I finally cross the pond tomorrow. Heading for Cambridge, London and Teddington in the UK and then off to Perugia and Rome in Italy. Get to spend 2 weeks over there so I’m very excited. See Jason and Mica and get to see my sister in Italy.

Oh yeah, and there’s that pesky thing called work that I have to do too. Stupid conferences. At least I’m an invited speaker: get the N-star treatment.

Cheers.

I’ve been asked by the few people who have taken the time to stomach some of my harsher critiques of our current form of Capitalism over the past few years whether or not I see the current financial crisis as some sort of vindication of my ideas. It has taken me some time to make a decision about that, but the short answer is: yes.

My principle argument about the self-destructive qualities of Capitalism has been many-pronged. Some of these prongs are not particularly relevant. My favorite deals with Capitalism’s requirement for unending expansion. While I think this is a perfectly valid point to consider, I can’t make a conclusive argument about its impact on today’s crisis.

The more relevant argument deals with the financial sector and the business of those who make money by dealing with money: investors, traders, speculators, etc. The core problem I have run into when talking about this with those who either aspire to become a participant in the financial sector, or with those who are simply admirers who hope to benefit from these practices now or at some point in the future is the claim that it is more complex than it could possibly look from the outside, and those who are not practicing cannot possibly understand its importance. This argument to me is akin to the religious argument that God works in mysterious ways and His truth, goodness, and existence is thereby unquestionable; an absurd justification, in my opinion.

So, speaking from the outside, the practices of the financial industry are self-destructive for the following reason.

The basic idea on Wall Street is to produce money by moving money. I’ve heard the phrase “you need money to make money” repeated without the batting of an eye by many respectable and intelligent people in my life, and this surprises me greatly. Currency is nothing more than the universal equivalent. In some economic epochs it has been an equivalent for goods more generally, and to some degree that is still the case. But more specifically in Capitalism it is the universal equivalent for productive labor hours. At its core the game in the financial industry is to create the equivalent using only more of the equivalent, without producing goods and without engaging in productive labor. This is not a complicated idea and no amount of business schooling or time spent engaging in this behavior can make it more complicated or less absurd. If there is any practice that this can be related to in a glorified fashion it is gambling. I’ve gambled a bit in my life and certainly wouldn’t mind winning the Powerball, but I could never convince myself or anyone else that going to the tracks, studying the horses and making a correct educated guess about investing money in a winning horse is in any way a productive activity. Now nobody at the tracks or on the Vegas strip is going to contribute to the collapse of major economies. However, it is the same activity that is the driving force of the industry whose success or failure correlates directly into the success or failure of world economies.

Now I don’t think this crisis is the end of Capitalism. Or even that any part of this world is ready for a major overhaul of the principle underpinnings of our economic systems. Those who know me know I am an admirer of Marx, Engles, and to some degree, Hegel. However as with any philosophy there are parts to appreciate and parts to call outdated and parts to dismiss on their own absurdity regardless of timeframe. Being a critic of Capitalism does not mean that feeling vindicated today makes me happy, or that it makes me search for that sickle I must have hidden away somewhere to head out to behead the fat-cat Capitalists and lead a revolution. Many radical socialists or communists have been revolutionaries; I am not. I hope that the crisis, whether or not it continues, allows people to open their eyes to some of the self-destructive qualities of our society, and allows them to get over fear of outdated catch phrases and misunderstood notions dealing with the big bad word: Socialism.