In my day…
One doesn’t necessarily expect the deepest analysis from Tom Freidman; his gift is for explaining sprawling issues to large audiences via anecdote, and he does so quite well. Even so, readers must expect more than yesterday’s op-ed:
Sometimes you wonder: Are we home alone? Obviously, the political and financial elites to whom we give authority often act on the basis of personal interests. But we still have a long way to go to get out of the mess we are in, and if our elites do not behave with a greater sense of the common good we could find our economy doing a double dip with a back flip.
Of course this is all true, but it’s also banal. It only gets worse, as Friedman bemoans the behavior of investment banks as “utterly selfish.” How else would Friedman expect banks to behave? Private institutions exist to make money while playing, generally, within certain agreed-upon boundaries; it’s the role of the government to set those boundaries.
Of course, it’s the inability of government to deal with large, long-term problems that is the difficulty. Friedman seems to believe, however, that the real problem is that the politicians we have are somehow “not adult,” that if we elected good salt-of-the-earth Senators none of these problems would have arisen.
I suppose there’s no way to disprove that counter-factual. However, it’s bizarre that Friedman completely discounts the role of institutions in shaping our political culture. One doesn’t have to look far for theories, some of the best being the role of the filibuster, 24 hour news cycle, etc etc etc. While nominally the “character” of our elected official is in our hands, it seems more relevant to focus on reforming institutions rather than making “in my day Senators and bankers knew how to sacrifice” kind of arguments.
-John
Related posts:
- Friedman and change
- The people’s court
- Is judicial activism a red herring?
- Christianity and the crash
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