments we hear from Congress and agency heads add up to “Trust us.” I assert that the reason we have trouble trusting them to do the right thing is that during the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 they DIDN’T do the right thing. And then we discovered a torture regime built in our name.

The Intelligence Community has done nothing to atone for the gross failures of competence and ethics committed before and during the Iraq War – all under the brand name of “intelligence.” The IC continues to operate as if its credibility was not gravely damaged by the Bush Administration. Moreover, the Obama Administration has failed to ensure some form of accountability under the rule of law once he took power. It continues to assert that its secret programs should be accepted by the public without question because of supposed integrity that the Community itself has neglected to safeguard.

The Intelligence Community has a brand crisis that dates back to Dick Cheney and John Yoo. They can start to fix it by admitting the severity of the failures a decade ago.

Read more at Medium.

The post The brand crisis of the intelligence community is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

There sure are a lot of scandals these days, and I wonder if the field of public relations has simply fallen apart. Executives don’t seem able to make convincing excuses any more.

Look – no matter what has happened, nobody expects organizations to come clean in a blubbering mess in front of five hundred cameras, confessing every possible wrong doing. But some coherence would be nice. Make a show out of it and perhaps try to keep the same message for longer than, say, twenty-two hours.

There is a pattern I have noticed in institutions caught in dodgy behavior. Their organizational message goes from apologetic to offensive in a matter of days, turning the public’s outrage from bad to worse.

Let us say that a former unpaid intern from ACME Corporation has taken a video of operations at their Puppy Grooming Superstores and thereby reveals that the cute little doggies are being butchered into component parts for luxury wallets, cat food, and whichever products call for high-quality puppy-based materials.

Within a day, five million people have seen the video on YouTube, 700,000 have shared the story on Facebook. and 25,000 mentions have been made on Twitter.

Here is the gameplan that I see when faced with such backlash:

1. Deny the allegations and in the calmest language possible, assert that the organization has everyone’s best interest at heart.

“The public is very upset about their perception that we at ACME chop up puppies for money. It is not that we were selling puppy skins and puppy internal organs – we simply wanted to increase the marketability of puppies worldwide. We love puppies and we regret the confusion.” 

2. Dispatch proxies, usually below the level of top executives, to say – “HEY – there’s a good reason this is going on. WE’RE the victims of the person who leaked – and your ignorance of how the world really works.”

“As a lobbyist for ACME, I can safely say that Americans – abetted by the smelly, malevolent enemies of business- are clearly ignorant when it comes to the puppy treatment industry. For example, the puppy treatment industry makes over $30 billion dollars in revenue, resulting in over 30,000 jobs worldwide. ACME and many companies like it create jobs. JOBS. Everybody likes jobs, and our enemies hate jobs. Also, ACME is full of nice people.” 

3. Dispatch second-order proxies to actually suggest that the leakers should be punished for their offenses against the institution.

“As head of the American Success Institute and former CEO of ACME, it is clear to me that Bolshevik communism is alive and well. The Trotskyite abuse of the very successful puppy treatment industry begs the question – do the leakers of the puppy parts distribution factory videos qualify as enemies of the state? Might they be sent to Guantanamo? I am simply raising the question.”

The institution goes from being conciliatory to predatory so smoothly, the public doesn’t realize that they did a 180 within a few short days. It makes the initial statements about how the institution is as concerned as the public completely invalid.

A note to those working at, or formulating communications for major organizations: Because giant bureaucracies tend to create an environment of groupthink, your perception of the world is likely bent. If your organization is rich and powerful, chances are that nobody is going to believe that you are a victim – even if you are one. You do not get the benefit of the doubt.

And if you are defending a scandal from a government agency, you should not receive the benefit of the doubt. You are responsible to citizens, not just consumers and shareholders, and that is a much more sacred trust.

If your message sounds like an attack, you will lose.

The post Incompetent scandal defense, in a modern style is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

In the Garden, there was the tree that was off limits. It was not the Tree of High Cholesterol, nor the Tree of Puns, neither that nor the Tree of Methamphetamines (though all of these should probably be avoided as well.)

It was the Tree of Knowledge. (עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע)

G-d knew that man could not be trusted with certain information, that he might wander from his true path, and so this tree was proscribed from man. And when man partook of fruits of Knowledge, there was he lost forever, cast to the sweat and toil and pain of eternity, waiting and praying for some sort of savior (מָשִׁיחַ) to sort things out.

And G-d created BuzzFeed.

I shall explain.

Ignorance of the audience is bliss

The Media, if you haven’t heard the caterwauling for years, is in Crisis. The Business Model, woe betide them, is Broken. There have been layoffs. The only way into the hallowed halls of the Fourth Estate is through numerous unpaid internships. Freelancer budgets are slashed. The fields are burned, salt is being sown into the soil – dark times indeed. Whither USA Today and Entertainment Tonight?

Surely the Internet would have disturbed the media business no matter what they did – after all, we are talking about a technology just as revolutionary as Gutenberg’s press. Yet digital distribution was not the most damaging disruption, even with the loss of advertisements. Nor can we blame the media’s own reaction, appalling as it has been for many outlets to assert that professional writing should only pay in “exposure.” The most corrosive effect of the Internet came after the Media was able to taste the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

Tragically, the media was able to learn what people clicked on.

Before, in the days of glorious and holy ignorance, the media produced a monolithic product in which Editorial was separated from Advertising. As a business looking for publicity, you either bought into the whole media outlet, or nothing at all. In the case of newspapers, you had to finance the front page, the opinion pages, the horoscopes, the sports pages, even the occasional “Weekend” section with all the skinny on all the Best Brunch Joints in Town. Nobody knew exactly which part sold the paper. Readers bought the whole thing, thus making editorial decisions a sort of magical alchemy. The recipe for a successful media outlet might be just the right combination of news, entertainment, hard data and opinion – but it was impossible to track eyeballs. Ergo – not everything had to be a profit center.

And then, they bit into the Apple, the juice running down their chin – just as you or I would have.

Suddenly, the editors knew on exactly which story people clicked.

The succulence of the fruit’s meat cascading down their throats, you could tell on which page the reader entered, how long they spent on the site, on which other articles they clicked.

Toward the Garden’s exit they hurtled.

The tyranny of the clickable

A friend of mine worked at a major news outlet in the early 2000s and told me of the shift in priorities. Two events occurred in rapid succession: the new and important U.S. Federal Budget was released, with major implications for policies of all sorts. Half way around the world, authorities claimed they might have caught a creepy looking guy who might have been Jon Benét Ramsey’s killer. The budget story couldn’t possible go on the front page of the news site because, “well, we would be giving away ad revenue.” Creepy Guy, as metrics soon showed, posted fifteen clicks for every pigeon-chested policy wonk who clicked on a detailed story about the budget.

This is not to say that editors were suddenly learning that sensationalism increased revenue; this is an industry that spawned the phrase “if it bleeds, it leads.” But it was the first time in which they were burdened with the exact knowledge of what didn’t make money.

Now, journalists would have to justify to management why they should run something that they couldn’t prove made money.

Worse – much worse – now advertisers could arrange to pay per eyeball. They were no longer bound to pay for the alchemy of hard news, engaging opinion, and a bit of fluff. Now, the equation was honed to a razor-sharp edge – we’re paying for clicks, not for your business to exist.

And Media was ejected most forcefully from the Garden.

Critical information cannot pay its own bills

We now live in a world where everyone can publish their own opinions, but the bulk of the population still imbues the brands of the 20th media complex with seriousness and authority. The business models behind those brands no longer share anything in common with the 20th century, the dollars simply having evaporated. As a result, media companies new and old are responding to this tyranny of the clickable, responding with the following tactics:

• Slash cost of goods sold by reducing money paid to writers (all except for “stars” who will receive “what the market will bear”)
• Finance the majority of the property with “clickbait” to guarantee eyeballs irrespective of substance (e.g. “20 Cats Having a Bad Day,” “Warren Buffett On How to Make Lots of Money,” “Is Sex Still Sexy?”)
• Surreptitiously supplant corporate press releases and advertisements with the same masthead as your publication (as tolerable – avoid the Scientologists and/or Westboro Baptist Church whenever possible)
• If you have extra time, do excellent work

Looking forward, it is difficult to imagine Big Media Companies, with their penchant for Class AAA office space in major coastal cities, escaping this new vortex. There is not yet a way to measure smart eyeballs versus cat-GIF-clicking eyeballs, and so the media that is supposed to counter the information streams from other official power is now indentured to All Title Case Clickbait. No doubt, ambitious journalists of 2013 and beyond will master the Clickbaitable before moving on to the underfunded and unappreciated art of speaking truth to power.

We do see attempts to split the difference. Buzzfeed is building on its mastery of clickbait to include longer form journalism, and some of it is quite good, even seated next to How To Make Boozy French Toast. This analysis of Yahoo’s play for Hulu? It’s punchy, brief and insightful. But it’s no doubt economically subservient to 10 Llamas Who Wish They Were Models. (Subtitle: “To Be Honest, EVERY Llama Wants to Be a Model.”)

We imbue media brands with a gravitas that was earned by other people in another era. In fact, the notion of one group of people under a masthead giving out The News is a distinctly mid-20th century concept in itself. As the media sweats and toils for its new master, clickbait, one dreams of the paradise left behind, where we were blissfully ignorant of the fact that critical information couldn’t cover its own bills.

We cannot give this Knowledge back. Yet I wonder if we could one day use it in the service of financing serious analysis – perhaps even better than before.

The post The media industry ate from the tree of knowledge is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

I just saw this graphic on “How to disagree” that is a perfect explication of the majority of intellectual exchange I see on the Internet:

To truly be accurate, the base of the pyramid would flare out much more, and the top three points would be much, much sharper. Regardless, you can now refer people to this pyramid whenever you see a rotten counterargument.

The post How to disagree is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

There is very little in this world as useless as the endless hair-pulling between two factions of the neoclassical economics world, The Keynesians and The “Austerians.” For those of you who correctly sense this to be too boring to follow, allow me to get you quickly and painfully up to date so that we can get beyond this whole moronic intellectual framework and on to something much more useful for actual people.

Ever since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the Same Old Authority Figures have separated themselves into two groups in their attempts to “fix” the world economy by doing nothing new or interesting. First, you have the Keynesians and their spiritual leader Paul Krugman. Their philosophy is simple: if the economy is producing privation, ecological ruin, anxiety, institutional collapse, grotesque inequality and bankrupt governments, have central banks print a bunch of money and give it to governments and megabanks. See? All better! Note: If this does not work, you did not print enough money! If you point out that, for example, the United States was already printing tons of money when its economy went in the toilet, Paul Krugman will scoff at you and mention his Nobel prize.

Grimacing toward the Keynesians in a hip-hop pose à la You Got Served is a group we can call the Austerians, economists that believe that we can fix the economy through “austerity.” This is accomplished by doing almost all of the same things as prior to the crisis, while making up any shortfalls by cutting government programs for the poor, sick and old. Cutting wages wouldn’t be a bad idea either, according to Austerians. (Why look at those nice Bangladeshis! Reasonable wages and a much lower Debt-to GDP Ratio than that horrible Europe!) If we follow the austerity path in a monastically devout way, we can reduce government debt, which is the Worst Thing In the World, despite that fact that most industrialized countries have been accumulating debt at a steady clip since the end of the gold standard, through times good and bad. According to Austerians, Government debt in 2013 is still the mostest awfulest thing ever which is precisely we everybody keeps producing lots of it and trading it on complex, state-sanctioned markets. Because it’s terrible and all the poor people need to help make it stop!

Rules of Austerity Wrestling

If you go on television to talk about The Global Economy, chances are either the hosts or the guests will attempt to suck you into this wrestling match. You are not allowed to stay on the sidelines, insisting on a broader and more nuanced understanding of our current economic predicament – you must immediately pump up on steroids, don Spandex pants and get in the ring.

Here are the only legal moves in Austerity Wrestling:

• Arguing for or against the use of quantitative easing  of debt from central banks and bond markets as a way to “get through” the “crisis”
• Bonus points: quoting Keynes, Hayek, or von Mieses directly as if their thinking applies directly to a 21st century economy where the financial sector is ten times larger than in their day, and where global trade is hyperconnected through nearly the entire planet

Illegal moves in Austerity Wrestling are as follows:

• Mentioning the role of energy markets, especially Peak Oil, as a potential driver of economic shift
• Refusing to accept the high Dow Jones average as a sign of recovery
• Mentioning the long-term effect of youth unemployment
• Referring to people earning low wages (The Poors) as some form of equal citizen deserving of consideration
• Wondering aloud if moving manufacturing to countries where buildings fall on top of you has something to do with our trouble
• Indicating the structural problem that comes from an consumer economy facing the reality that Generation X is half the size of the Boomers
• Admitting that today’s bureaucratic management techniques are entirely overwhelmed by the level of complexity we have wrought
• Presenting any thought other than those specifically mentioned above

Like so much in today’s media, this is the game – we take a fascinating event in world history – a historic economic shift driven by demographics, management techniques, energy transition, technology and more – and we reduce it to a framework that is clean, well-defined and useless. Coke or Pepsi? Mac or PC? “Quantitative Easing” or “austerity?”

I got to play this game briefly on RT’s CrossTalk with Peter Clavell. The host, Clavell, actually avoids this construct, but the moment I am asked a question about austerity, the wrestling match is on. I say that obviously you can’t spend money indefinitely without consequences, no matter who you are. One of the other guests immediately straps on his Spandex and goes all ‘roid rage, accusing me of (GOP communications guru) Frank Luntz-style distortions so that I can support “my” plans for austerity. Huh? Since when is it a controversial thing to say that spending like a drunk sailor has consequences? How does that equal wanting to squash the poor while I laugh over at Karl Rove’s house? Well, in the Austerity Wrestling ring, it makes sense.

Eventually, I got to make my real point, which is that neither Keynesian nor Austerian politicians have articulated what’s going to happen after their miracle cure “fixes” the economy. Where are we going? If we suffer through “austerity,” what’s next, and how is it better? If printing money is the way to success, how long until we actually see some reductions in unemployment and the revitalization of some downtowns? I think that austerity has worked well for the Estonians and is actually causing an epidemic of suicide in Greece and Italy, so obviously there isn’t one right answer. I’m merely interested in the quality of economic leadership – people who can articulate a vision of a better future. The cognitive onanism of a bunch of theory-masticating college professors and central bankers is one step below useless for me and everybody else.

In the meantime, I’m treated to opening the newspaper and attending conferences where theoretical economists whose work did nothing to predict or prevent out current predicament trumpet the success/failure of printing a lot of money (Look! The Dow is awesome! Also, our kids are doomed!) or point out the success/failure of the other guy (Look Latvia is doing great after austerity! And Portugal is doing terrible! Boo!) But just like professional wrestling, neither side ever wins, and the whole spectacle is a distraction from anything substantive going on in our lives.

And note that nobody will ever mention the real reason behind all that debt – it is a new way of executing great power politics through currency manipulation and financial engineering, all while telling Regular People that government debt works the same way as your checking account. If we’re going to discuss sovereign debt structures and bond markets, well let’s get into it – but this will preclude us from simultaneously guilting the guy in the street into believing that there is something bad he did yesterday that now requires his retirement to be delayed by a decade. Thus, we avoid having a real discussion entirely.

Time to discuss things that might actually help people

Bottom line – our economic woes lie in our failure to understand the future, not in our inability to declare a winner among the neoclassical economists from the 1940s. Huge questions remain, with answers that will impact real people’s lives. How can we transition away from our fragile, plutocratic financial institutions toward something that allocates capital in a flexible and useful way? How disruptive will the current energy transition become, and how fast will in change national fortunes? How much will climate change disrupt the world economy? What is a “nation-state” in a hyperconnected global economic system where both national and supranational policy makers seem unequal to the task of managing complexity? What about the unprecedented surge of aging populations? What are the rights and obligations we have to society as the economy becomes more abstract and global?

These are all questions we need to discuss, and their answers will be useful to real people, actual business leaders. But as far as the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussions about austerity go, I have had my fill. Every moment spent wondering about that construct is a moment that could be spent helping somebody, revitalizing a downtown, finding a job for a young person. I’m throwing out my Spandex trunks.

The post The uselessness of the austerity wrestling match is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

This past weekend I drove from Saint Louis to Oklahoma City on the original Route 66 – “The Mother Road.” A friend of mine wanted to attend a meetup of Saab owners using the classic highway, so I road shotgun to provide company and observe what remains of the roadway that was the primary route between Chicago and Los Angeles from 1926 to 1960. In the end, I really wanted a lot of housepaint and a crew of painters.

Let me explain.

As you come out of Springfield. Missouri you eschew the popular I-44 and ignore the redirected U.S. Route 66, turning down some back roads to arrive at the real Route 66. This is the view from 1940, photographed this weekend:

I can only imagine that this was the view that your grandfather had as he made the classic journey Westward: cement concrete roads, barely two-lane, isolated services, generally unspoiled landscapes, the road wandering off into the promise of America. Also: gas for twelve cents a gallon! This is the Route 66 of the Nat King Cole song – a long and winding road that goes through a bunch of beautiful, thriving communities on the way to California. It goes through Saint Louie – Joplin, Missouri, Oklahoma City – criss-crossing through Galena, Kansas, Catoosa, Oklahoma and many other communities whose names are obscured to all but the locals.

In 2013, this road does indeed wander off into the promise of America, but that promise has been broken. When the Eisenhower Interstate System was completed in the 1960s, the endless flow of motorists opted for wider, faster roads that did not bother stopping for every little town. As information technology and biotech has advanced, centralized farming has either moved farming under giant corporate holding companies, or to new places all together, such as California and points west. Light manufacturing has gone to points far east. As such, the view of most of the small communities on Old Route 66, is more like this:

I’m going to spare you the photos of the endless array of trailers and makeshift houses along the way, linked only by the cracked and weed-ridden concrete of the old Mother Road, left to rot. This, too, is America in 2013, and if you extrapolate the trend into the future, it leads straight into a vision of dystopia.

My mind wandered to all of the various wars and bailouts that have consumed this nation’s blood and treasure. Since 2001 there have been those two wars in far off lands, followed by a decade of nation building. Later, after a senseless deregulation of the banking industry we sent endless rivers of printed cash flowing into the coffers of the banks whose recklessness nearly set the world ablaze. We guaranteed the survival of General Motors, AIG, Fannie and Freddie. The total cost for these policies: trillions of dollars.

All I want is some paint.

I see the men, women and children scraping around the remnants of these once-thriving American communities, and I wonder how they can keep their head up, walking by abandoned downtown building after burned out house after dilapidated mobile home park. Our national government jumps at the chance of keeping car companies and banks from suffering the consequences of their mismanagement, and meanwhile, vast swaths of the United States are left to rot. We pour out our treasury to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, and turn a blind eye to the Heartland.

We could have, during this interminable series of bailouts, set aside one billion dollars for a paint job. Imagine the collective impact of repainting downtowns in bright fresh colors. Think of the people of these communities, once the backbone of our nation, told by the rest of us – you are not forgotten. Consider the difference in a young person between growing up in a place rotting off the bone versus one in a town that is still honored.

One billion dollars- that’s a fraction of what we spend on the drug war, interest on the debt, policing the hills of some country that Americans can’t identify on a map anyhow. Senators spend one billion dollars before you have had your morning coffee.

Imagine what it would mean to these people.

Imagine what it means to have pride.

The post One billion dollars of paint is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

When my friend Doug Stephens, retail futurist par excellence with a great new book out, told me about this, I almost thought that it was satire of the marketing profession. And yet, it’s a real thing – selling candy through the lens of the gay rights movement - and a signpost that tells us about the future of branding.

In an effort to make the “Mike & Ike’s” brand of candy relevant to young adults, the brand’s managers decided to bolt on a story about Mike & Ike as some sort of romantic couple now going through a divorce. From the article “Brands Come Out of the Closet“:

Caught in the crossfire of the gay-marriage debate were Mike & Ike, Just Born’s old-school fruit-flavored candy from our childhood. The candy brand has been around since the 1940s, but has been relatively quiet the past few years. All that changed in April 2012, when in an attempt to capture a younger demographic, the company launched a marketing campaign based on Mike & Ike’s troubled partnership.

Though the advertising, social media and packaging campaign attributed the split to creative differences, it wasn’t long before rumors were flying that it was part of a “gay divorce.” The Family Research Council publicly denounced the brand, saying, “It’s just another subtle example of society chipping away at the value of marriage.” Is the world ready for a maybe-gay candy? It appears so. Mike & Ike had its best year sales-wise in a decade, up more than 7%; it also tripled its Facebook fanbase.

The company has reinforced this original take on candy with images designed to remind your of the impending personal strife facing the two male characters who have never been seen in public.

Evidently, Ike is taking the whole thing rather hard and erasing any trace of Mike. You know how it is when a romance goes bad.

But wait! Facebook update! They are getting back together! Or something!

Is the future of branding in surreal stories?

Once upon a time, people actually sold products by describing their benefits.

Then, as time went on, they moved on to showing how the product reinforced whatever identity the customer already had (or aspired to have)

Now, we’re in a brand new era. The future of branding seems to be about intriguing people with a story that captivates them – even if it really does not have a thing to do with the product or service sold.

In the old days, you would actually describe how delicious Mike & Ikes are. If you followed late 20th century logic, you would need to show how Mike & Ike defined you as a fun-loving or creative or whatever kind of person.

What we see today has no connection to that logic whatsoever. Nobody really thinks that Mike & Ike candies cause your gay romance to go bad – so it’s not a question of product feature. And nobody at the ad agency is attempting to say – “Mike & Ikes – the candy for people who believe in gay marriage, even bad ones.” And thus this isn’t a call to some form of identity.

No, the bad gay romance thing is just kind of funny. It’s ironic. For a young adult (the kind that isn’t aware of the diabetes epidemic) perhaps this kind of entertaining narrative will induce them to buy this brand of candy more often because – who knows what those crazy guys at Mike & Ike will come up with next. So, as we can see from the results, more people are willing to “like” the brand and purchase the product just because the narrative is unexpected.

In fact, this kind of phenomenon is revolutionary. What matters here is not the product or the consumer, but the brand itself. The customer is potentially drawn to the product because the people behind the brand seem to be plugged into the zeitgeist. Gay marriage is a cresting a huge wave all over the world; just as I write this, the French Senate approved the “Loi Taubira,” thus making gay marriage and adoption the law of the land. What does this have to do with candies? Nothing. But the brand is stating clearly, “Hey, we’re hip – we know what is interesting and relevant.”

Branding is really old hat these days – the new generation has been marketed to death since they were in diapers. Hearing about new products and what they mean to our identities is really old and busted. Connecting with a group of people – even through something trivial like candy – who know what’s important in the world – that’s something people seem to hunger for.

Is your brand able to connect itself to the larger cultural evolutions in the world? It seems to be driving sales.

The post Why Mike & Ike’s gay divorce is part of the future of branding is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

You really need to be following the writing of Sarah Kendzior this week as she rips the major media outlets for their utter incompetence in understanding the role of race, ethnicity and nationality in the Boston Marathon bombing. The fact is: we don’t know what motivated these men. There will be a trial – and then we will know more. In the mean time, the American media has been throwing out every possible stereotype (indomitable mountain men!!!) and disjointed factoid from Wikipedia their interns could gather.

Now, Juan Cole isn’t really “the media,” and I normally enjoy his analysis of Middle East affairs quite a bit – but I was perplexed by his trying to use 19th century literature to explain Monday’s actions in absence of thorough knowledge about the motive’s of the alleged bombers.

“They were playing the nihilists Arkady and Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons,” explained scholar Juan Cole, citing an 1862 Russian novel to explain the motives of a criminal whose Twitter account was full of American rap lyrics. One does not recall such use of literary devices to ascertain the motives of less exotic perpetrators, but who knows? Perhaps some ambitious analyst is plumbing the works of Faulkner to shed light on that Mississippi Elvis impersonator who tried to send ricin to Obama.

Cole’s connection to philosophical nihilism might be a stretch, but it’s sure a lot better than those hyperventilating that one of the suspects was named after a brutal Mongol warlord!!! As my own son is named after the Norman conqueror who slaughtered Saxons to dominate England, I find this analysis unhelpful.

Why can we not just say, “I don’t know. Nobody knows. This was horrible. Our justice system will tell us the rest?” That would be honest, calm and dignified – but this is the American media we are talking about.

Now, for those of you without backgrounds in intercultural analysis, maybe this doesn’t seem too ridiculous. Let me illustrate how inaccurate such wild speculations would sound if it were about a culture you did understand.

Let us say that a guy got drunk at a bar outside of Mobile, Alabama,  got in a fight with some dudes about University of Alabama versus Ole Miss college football, and ended up shooting them dead in the parking lot.

Terrible, right? Stupid, violent, too many damn guns, shame, right?

Now imagine that some foreigners slapped a crappy pseudo-anthropological analysis on top, full of weird historical references, non-sequitur references to the church, and misguided assumptions about ethnicity.

DATELINE APRIL 21, 2013

IT HAS HAPPENED AGAIN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

Yet another massacre has occurred in the historically war-torn region of the Southern United States – and so soon after the religious festival of Easter.

Brian McConkey, 27, a Christian fundamentalist militiaman living in the formerly occupied territory of Alabama, gunned down three men from an opposing tribe in the village square near Montgomery, the capitol, over a discussion that may have involved the rituals of the local football cult. In this region full of heavily-armed local warlords and radical Christian clerics, gun violence is part of the life of many.

Many of the militiamen here are ethnic Scots-Irish tribesmen, a famously indomitable mountain people who have killed civilized men – and each other – for centuries. It appears that the wars that started on the fields of Bannockburn and Stirling have come to America.

As the sun sets over the former Confederate States of America, one wonders – can peace ever come to this land?

Sometimes, people are in a cult of violence tied up with religious fundamentalism and nationalistic terror groups.

Sometimes, they are just savages who come from a place that might have churches and politically-motivated knuckleheads.

Being a real analyst of international affairs, you need to understand how subtle that difference can be.

The post If media covered America the way we cover foreign cultures is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

The uproar about Bitcoin in the last couple weeks has obscured the much larger global trend toward local currency and new forms of economic integration. That’s reasonable enough – smaller communities creating their own monetary systems appears to be somewhere between a lark and a joke for the conventional mind. But while the financial media is busy mocking everything new coming down the pike, the local currency trend is picking up steam.

I can’t believe it took me this many months to hear the news about the mayor of Bristol taking his entire salary in the new Bristol pound.

Of his salary – currently £51,000, though the figure could change – Ferguson said he would take it in Bristol pounds, a currency introduced this year and proving a success.

What is the Bristol pound? The local currency is similar to the ones used in other UK “Transition Towns” such as the Totnes, Lewes, and Brixton pounds. And like its German counterpart, the Chiemgauer, its initial value is tied to the national currency (in this case the pound sterling) but then begins to decline in value over time to discourage hoarding. There is also a penalty for trading it back into national currencies as a way to encourage people to spend locally once they make the commitment.

More details from their website:

It is a complementary local currency designed to support Bristol’s independent businesses, strengthen the local economy, keep our high streets diverse and distinct, and help build stronger communities.

The Bristol Pound is the UK’s first city wide local currency, the first to have electronic accounts managed by a regulated financial institution, and the first that can be used to pay some local taxes.

The Bristol Pound is run as a partnership between the Bristol Pound Community Interest Company and Bristol Credit Union. It is  a not-for-profit social enterprise.

You can spend Bristol Pounds using:

You can spend Bristol Pounds at every participating  business using either paper Bristol Pounds, or from a Bristol Pound account with any mobile phone by using our simple TXT2PAY sms payment system, or over the internet.

Having electronic accounts makes Bristol Pounds easy and convenient to use for the public and opens up the opportunities for business to business payments.

Currently, Bristol’s local currency  is reporting around 100,000 pounds of total deposits and a rising number of merchants accepting it as payment for services. There perhaps couldn’t be a stronger sign than the leader of the city committing his entire purchasing power to the scheme.

Be on the lookout for this and many other communities building resilience and economic vitality through these innovations. It’s looking less and less like a lark every day.

The post The mayor of Bristol takes his whole salary in the local currency is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

A couple hours ago, as my Twitter feed began its predictable digital outrage against Congress’ inability to pass any legal measure that might reduce the unfettered flow of guns around our psychically unstable nation, I was moved to spew forth one of my patented Twitter Rants.

Strap in. Oh, by the way – you’re partly to blame.

>>>>>>>>>

You want to know why Congress is so terrible? Here’s why, 140 characters at a time:

Everybody is so indignant about Congress, but only 10% of Americans can name the Speaker of the House. You want to know why America feels like a chaotic mess? We oscillate between demanding “freedom” and demanding authority figures.

• Don’t tell me what to do with my guns, money and healthcare! Wait! There’s gun violence, somebody do something!
• I don’t like Big Government! We were attacked by terrorists! The government needs to invade someone’s country, and quick!
• I don’t want Gubmint in my Medicare! However, it’s OK for the Gubmint to search my wife’s bra at the airport.
• In the years between elections, I find policy discussion’s so boring! Hey, why is policy being run by special interests?

You know why policy is run by special interests? Because the Supreme Court told you money = speech and America said nothing. You know why gun manufacturers are buying off Congress? They make 1,000 phone calls, emails and personal visits to Congress for 1 of yours.

You know who the new ambassador to Canada is, our greatest ally and trading partner? Chicago’s partner at Goldman Sachs! Why would we appoint a banker to a diplomatic position? He raised big money for Obama in 2012! That’s how it works.

The power of special interests isn’t a conspiracy necessarily. You want to know something? Lobbyists educate new Congresspeople who are dumber than a bag of hair. My office in DC was on the 9th floor of a building chock full of lobbyists. I’ve seen the game top to bottom. Some chucklehead from Indiana’s 3rd district has the biggest used car dealership. He wants to run for Congress. He’s in Washington at lobbying shops BEFORE HE EVER RUNS. He starts sucking off the lobbyist tit before his first stump speech. He meets potential staff – introduced by lobbyists – and starts meeting donors from corporations and activist groups.

Now our man goes back to actually run in Indiana, or wherever. He wins! Hooray! But you know what? He’s a used car dealer. Do you think he spent his two years of politicking boning up on nuclear energy policy or geopolitical security? No, he was grabbing money. So our new Congressman arrives in Washington, accompanied by some of his political operatives and DC staff picked by lobbyists. He gets appointed to some committees, the sucky ones with no real power, but now he has actual work to do – about which he knows nothing.

So our new Congresscritter is on the Ag committee or Science, and now he has to vote on grazing rights and subsidies for natural gas. He doesn’t have a shit of an idea. NOW WHO CALLS HIM NEXT? YOU? Your friends from Facebook? College professors? NO, LOBBYISTS. By the way, the very second he arrives in DC, he’s immediately back on the hunt for money and really busy paying off favors to donors. So he literally has no time to study the issues. And in the door walks…his friends that hooked him up with cash to begin with! And they represent various industries. They come with actual information – slanted though it may be – about what our guy has to vote on. The lobbyists explain the stakes – the history of the policy, size of the market (beef grazing in Wyoming, whatever), and the number of jobs

You are at home watching Game of Thrones, half way through a six pack. You aren’t studying grazing rights either.

So, the vote’s on Friday. So far, our man has heard from his money guys, representatives from agribusiness…and who else?

BUT WHAT ABOUT “THEY GOOD GUYS?” The “non-profits” and do-gooder networks in DC. You give them $50 every year or so – “Organic Food USA.” The guys at Organic Food USA are paid $23,000 to live in DC. They are usually a hot mess. They *might* get a fax off to our man’s office. (By the way, the reason media covers a lot of corporate press releases verbatim is…they are written correctly! And the guys call you back!) So Organic Food USA send some dogshit pamphlet to the Congresscritter’s office, MAYBE tries to get a meeting with him. Organic Food USA decides to write an emotionally-charged email to their existing database, and updates their website. It’s easier.

You, at this same moment, are looking at pictures of old lovers on Facebook.

Now it’s the night before the vote. Our Congresscritter has received one briefing from a lobbyist and some advice from two other colleagues. The only coherent point your average Freshman Congressman has received is from people paid to sway his vote for profit. Congressguy goes to a fundraising dinner, makes phone calls to his district until 11:00pm EST, and passes out with a scotch. The next morning, all things being equal, he votes for a “strong jobs policy” on that grazing thing – and moves on.

TalkingPointsMemo and HuffPost (or RedState, who cares) cover the vote. You and your friends register your indignation in the comments.

The next big vote is next Wednesday, on subsidies for pharmacogenomic medicine, whatever the hell that is. The Chinese are our competitors. This weekend, Congresscritter is flying to Indiana to attend a sporting event and meet with donors.

You listen to NPR.

This is the deal every day in Washington DC. Is it a conspiracy? It’s a pretty open one. I’m telling you what 200,000 people know. You wonder why policy from Washington sucks ass?

1. Money runs elections.
2. Lobbying pays a ton.
3. You are apathetic about policy.

BUT WAIT, NOW IT’S A YEAR DIVISIBLE BY FOUR!!! Now we spend the year listening to messages designed to flatter our egos for months. Yes, the money from lobbyists goes to market research, who ask YOU what YOU want to hear from your leaders. “Change.” “Small government.” There are shops that measure your pulse and eye twitching over the exact wording of policies. And they feed that back to you for a year.

You know that Obama didn’t like the “Change” thing in 2008, right? But that’s what the marketing said YOU wanted. So…YOU GOT IT! CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN! ALSO, UNICORNS THAT GIVE ME A RIDE TO WORK! TRANSPARENCY! NO HOMELESS PEOPLE. WORLD PEACE!

You asked for them to tell you these things. They told you. It was all financed by The Money Guys.

So now, it’s an odd number year, the new class is sworn in…and visited by their lobbyist chums, with fresh power points. Is this a conspiracy? No. Conspiracies are hidden from view. This is open for all the world to see. We like it this way. Oh, we don’t like the corrupt policies that it guarantees, but we sure don’t want to be bored by any policy discussions.

Sit around and discuss the implications of defense policy? Snore fest! Wake me when we bomb somebody! Then I’ll cheer/protest.

I believe in healthcare for all people/those who earned it! I do not, however, believe in learning about the cost of diabetes care!

So, Congress f***ed up and can’t pass a “simple” piece of legislation that will guarantee MAXIMUM primary challenges financed by NRA?

No – the problem is at the root. It’s time to look at this as a whole system. We all share blame – and responsibility.

Now what?

The post Why Congress sucks is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

Nobody plants a bomb in LaPlatte, Nebraska. The terrorists of the world pick London, Madrid, New York, Tokyo, Washington and Boston as the target of their rage. This is where we house the world’s art and science, build iconic structures and hold leadership summits. In these cities you are usually walking distance from greatness, be it artistic, intellectual or financial. In the great cities of civilization you can attend a fashion show, a colloquium on energy policy, a sporting event, or simply delight in the spectacle of people on the street while you savor a cup of coffee. From the first Sumerian cities to Copley Square, civilization is man’s great adventure, the journey of an undisciplined species working together in service of universal principles.

There is also something in man that secretly rebels against this journey, a smouldering compulsion to reduce us back to wild, squabbling beasts in a bog. From Aum Shinrikyu to al-Qaeda to the psychopathic author of Boston’s tragedy, this cognitive perversion expresses itself in premeditated acts of violence against city dwellers. These bestial remains of our ancient past seek to reduce us to their animalistic level by literally covering the edifices of civilization in blood and gore. These subhumans think that by reminding us of our physical frailty, they can exact revenge against those who live by elevating their brains and their hearts instead of their twisted guts.

Boston is a civilized place, driven by refined values – erudition, tolerance, collective welfare, and tradition, among many others. From Faneuil Hall to Bunker Hill to Harvard to Fenway to Southie, Boston is a great city by any measure. Its people range from foreign scholars in Cambridge to Back Bay traditionalists to salt of the earth workers in Quincy, each contributing to one of the most successful, prosperous and celebrated cities in history.

While millions revere this city and others like it, there remains in the shadows, a beast. The great achievements of civilization remind men who would prefer to remain animals of whatever wretched insufficiency their have in their black souls. They digest themselves while leering viciously at civilization in ashamed silence. As they hate language and art, they cannot express this feeling through words and image. As they despise science, they cannot submit to medicine to heal their sickness. They can only express their grotesqueness through blood.

Cowardly violence is the only achievement to which these aberrations can cling. Meanwhile, the rest of our species must continue onward in our destiny – working together to explore the great values of art and science. We shall meet together in cities, elevate our minds and souls and aspire to greatness. We shall leave the beasts behind, even though they live deep in the hearts of man.

Civilization will prevail.

>>>>>>

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my latest book, entitled The World After Normal, a group of essays on an American culture in transition. 

The post The beast at the gates of civilization is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

The United States is the only country in the world that treats other nations as completely optional. Obviously, I don’t mean when it comes to manufacturing our critical goods or providing us with tankers full of light sweet crude, but culturally, America acts as if Other Countries are places that exist only in text books or vacation brochures. This is most acutely evident in the narrative projected by our media outlets: America remains the center of the world and Other Places are only worth describing if 1) something is on fire or 2) we have declared war on the people there. So if you live in the United States, your view of global events is myopic at best and completely distorted at worst.

I decided to undertake an experiment – to rely completely on non-American, non-English-language media for a period of a week.  I have spent almost thirty years studying French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, Japanese and other languages. For news analysis, my French is very close to native, my Spanish is fluent, I can read Portuguese and Italian with little problem and my Japanese is limited to smack talking and effusively complimenting sushi chefs. Those were my biases in this experiment: lots of French, quite a bit of Spanish and Portuguese, considerable focus on Europe, where many of the media conglomerates for those languages are located.

Here’s what I ascertained during my week-long fast of American media:

Things are happening in countries that are not the United States

Did you know that Japan is installing Patriot missiles in Tokyo because of North Korean aggression, that France is at war in Mali, and that Iran just had an earthquake that killed thirty people? Yes, all of these are important events that took place outside the borders of the United States and which were reported widely – everywhere but in the US.

The most important bias you get beyond when leaving US-English media is the presumption that the United States is the only country worth covering with the rest jammed in the “Global” section of some website. For the rest of the world’s media (possible exceptions: Iran, North Korea) events in Perú, Austria and Thailand are not trivia for people who “studied abroad that one time” – they are simply the news.

The media is not the most important topic of the media

One of the best things to get away from in US-English media is the juvenile self-obsession of the media with itself, especially the recent focus on helping the poor media conglomerates stay in the black ink by using free labor and/or puerile moron click bait in place of maturely analyzed news. America now has TV shows about making TV shows, cable programs about making cable news programs, Narcissus on the cusp of drowning. The whole American media industry is so busy trying to maintain huge empires, luxury office space and big salaries for its “stars,” that it is taking significant time away from just doing their damn day jobs and reporting the events of the day for an interested public.

I’m not naive about the issues of quality and bias in foreign news. Having lived and worked in Paris for close to twenty years, I am intimately acquainted with the slants of French media outlets, for example. Le Monde is center-right and quite small-c conservative, a bit authoritarian. La Libération is into splashy headlines and socialist biases that would make my father’s head explode. Le Figaro has almost a royal reserve about its coverage, and Les Echos is a great financial read with simple, direct news analysis. There are new kids on the digital block with post-political biases, such as the now ascendant Mediapart. There are strengths and weaknesses to all these outlets, but all week I didn’t read one piece about how tough it is to report news in this new economy, we need free interns, bla bla bla. From Canada to Italy, I just got to focus on the news. It was refreshing.

Opinion is not news

After about three days of non-US digital news, a realization gently revealed itself: I wasn’t required to wade through page after page of anecdotally-driven opinion pieces masquerading as news. The majority of the clicks out there were of hard news stories, not a series of self-important “here is how I feel about the news” pieces. Sure, there are OpEds, and some great ones, like this piece from a Portuguese official ripping apart the German finance minister for saying that other “countries” were “jealous” of Germany. (International affairs pro tip: countries have interests and policies, not feelings)  What is missing is that which comprises a shocking percentage of US coverage – thinly researched, perspective free assertions about what something “means.” There are three categories of this that are epidemic right now:

• Lobbyist-activists producing “analysis” pieces that are really doing advocacy for some undisclosed goal (usually war)
• Executives from some institution executing a broader corporate branding plan
• “Staff writers” from Ivy League schools with zero practical experience opining about how what business or government ought to be doing this week, based on the unexamined feelings of 1400 people in San Francisco, New York, Boston and DC, as opposed to data

Opinion pieces are fine – but in non-English media, I find that they are clearly marked and provide some value other than an argument for the status quo.

Time for an enriched diet

To sum up, your choice of media very much shapes your perception of the world; my experiment reminded me that it shapes mine. This week showed me how much American media is focused on propping up authority figures, reinflating unsustainable financial bubbles, and maintaining the lowest possible cultural and intellectual standards. The thing is, America is a huge country and its media industry industry is pervasive. Also, there is a preponderance of media in English because of its use India, China, Korea and other countries as a lingua franca for business. If you live in the U.S. and want a global perspective, getting away from the US-American media bubble is going to require effort on your part.

You wouldn’t be very healthy if your food diet was both limited in diversity and low in quality. Sadly, America’s intellectual diet is increasingly resembling its food choices – heavily processed, weighted towards a juvenile palate, providing little value for a balanced life.

Fetch me my passport.

>>>>>>>>

If you like this post, you might enjoy my latest book, The World After Normal, which is an irreverent look at American culture in transition.

The post Breaking through the American media bubble is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

The world’s Very Serious Financial Media had an amusing freakout yesterday about the relative importance of the rise in value of a novel digital currency scheme called Bitcoin. Their message is very clear:

Look you monkeys, stop paying attention to this Bitcoin thing which is a big joke and also not significant of anything, and also very dangerous. Now. Just stop. Right now. Go look at housing starts. Also, it’s a recovery. Stop looking at alternatives. Now. Because things are great.

Of course, if you think the global economy includes several people who aren’t named Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon, things are not that great and alternatives seem like a way out of some intractible problems. But then, the Very Serious Financial Media is not especially interested in people not named Buffett, Bezos or Dimon.

The event that unleashed such interest in alternatives was *sigh* yet another small country Eurozone meltdown involving people that speak Greek, megabanks, oligarchs and bailouts that take money from the locals to repair damage done by a handful of really terrible financial engineers. Cyprus’ banking system is unstable (likely resulting from too much Greek-speaking) and the government came up with the Very Reasonable Proposal of simply seizing money in the deposit boxes over a certain amount. There, all better!

What? What? Why so angry, bro?

The results have been two-fold. On the island of Cyprus, bankers and policy makers have no doubt been receiving phone calls from angry, angry men with Russian accents – men who employ various former members of the Spetsnaz. There have also been exasperated calls from Brussels, London and Frankfurt and the predictable scripts about capital requirements and austerity, responsibility, et cetera.

And in the rest of the world, something very interesting happened. Nobody bothered to go to some park in Manhattan to sit around with bongos. There might have been a protest in Paris – what with it being a day ending in “y” – but not about this issue. Even the Cypriots themselves seem to be handling the events with a certain poise. Yet around the world, a billion dollars of market capital has shot into an anonymous, stateless currency system called Bitcoin.

I’m not recapping what Bitcoin is; you can Google it yourself for technical details. And if you want an overview of the alternative currency movement in general, you can peruse Transitionistas and also check out this television program I did with Al Jazeera’s The Stream last year.

I’m most fascinated by yesterday’s paleo-media freakout on the subject of Bitcoin.

Telltale emotion

The telltale sign in any social system is when public-facing people imbued with authority suddenly become unhinged and begin showing umissable signs of emotion in their supposedly dispassionate analysis of world events. Now that Bitcoin passed the one billion mark, people who were ignoring the project a week ago now have very strong feelings about it!

Yesterday, Felix Salmon burst forth with 5000 words on the subject, as a piece of expository writing on why this novel payment scheme is such a bad idea. The essay goes from pillar to post, from discussing the role of deflation to saying that the people who have bet on bitcoin will be bitterly disappointed, to saying it smells like cabbage – the pseudo-analytical kitchen sink. Note that in not one of these 5000 words does he explore why this is happening, the growing lack of faith in the authority and reliability of dominant financial institutions. His only analysis of the emergence of Bitcoin is:

“Bitcoin has become suddenly popular in Cyprus for obvious reasons: no government can confiscate your bitcoins, or prevent you from transporting them out of the country.”

Of course, he makes no mention of the interest in Bitcoin in Finland or the United States or Australia – just countries in trouble, like Cyprus, Belarus and Ukraine. Is he asserting that only people in a state of panic see the use of this technology, and Clear Eyed Journalists At Major Publications like he are the only ones with the intellectual capacity to see past the fraud? Interesting assertion.

But Felix is concerned about the effect of Bitcoin…on democracy!

…it turns out that financial-services companies are a very important part of any democracy.

It’s because we place so much trust in banks, after all, that they are forced to take on a great deal of responsibility. Banks and central banks are given an important job to do, are regulated and scrutinized, and can be held responsible for their actions. The population of the entire country, as represented by the government, stands behind bank deposits and promises to honor them even if the bank goes bust. Money, in other words, is a key ingredient in the glue which keeps the social compact together. (What we’re seeing in Cyprus is in large part a demonstration of what happens when that compact starts becoming unglued.)

Bitcoin, in that sense, is anti democratic.

Banks and central banks can be held responsible for their actions? Excuse me while I clean the coffee I just snorted through my nose. Is this guy for real? Bernanke and Geithner were in charge of central banks prior to the greatest meltdown in history, and they were held accountable? No, they received promotions and fawning praise.

And responsible banks? In the age of Lanny Breuer, the head of criminal enforcement for the USDOJ who stated in public that he decided – in his personal wisdom – not to prosecute banks because of his own beliefs that the system would collapse if the law were to be upheld on matters of billions in fraud…that’s your system of responsibility?

To promote his stream of consciousness piece Salmon wrote:

It’s fun to watch the bitcoin bubble, but it’s also important to understand that almost no one actually wants to live in the kind of world that bitcoin enthusiasts are looking forward to. Thankfully, the rising price of bitcoins is not some kind of market signal telling us that we’re closer to that world. But at the same time, it’s certainly not something to celebrate.

You kids have had enough fun! Mr Salmon is not curious about what it all means, but he’s very certain that he knows how it will come out, and that you will prefer his vision of the future. It’s a very humble analysis, really.

Even though I don’t understand this, I’m still right

Izabella Kaminska from the Financial Times Alphaville took to writing a piece of Bitcoin based on utterly false technical understanding, mostly coming from an analyst at France’s largest bank, who – quelle surprise - is not a fan of alternative currency that bypass his institution. Exposed by another financial blogger who does understand the technology, Kaminska piroutted gracefully past her failed analysis to admit that – pax - sure, she could have done her homework – but that of course her conclusion is still correct. Because Bitcoin is risky!

I love Ms. Kaminska’s mastery of the media’s favorite technique when caught in a lack of rigor: Be quick to admit your mistake on a technicality, then immediately proceed back to claiming that your argument is still correct. Just once I want to see somebody say “You know, I have more work to do on this issue, and I’ll get back to you.”

Then again, you don’t require concise arguments or technical understanding or deep sociological insight to arrive at the conclusion to which the financial media must arrive: Any threat to the status quo puts me out of a job one day.

Why such opposition over a billion-dollar thing?

Can we have a quick reality check? We’re only talking about a billion dollars so far, which is the post-tax profit Exxon Mobil puts up in 22 days. So why the panic mode from the press?

Perhaps we can see the biases inherent in being employed by the very institutions that are on the way out. If you’re sitting in London, financed by ads from the banks themselves, the description of this group of innovations must only be seen from a negative point of view. And that is likely why otherwise decent writers find themselves stammering in the face of an undeniable trend.

By way of my own opinion, I am not a Bitcoin “enthusiast” looking to smash ideological enemies to make way for a Pirate Party-run, Bitcoin-financed global utopia. I don’t own Bitcoins and don’t care one way another whether the world turns its back on this innovation next month. I’m merely curious as to why a group of people agreeing to exchange value in a novel – and risky – way elicits such an instantaneous and inchoate response from otherwise professional analysts?

Perhaps they suspect that this story will proceed far beyond this initial billion dollars. I know I do – because this isn’t the last institutional crisis, either.

The post The glorious Bitcoin freakout of 2013 is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift

This is a portrait of my hero, Roger Ebert.

A tradesman journalist who banged out copy day after day, night after night in the great city of Chicago. He wrote his guts out and pounded booze with Mike Royko and Studs Terkel (and subsequently recovered from alcoholism in 1979).

He elevated film criticism to an artform, and was extraordinarily prolific in it until his very last days. He still wrote some 287 film critiques per year, “awake in the dark.”

He loved the Midwest. He loved America.

He loved his wife.

He got sick, and wrote about it in detail that refused to be ashamed of human frailty. They cut the bottom of his face off, and HE HAD HIS PORTRAIT DONE.

He could no longer speak, and yet his voice got LOUDER. He wrote more. Said more. Mastered Twitter. Wrote more. Wrote deeper. Made his final act his most powerful.

They say America has lost its heros. They point to our corrupt politicians, our cheating athletes.

This is my hero – a lover of words, of art, of civilization. A tradesman, a philosopher, an inspiration.

Adieu, Roger.

The post A portrait of my hero is from Eric Garland | future trend analysis, social change, economic shift