Private Parts

When I first glanced at Andrew Keen’s article on internet privacy I was more than intrigued. Keen was writing in an excellent publication, Wired, and was addressing the loss of privacy that occurs when more and more people share more and more of their personal information on line. Link here.

We need more people in our culture defending privacy and explaining its value.

If you lose your privacy, if you have it compromised, or if you sacrifice it to whatever cause seems good to you, you will end up in very serious difficulty.

Undoubtedly, this is a major social problem. But Keen adopts a conspiratorial tone when he suggests that a bunch of entrepreneurial hucksters in Silicon Valley are stealing our privacy from us. Such a tone forces his argument and makes it unpersuasive.

Many people mind find internet marketing and advertising to be intrusive. If people can discover what you have purchased online, whether at Amazon or at Soap.com, they know something about your personal habits and preferences.

Then, they can use the information to send you notices and announcements about new products and services that are suited to your habits and predilections.

I am not ready to call this a breach of your privacy, mostly because I do not see that it is ultimately that important for someone to know whether you prefer Colgate or Crest.

But maybe that’s just me.

What happens in internet marketing feels a bit like what used to happen when you had a favorite salesperson at Saks or Barney’s. That person knew what you liked and needed. When a garment arrived in the store that would suit you especially well, you would be among the first to receive a call.

Effectively, it is a similar, if not the same, principle.

It also has something in common with television advertising. The cost of the cable notwithstanding, we do not pay to watch most television shows. Network television is provided to us for free.

Of course, we are paying with our time and with our attention. We are paying by allowing ourselves to be exposed to a message from the people who are paying for our access to television programs.

Advertisers pay for television because they want to pitch their products at us. Why else would they want to do us the favor of treating us to free television shows?

You might think that this is intrusive. You might even think that the Budweiser ad is something of an invasion of your privacy. In that case you can subscribe to one of the fee-based networks, like HBO, and escape advertisers altogether.

Like it or not, it is not a moral failing. It is the way of commerce. Someone has to pay for the content you watch on television; those who pay for your television shows want to receive something in return: your attention. Or else, a chance to do business with you.

Similarly, much of what happens on the internet is free. It costs nothing to search Google or to use Facebook. These sites provide a free service. In return they expose us to advertisements and they gather information about us.

By allowing ourselves to be exposed to these minor indignities-- if you want to call them that-- we are, effectively, paying for the use of these services.

It makes no sense to think that someone ought to be giving them away for free.

It might feel like fun or like play, but when we use Google or Facebook, we are engaging in commerce.

If you don’t want Mark Zuckerberg to know about your tastes, then don’t go on to Facebook. Today it is virtually impossible for many people to avoid Facebook, but perhaps one day there will be a new business model where you pay Facebook for access and prohibit it from selling any of your information or trying to pitch any products.

Online shopping is enormously convenient. Yet, the choices you make when you are trolling through Amazon are not in the realm of strictly private information. Any more than it is private information when you go to the supermarket and stop before the display of paper towels. When you are looking online for the best deal on a blender or the perfect shampoo your searches are not exactly private information. As part of a commercial transaction, they are, at the least, borderline public information.

Something quite different happens when you reveal details about your private life on Facebook.

When you do so you are making a free choice. You can, fairly obviously, able to reveal as little or as much as you wish.

If you decide to regale your 4,000 closest friends with pictures of your private parts, or if you otherwise compromise your privacy, it is not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault.

For my part I find that most young people reveal too much about themselves and do not understand the consequences of their actions. I am not merely referring to the practice of adolescent sexting.

One might ask where people have learned about the joys of moral exhibitionism. And why do they feel that it is right and proper to confess and reveal every intimate fact about their lives.

In my view, the answer must lie in the influence of our therapy culture. Therapy asserts the value of the free and open expression of feelings. And feelings are private, intimate things.

Therapy has even managed to convince people that it is essential to their mental and physical health to allow their private feelings hang out in public.

If our culture valued decorum and propriety and modesty, then perhaps, young people would not respond to the siren song of Facebook and Twitter by revealing more about themselves than anyone really wants to know.

There are aspects of our culture that have devalued privacy. Blaming it on Facebook absolves the individuals who are freely exposing more of themselves than need be.

If Keen is saying that too much promiscuous self-exposure is a bad thing, then I would agree. If he is saying that an impulse toward socialization is responsible for this trend, then I would demur. Revealing too much of your intimacy does not make you more social; it makes you more asocial.

People who reveal too much have more difficulty making and keeping friends, commanding respect , and being trusted. No one is going to confide in you for very long if you cannot keep a secret.

In some ways social media can be a tool for socialization, or for personal branding, or for personal marketing. Once it becomes overused, it becomes the enemy of socialization.

Unfortunately, Keen goes awry when he takes his argument too far. He is wrong to say that there is something intrinsically wrong about being social or sociable.

Keen is wrong when he says: “Today's digital social network is a trap. Today's cult of the social, peddled by an unholy alliance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and communitarian idealists, is rooted in a misunderstanding of the human condition. The truth is that we aren't naturally social beings. Instead, as Vermeer reminds us in The Woman in Blue, human happiness is really about being left alone.”

Keen would have done better to take a lesson from Aristotle. As the philosopher said, there is no such thing as a human being living alone, in isolation from other human beings. As he wrote in his Politics: “… the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors.”

Far from representing the essence of human happiness, being left alone can involve being ignored, being marginalized, and being rejected.

Moreover, the truth of human nature cannot be found in a painting by Vermeer, any more than it can be found in a play by Sophocles.

The Vermeer captures a poignant moment in a woman’s life. To be alone at that moment, to enjoy one’s privacy without sharing it with anyone… such is fundamental to human sociability. If all of you is exposed, then you would lose the ability to manage your relationships by exposing a little or a lot to this or that person.

But the Vermeer is not the truth of human nature any more than King Oedipus’ murdering his father and marrying his mother is the truth of human motivation.

Political Leadership in Action

If you turn on the evening news you will discover that Barack Obame believes that he can create jobs by prancing around the country doing photo-ops. For him being a leader involves showing up at a factory or two, calling for more government spending, and hobnobbing with Silicon Valley execs.

Obama has left a leadership void. Now, it is being filled by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

The new center of political gravity is in Trenton, New Jersey. Go figure.

Leading a markedly blue state, with a Democratic legislature, Christie has not just balanced the budget without raising taxes. He has also followed Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in standing up to public employee labor unions.

Remember when Democratic lawmakers across the nation were quivering at the thought of facing an angry voter or two at a town hall meeting? Remember when they were canceling open meetings be because they were afraid to face their constituents?

All the while, Chris Christie was out doing town hall meetings with angry voters. He was not ducking confrontations; he was facing down his detractors, looking them in the eye, and telling them the truth, straight up.

To those who discovered Christie on Youtube videos, it was as though someone was finally treating Americans like adults. More than that, Christie was not pandering; was not holding a finger up to the wind to see which way the special interests were blowing. He meant what he said and said what he meant.

Next to the preening of Barack Obama it was a breath of fresh air. People responded favorably. Other governors, facing similar fiscal trainwrecks, followed Christie’s lead.

Whether or not they ran on his platform, many governors have been emboldened by Christie to face their fiscal crisis head on.

Let’s call the other governors: Christie lite.

Even Andrew Cuomo in New York decided to get tough about the deficit. John Kasich in Ohio is gearing up for a fight against the teachers’ unions. Scott Walker in Wisconsin decided that to face down the teachers’ unions and has unleashed a firestorm of incivility that is worthy of Greece.

When it comes to incivility, labor unions make the Tea Party look like… a tea party.

When it comes to fiscal discipline, Barack Obama has been AWOL. So, Chris Christie filled the vacuum with his outsized persona, his pugnacious attitude, and his courage in facing down any and all comers.

Chris Christie does not exercise leadership by telling the other governors what to do. He has no power or authority over the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, or New York.

Christie is a leader because others are following his example. In many ways, this is the essence of great leadership: when people follow your lead even though they don’t have to.

For some time now I have been reporting on the Christie phenomenon. I am also among those who would very much like to see him run for president.

Christie might think that he is not ready, but the real issue is whether the country is ready.

Anyway, leadership is about substance more than about style. Before Chris Christie became a Youtube sensation, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels had effected similar reforms in his state, without all of the sound and the fury. Of course, Indiana is a red state, so the pushback was milder than in places like Wisconsin, or even Ohio.

In today’s Wall Street Journal  Peggy Noonan argues, persuasively, that Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie are providing, from their statehouses, the kind of leadership that national leaders have not been providing. Link here.

To show what she means, she offers two remarkable speeches, both of which were delivered in Washington in the past week, by the two governors, to conservative audiences.

As you know, Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, and thus, is especially well qualified to comment on the art of speechmaking.

As she puts it: “There were two big speeches this week, and I mean big as in ‘Modern political history will remember this.’ Together they signal something significant and promising. Oh, that's a stuffy way to put it. I mean: The governors are rising and are starting to lead. What a relief. It's like seeing the posse come over the hill.”

She is referring first, to the speech that Mitch Daniels gave before CPAC… which I linked and commented on here.

And she is referring, second, to Chris Christie’s speech to the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday. Link here.

If you have not yet had the chance to read them, they represent some very serious thinking about our current economic problems, and offer some serious solutions to those problems.

I would add that both speeches have deftly stepped beyond politics. Meaning that both governors are positioning themselves to lead a nation, not a party.

Terror and Savagery in Cairo

Presidents are in the business of creating narratives that make them look like they are in charge and that all is well. Almost always, they portray themselves as accomplished, competent, and, dare I say, presidential.

Thus, Barack Obama, commenting on the events in Cairo in his February 15 press conference, gave himself high grades for his handling of the crisis in Egypt: “And at each juncture I think we calibrated it just about right. And I would suggest that part of the test is that what we ended up seeing was a peaceful transition, relatively little violence, and relatively little, if any, anti-American sentiment, or anti-Israel sentiment, or anti-Western sentiment. And I think that testifies the fact that in a complicated situation, we got it about right.”

Oh, really. Now let’s try to explain that to Lara Logan.

Logan was sexually assaulted by a mob that knew that she was an American journalist; the mob was yelling out and treating her as though she were a Jew. If that does not represent anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-democratic sentiment, I wouldn't want to imagine what does.

It is inaccurate to see this as “only” a horrifying criminal act; it was also a political statement. The mob was saying something to the world, and what it was saying contradicts Obama’s optimistic narrative about a "peaceful transition."

What motivated the protests in Tahrir Square? Perhaps it was a desire for freedom and dignity. But there was also a full expression of raw hatred. The mob hated Americans, hated Jews, and hated women. Does this feel like the dawning of an era that we should welcome?

After all, Hosni Mubarak was an American ally; he had sustained a peace treaty with Israel; and he had outlawed female genital mutilation.

One cannot ignore the fact that those who were rising up against Mubarak were also expressing hatred for what he stood for and for the allies he had defended.

It is normal not to want to look at or even imagine what happened to Lara Logan. Surely, it was an act of exceptional savagery, and, when faced with such actions, we normally look away. But that does not excuse us from the need to try to grasp the act as a cultural statement.

As the story is now being told, Logan was separated from her security by a mob, was violently assaulted for 20 to 30 minutes, and was then rescued by a group of Egyptian woman and Army soldiers.

Look at this a little more closely. Reports suggest that Logan was attacked by a group of 200 men.

This means that it was not just a dozen or so gang members. The group coalesced and organized spontaneously to express their rage against an American woman journalist, one whom they thought was Jewish.

To the mob, Lara Logan represented everything that it hated about the Mubarak regime.

Tragically, violent sexual assault against women has always been a weapon of war. What distinguishes the men who assaulted Logan was that they did it in a public square, knowing that the news would be published far and wide.

They were not trying to hide their crimes. They were not worried about being punished. In truth, they were proud of what they did; they were making violent sexual assault into a political statement, one that they wanted the world to hear.

They were not just commiting an act of savagery; they were committing an act of terrorism.

I may be uninformed, but I do not recall another mass public demonstration where a woman has been subjected to a violent sexual assault in public.

Of course, Barack Obama said yesterday that he wants the perpetrators to be brought to justice. If Obama sees it as a matter of justice, then, as I see it, that increases the chances that he is talking about an act of terrorism.

Clearly, the reality of what happened to Lara Logan is beyond what any of us want to imagine. Yet, we gain nothing when we cover it all up by saying that it was a victory for feminism. So says Rachel Larimore when she explains that since Egyptian women accompanied Egyptian troops to rescue Logan, that the future looks brighter for Egyptian women.

Larimore wants to see it through the prism of a rescue narrative, but, reality suggests that rescue, such as it was, was too little too late.

Stop for a moment and contemplate the monstrous fact that it took between 20 and 30 minutes to break through the mob. And that assumes that the women and soldiers in the square tried to reach Logan immediately.

It's possible that they were too afraid to attack the mob. It is also possible that after 20 or 30 minutes the mob started breaking up, thus making rescue possible.

As horrifying as it is to contemplate, we must recognize that 20 to 30 minutes is an extremely long time to be subjected to a violent sexual assault. Calling it savagery seems to me to be the minimum.

We are not talking about an act that took a couple of seconds or a couple of minutes. That would have been sufficiently gruesome in and of itself. But 20 to 30 minutes is an eternity.

If you are still tempted to believe Obama’s rosy scenario about what happened in Cairo, and if you want to classify the assault on Lara Logan as an extreme form of a crime that is committed every day, then I would recommend that you read Lloyd Grove’s interview with wealthy and influential Egyptian businessman, Shafik Gabr. Link here.

As the world’s attention shifts to Bahrain and Libya, Gabr reports that Egypt is verging on anarchy and that foreign terrorists from Hamas and Hezbollah have entered the country and are trying to use the turmoil to advance their own goals.

Grove reports his interview with Gabr: “’There was a serious plan to scare the populace, no question about it,’ he [Gabr] said. ‘There was a huge number of police stations that were torched all at the same time, all in the same manner. I cannot attribute it to any party. I can say very honestly that there were factors playing a major role beyond the youths in Tahrir Square, to torch, attack, break cells in the prisons for prisoners to be released, to steal police uniforms, to steal armaments, in the very same exact manner across Egypt, not just Cairo. And that requires planning. It’s almost like one of those movies where you have sleeper cells.’”

Do you still believe that we are watching a peaceful transition with relatively little violence?

Lara Logan Was Sexually Assaulted in Tahrir Square

Apparently, there was more to the festivities surrounding the fall of Mubarak than we knew at the time. Last night we learned that CBS reporter Lara Logan had been beaten and sexually assaulted by a gang in the midst of all the celebratory mayhem.

Clearly, it was news. Just as clearly, it should have been reported sooner. As  Richard Cohen says in the Washington Post: “As I'm sure even Logan would admit, the sexual assault of woman by a mob in the middle of a public square is a story. It is particularly a story because the crowd in Tahrir Square was almost invariably characterized as friendly and out for nothing but democracy. In fact, some of the television correspondents acted as if they were reporting from Times Square on New Year's Eve, stopping only at putting on a party hat. In those circumstances, a mass the sexual assault in what amount to the nighttime version of broad daylight is certainly worth reporting.” Link here.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the assault lasted between 20 and 30 minutes, and that it was not a rape. Logan was rescued by a group of Egyptian women and soldiers from the Egyptian Army. Link here.

But was this assault significant? Writing on the DoubleX blog Rachel Larimore suggests that it might be a bad omen for Egyptian women. Link here.

One hopes that Larimore was not so completely caught up in the celebration that she neglected to examine the current conditions of Muslim women living in Egypt.

As I have blogged before, Egyptian culture requires that nearly all Muslim women suffer genital mutilation. And a solid majority of Egyptian Muslims would like to live under Shariah law.

Under that regime, a woman who has been sexually assaulted has nearly no chance of accusing any man of rape. If she comes forth, she will most often be condemned as a whore.

It should also be noted, again, that the Mubarak regime had outlawed the practice and that religious leaders from all Egyptian communities had condemned it.

Still and all, it continues, as a cultural practice, in defiance of the law.

As most of us know,  girls are forced, often by their mothers, to undergo this savagery, because, in Egyptian Islamic culture, it is a precondition for finding a husband.

Why is it necessary to excise a girl’s clitoris? The reason must be that a woman who is apt to experience sexual pleasure cannot be trusted to remain chaste, either before or during marriage.

A woman who has not been deprived of her ability to experience such pleasure would be counted, by such a culture, as a whore.

And once a woman is identified as a whore, wouldn't that make it more like that an Egyptian Muslim feel that he has the right to assault her?

No one is going to be punished for sexually assaulting Lara Logan.

A sexual assault is not like any other assault. While other journalists were beaten in Tahrir Square, often brutally, no other one was sexually assaulted by a mob.

This leads to another issue, one that everyone has been avoiding. Should Lara Logan, mother of a small child, have put herself in such a dangerous situation? There is a difference between courageous and foolhardy.

Worse yet, should her producers have assigned her to cover the events in Tahrir Square once they understood how violent it was.

For our culture the issue is: should a woman be able to do anything and everything that a man can do? Is that what it means to achieve gender equality?

Of course, there’s nothing about gender that would make it impossible for a woman to be a war correspondent. We are not talking about situations where requirements have to be changed in order to find places for women.

One may seek gender equality by requiring the fire department to change its physical exam in order to make it something that a woman can pass. But then, ask yourself whether you want that woman or a much stronger man to be responsible to rescuing your child from a burning house.

When it comes to female war correspondents, we know that these women are at great risk of sexual assault. Few talk about it because they feel that if they did they would not be allowed to do their jobs. Link here.

At the slight risk of sounding sexist, how many husbands would want their wives to go off to a war zone if they knew that their wives would very likely be sexually assaulted?

Or, how many fathers would want their daughters to pursue such a career path if they knew the risk?

Given the state of our culture, I am sure that many people will answer that husbands and fathers should not have a say in what career path a woman chooses to pursue. Of course, given that she is the mother of a child, and given that any harm that befalls her will hurt her child, should her husband have any say in these matters?

After all, an autonomous independent woman like Lara Logan makes her own decisions.

If a woman’s actions increase the likelihood that she will be hurt, who would fail to warn her. And what is the distance between issuing a warning and trying to prevent her from doing something that entails far too much risk.

Then again, if a man believes that a woman should be under his protection, does this make him a tool of the patriarchy, wanting only to oppress the woman?

Or are the women who choose to take extreme risks in order to show that they can do anything a man can do sacrificing themselves for a cause?

I recognize that this sounds paternalistic. But is it paternalistic to recognize that women have a specific vulnerability to certain crimes, coupled with a relatively weak physique? One might say that I am being realistic.

If we are to think through these issues, we need to know that Logan’s decision was not autonomous and independent. Feminism notwithstanding, no wife and mother undertakes such a task without hearing what her husband has to say about it. Beyond that, producers at CBS had to agree to it, though if they had refused to send her into Tahrir Square they might have been hit with a gender discrimination suit.

But once the producers agree to Logan's assignment, then they are responsible for protecting her and providing her with security?

Is it paternalistic to expect that they would do everything in their power to protect their correspondent? And is it fair to say that they bear some measure of responsibility for what happened to her?

If they could not assure her safety, they should not have allowed her to go out there.

Traditionally, any serious definition of masculine behavior begins with the idea that men are charged, as a primary moral responsibility, to protect and provide for women.

Our politically correct culture has proclaimed this to be a prejudicial anachronism, but it persists in the emotional core of all human males.

If a man’s wife or daughter is sexually assaulted, he will feel in some way responsible, regardless of the circumstances. If she is injured he will feel that he failed in a primary moral duty, to protect her.

Human emotion does not ply itself to the demands of political correctness.

If men abrogate their role as protector of women, does that mean that they care so much about women that they respect their freedom and independence or does it mean that they do not especially care what happens to women?

Multiculturalism in the American Army

The War on Islamic terror notwithstanding, the U. S. Army systematically ignored Major Nidal Hasan’s Islamist extremism up until, and even after, he shouted: “Allahu Akbar” and gunned down thirteen people at Fort Hood.

Fortunately for us all, Dorothy Rabinowitz is on the case. Today she offers a look at the report filed by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, report which expressed shock and dismay at the willful blindness of the American military. Link here.

In Rabinowitz’ words: “In this report, titled ‘A Ticking Time Bomb‘ and put out by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, there is a detail as dazzling in its bleak way as all the glowing misrepresentations of Dr. Hasan's skills and character, which his superiors poured into their evaluations of him. It concerns the Department of Defense's official report on the Foot Hood killings—a study whose recital of fact made no mention of Hasan's well-documented jihadist sympathies. Subsequent DoD memoranda portray the bloodbath—which began with Hasan shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’—as a kind of undefined extremism, something on the order, perhaps, of work-place violence.”

The technical term for this is censorship. It represents a systematic repression of inconvenient details. And it was committed by the American military. And, as Rabinowitz notes, it was not some accidental oversight; it was policy.

Shouldn’t Robert Gates have to answer for this?

In the meantime, Rabinowitz concludes that multiculturalism has infected the mind of the American military.

It has been there for quite some time. While many soldiers were out fighting against Islamic extremists, other parts of the military were ignoring a threat from within their own ranks.

Describing evaluations of Maj. Hasan, she writes: “Some of those enthusiastic testaments strongly suggested that the writers were themselves at least partly persuaded of their reasoning. In magical thinking, safety and good come to those who obey taboos, and in the multiculturalist world, there is no taboo more powerful than the one that forbids acknowledgment of realities not in keeping with the progressive vision. In the world of the politically correct—which can apparently include places where psychiatrists are taught—magical thinking reigns.”

Not only did the military overlook Hasan’s overt sympathies with Islamic terrorisms, but it praised him for them. The military saw Hasan as a special kind of Muslim, one who, by flaunting his jihadi sentiments, was really providing the Army with a special insight into the mind of a Muslim radical.

Rabinowitz writes: “Here was a world in which Hasan was untouchable, in which all that was grim and disturbing in him was transformed. He was a consistently mediocre performer, ranking in the lowest 25% of his class, but to his evaluators, he was an officer of unique talents.

“He was a star not simply because he was a Muslim, but because he was a special kind—the sort who posed, in his flaunting of jihadist sympathies, the most extreme test of liberal toleration. Exactly the kind the progressive heart finds irresistible.”

Imagine yourself in Hasan’s shoes. Do you think he could respect an institution that could be so completely deluded about what he was saying? Might he not have believed that he was striking a blow against a decadent culture, one that was so mentally weak that it could not even bring itself to name its enemy?

The War Against Manufacturing

In the comments to yesterday's post David Foster kindly linked to a column he wrote last year on the Chicago Boyz blog. Entitled, "Faux Manufacturing Nostalgia," it offers an excellent overview of the war that has been waged against manufacturing and industry since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Link here.

Can the Economy Be Saved by Dirt?

It’s easy enough to talk about wealth creation; it’s far more difficult to create wealth. This is even more true for people who live in a culture that values meaningful experience over industry and hard work.

So says David Brooks today in The New York Times, in a must-read column. Link here.

As Brooks sees us, we believe that the good life involves aesthetically pleasing and ethereal pursuits. We are more interested in good, clean fun, than in hard work. We are convinced that once we purge the system of waste and corruption the economy will once again become an engine of growth.

How many Americans were scandalized, even horrified, by the Tiger Mom because she did not seem to allow her children to have the kinds of fun experiences that are now our birthright?

In many ways today’s America feels contented and complacent. Most people believe that the worst of the financial crisis is behind us, and that we should now get ready for a new prosperity.

Brooks' meditation on these themes is based on a recent ebook by Tyler Cowen: The Great Stagnation.

As Cowen and Brooks see it, Americans have overcome the “materialist mind-set” that identified happiness with hard work and wealth creation.

We have come to believe that technology allows us to live better and more meaningful lives without really creating very much new wealth.

We sit around complaining about the rise of the new China, but we are not really willing to revive the now-dormant Protestant work ethic.

Brooks is entirely correct to see that our pundits, prophets, and public intellectuals have produced this shift in cultural values. A culture that excoriates the Tiger Mom for child abuse is hardly ready to compete against China and India.

To make his point, Brooks creates a thirtysomething fictional character and names him Jared.

Jared’s grandfather was an entrepreneur. He founded a company that built brake systems; thus, he created wealth and employment,

Jared organizes conferences that promote lifelong learning and blogs about modern art.

Jared sells experiences, and enjoys his life. Yet, he does not produce very much wealth and his work does not create very many downstream jobs.

Brooks writes: “As Cowen notes in his book, the automobile industry produced millions of jobs, but Facebook employs about 2,000, Twitter 300 and eBay about 17,000. It takes only 14,000 employees to make and sell iPods, but that device also eliminates jobs for those people who make and distribute CDs, potentially leading to net job losses.”

Jared is worried that his work his not producing very many jobs. “He also worries that the Chinese and others have a material drive that he and his cohort lacks. But he’s not changing. For the past few decades, Americans have devoted more of their energies to postmaterial arenas and less and less, for better and worse, to the sheer production of wealth.”

How did the Jareds of this world learn their dysfunctional value system? Brooks sees that the fault lying in the educational system: “During these years, commencement speakers have urged students to seek meaning and not money. Many people, it turns out, were listening.”

Of course, commencement speakers represent all of the educators who have taught these values to the students in their classes.

It almost feels as though the younger generation has been drugged. Young people care primarily about how things feel. When they discover that they are losing out, they refuse to accept the verdict of reality.

A generation that knows that its approach is not working, refuses to change. In highlighting this point, Brooks points to a culture that discards pragmatic considerations, like trial-and-error.

As Cowen and Brooks point out, we have also come to believe that we are so rich in meaningful experience that we do not have to worry about paying for things.

Therefore we live beyond our means; the government lives beyond its means; and we assume that we will receive some kind of ultimate reward for having discovered how best to enjoy a life that is not burdened with excessive labor.

Changing the culture and its values is no small task. That does not prevent me from offering a few ideas for how we might restore the value of wealth creation.

I recommend that we focus less on the ethereal world of great ideas and technological innovation, and get back to basics. I believe that the cure to our problems lies in: DIRT.

We are so obsessed with being clean-- as in clean energy-- that we have overlooked the fact that the energy business is dirty. We know that we need to rebuild our infrastructure, tunnels, roads, and bridges, but building infrastructure is a dirty business.

Even the food that we eat comes to us from ... dirt.

When I say that DIRT will set us free, I envision a world where people value mining and agriculture.

Please do not imagine that I am recommending even more government stimulus spending. The first Obama stimulus talked about infrastructure spending without delivering much of any.

The private economy is more than capable of rebuilding America and feeding the world. It would be doing more of it today if the government had not gotten into the business of crippling it with regulations and lawsuits, the better to make it all look and feel clean.

The world is short of food. Food riots are breaking out. The prices of farm commodities are shooting up.

What is the American response? In California, the courts have shut down one of the nation’s most fertile farmlands in order to protect a three-inch long smelt.

Victor Davis Hanson explains: “On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border. Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.”

He continues: “What an anomaly — with suddenly soaring farm prices, still we have thousands of acres in the world’s richest agricultural belt, with available water on the east side of the valley and plentiful labor, gone idle or in disuse. Is credit frozen? Are there simply no more farmers? Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs?” Link here.

Of course, this story has not been hidden from public view. Everyone knows about it. The problem is: No one much cares. There could not be a better example of our dysfunctional value system.

At a time when agricultural commodities are becoming increasingly expensive, why kind of mindset shuts down agriculture in order to feel good about the environment.

Our energy infrastructure is not in very good shape. Recently, Texans were forced to deal with rolling blackouts. Other parts of the country have had blackouts. Surely, many more are to follow.

America has gotten itself into the position where it is not going to be able to provide enough energy to keep the country moving.

For those who think that we should build new factories and gin up our manufacturing base, where do they think the energy is going to come from?

Windmills?

A serious country, a country that wants to get to work, would have already started building nuclear and coal generating power plants. Not just one or two here and there, but dozens, everywhere.

In America we cannot do what France and Japan have done because we have given too much power to the environmental lobby, lawyers, and regulators.

Again, as long as we can all feel clean, and can join together to bemoan the lack of clean energy alternatives, we do not really seem to care.

American do not even think that they need to build nuclear power plants. They seem to believe that we can all go green and produce the energy that we need. Solar panels and windmills... that's the ticket!

Better yet, we are trying to aggravate both the energy and the food problem by pretending that food is energy. So, we are burning corn, driving up the price of food around the world, because believe that ethanol is the solution to all of our energy problems.

If you don’t believe David Brooks or me, take a look at what the markets are telling us.

We are living through a great secular bull market in commodities. It began around ten years ago and still seems to have many years to run.

You cannot say the same for the technology heavy Nasdaq. While the prices of gold and copper and wheat and corn have been flying, the Nasdaq, over the past eleven years, is down more than 40% from its 2000 high.

Sometimes reality tries to tell you something. It’s always a good idea to listen.