No Country for Old Anybody

I don't like predictions because predictions affect expectations and expectations affect outcomes. Judging from that you might think that I believe in positive thinking and creative visualization and such but I don't, though I prefer anything to pessimism. I'm trying to figure out what I do believe in and it's probably incremental change, with feedback, in the direction of good outcomes.

What an appealing title. And it makes a nice, knotty acronym if you want to try it. There are always assumptions, sometimes hidden, underlying everything, which is where the trouble usually starts. The assumption of rational markets is a notorious failure. And the assumption of rational actors within markets. And the self-correcting thing. What next? That people prefer pain to pleasure? 

Maybe. You have to wonder when you witness the American people voting themselves a heap of hurt, even when the hurt is almost immediate and the causal mechanisms are clear. When the recipients of social services vote against those services, for example, probably from an instinct for comparative disadvantage, meaning that other people they don't like will be hurt more. 

If this sounds sick to you I won't argue the point. Then consider longer term examples with less clear causal mechanisms, such as the case of the care and feeding of aging baby-boomers. I think we're heading for a crash on this one, unnecessarily. The good intent isn't even there. In fact there are people in power who seem to want to deprive the boomers of their security.

When it could be easily ensured through incremental means starting now, but there isn't the collective will. It makes me want to move to Scandinavia. They must have internet dating sites there, maybe I can marry a Swede and get citizenship. Shit, I better lose some weight, if I want to marry a sexy Scandinavian, but I'm motivated, by this, my new retirement plan. Good-bye, cruel, American world!