Dana Blankenhorn

The Age of Human Capital

The 20^th century was dominated by resource capitalism. The great wars of that century were all built around a desire of great powers for direct access to natural resources – coal, gold, diamonds, and most especially oil.

The crisis we have just passed through, the one that began with the economic collapse of 2008 and the election of Barack Obama, is the last paroxysm of this old order.

Oil’s control of our economy is fading, just as manufacturing faded in the 1970s, production economics faded in the 1930s, and unregulated monopoly faded in the 1890s.

What is Money?

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 37 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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On my new beat, at Seeking Alpha and TheStreet.Com, people talk about money all the time.

Money is, in fact, the great mystery of my working life. What is it?

Is gold money? Is a dollar money? What makes them money?

What makes them money is that they're a store of value people understand and accept. There's an assumption that if the world comes crashing down tomorrow people with gold will have money but people with paper won't.

I no longer think that's right, because the only value gold can store is excess value, and if there's no excess value to store it's not money.

England and the Threat from Immigration

When Americans think of a “threat” from immigration, we are thinking demographically. (Click below to meet the two gentlemen to the right.)

We think, rationally or not, of millions of low-skill workers, either taking public services from us or low-wage jobs. “They're too lazy to work. They're stealing our jobs.” 

England is a completely other country, especially in its politics, and I sometimes wondered why until I came across the story of Yougov.

I was mainly looking for an interesting Seeking Alpha story, some hidden gem that just reported earnings. That's not Yougov.

Oh, it is of some mild interest that they're buying up U.S. market research outfits like Harrison Group and Definitive Insights, so that it now has more employees here than in Old Blighty.

Unemployment and Mexicanization

Here's something no conservative will tell you.

There is no such thing as unemployment. Not in America.

There is, instead, a mismatch among our skills, our expectations, and the political value of work.

Go into a restaurant. Order lunch. Now, if you can, go into the kitchen. Chances are most of the people there will be Mexicans – cooks, dishwashers, everyone behind the scenes. Mexicans probably butchered your meat, picked the vegetables on your plate, packed the fruit. It's likely they, or their Central American brothers and sisters, mowed your lawn today, and wiped the butt of your aging mother in her nursing home. They may be caring for your kids right now.

Mexican labor is everywhere. Wherever there are employers who want to exploit workers in order to increase profits and keep prices down, you'll find Mexican labor. In Europe, it's Turkish and Serbian labor. In Japan, Philippine or Chinese labor.

It's not an immigration problem. It's a market problem. Employers aren't paying wages Americans will accept. If Americans took those wages they'd be living like Mexicans.

But when you drive labor costs down, you degrade the market you're selling to.

Mbeki Ate My Book

Regular readers may wonder why you haven't seen any fiction here for a long time.

The reason is Thabo Mbeki.

When I began The Chinese Century, then The American Diaspora, I was trying to distance myself from the reality around me, and building (in my mind) a different kind of utopia on a foreign shore. I recognized that from the start, but it didn't stop me. When I picked up The Duke of Oil it was with the intention of finishing that story out, embracing the idea of a different energy future and tracking the fall of the Bush Administration characters who had brought us to this end.

But as I wrote the idea of a South African utopia, as opposed to the dystopian reality, became less and less possible to me.

The reason was Thabo Mbeki.

The American Disease

I have no scientific proof of this, but I have long believed ADHD to be the American Disease.

Up to 5% of Americans are diagnosed with ADHD. I'm one of them. I'm creative, I'm quick, I tend to being a polymath. I also have trouble finishing anything longer than a blog post, I'm quick to anger, and I have enormous trouble concentrating on anything I'm told I have to concentrate on (as opposed to what I want to concentrate on). I am very difficult to compel.

In other words, I am both hyper-focused and distractable, I can be charming but I'm prone to depression. These are symptoms typical of what I call "male" ADHD, the kind you hear about and read about most often. I have likened it, most popularly, to having Robin Williams in my head. (This also brings a tendency to self-medicate. Robin's had two stints in rehab.)

There is another kind of ADHD, which may be dramatically under-diagnosed. I learned about it from my daughter. I call it "female" ADHD. In this version you become Robin's audience. You're lost in your own world, and breaking out into the real world can be a struggle. This often comes with learning disabilities -- dyslexia in my daughter's case.

So why do I call this the American disease? Partly because very few Europeans have it. To many Europeans this proves Americans are making the whole thing up. But think about it. If you were living in, say Germany or Italy 100 years ago, or in Ireland or Scotland 200 years ago, or in England 300 years ago, and you had ADHD, what's the first thing you'd think of doing?

Right, getting the heck out of there. Going to America.

This Week's Clue: Parti le Confédéré

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 26  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of July 2.

Enjoy.

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It is very seldom that national parties collapse. The most recent such event I can recall is the collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada,  which ceased to exist as a national force in 1993. A successor party finally came to power last year.

Usually, failed national parties go through a long period of reform and come back wearing new clothes. This is what Labour did under Tony Blair. It's what the nation's Conservatives are now trying to do under David Cameron.

But can that happen when the party in question finds itself isolated to a regional base, more important to an ethnic base? That's what is happening to the Republican Party, which is devolving into something like Canada's Parti Quebecois, only based in the old Southern Confederacy. (To the right, that party's favorite for the Presidency.)

In the Midwest, farmers are abandoning Republicanism. The Mountain West is suddenly friendly toward Democrats. The Midwest sees Republicans on the run in most every state. The party is nearly extinct in the Northeast. On the West Coast, only Alaska remains GOP country, and that party may soon be speaking from inside a jail cell. Republicans who succeed outside the Confederacy  (like Arnold Schwarzenegger) do so only by leaning into the prevailing Democratic thesis, accepting its premises and seeking moderation.

But in the old Confederacy, and especially in the Deep South, where I live, the Republican Party is advancing across a broad front. In Georgia's 10th CD, for instance, Democrats didn't even make the run-off. Mississippi is now seen as a model for Republican governance, a model Louisiana seems anxious to emulate. In Florida and Tennessee, the Republican Party is strong, in South Carolina and Texas it's dominant, and everywhere else in the South it is competitive.

Outside the old Confederacy, this is just not the case. And one can argue that some of the party's dominance in the South is attributable to Washington largesse, largesse you can expect to be pulled by a future Democratic government.

This is the bargain Nixon made. This is the final nail in the coffin of the Nixon Thesis. And there's a reason for it.

Race.

The "Immigration" Debate

I have seldom gotten involved in what is called the "immigration" debate because my views are so outside the mainstream. (Picture from Investor's Business Daily.)

Not being a politician, and not being on the Teevee, I can state the obvious point famous people ignore. Which is there are two immigration debates.

There is a general debate, about how many new people should come in, which ones, under what circumstances, how do we enforce it and all the rest.

Then there's the racial debate. Here it involves Mexicans. In Europe it's Muslims.

These debates are quite similar, in that they involve a complex mix of anger and guilt over how the parts of the world involved interact. For Europeans, there's the colonial experience, the Palestinian issue, oil, and terrorism. For Americans, there is our history regarding Mexico as a country, and indigenous people in general.

Because when you look in the Mestizo face of what we might call the average Mexican-American worker, that is what you are looking at. Indigenous, native American heritage, the people who were here for thousands of years before the Great Nations of Europe settled on the shore.

Now I want to further subdivide this issue, separating the issue of Mexico from that of  race to tell you an even harder truth. Mexico has a race problem, too. Mexico consists of a small elite, mostly of European heritage, a modest middle class, and a vast underclass, most of whom are indigenous. The rape of the west which marked our 19th century is still going on in Mexico, only there it is the rape of the south, including Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, where there is an ongoing insurgency.

This Week's Clue: Now is the Summer of our Discontent

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 22  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of May 28.

Enjoy.

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Now is the winter of our discontent,
Made glorious summer by this son of York

(That's Ian McKellan, whom your kids know better as Gandalf from Lord of the Rings,to the right, in a 1992 production of Richard III., by Shakespeare. He played Richard.)

Every season in America is different. Some are good, some bad, and some horrible.

The really, really horrible seasons come about once in a generation. They are horrible in the eyes of their beholders, the adult voters of the time.

They are horrible not just because of events, but the hopelessness most people feel in the face of those events. We feel powerless, impotent, and we fear there are no answers for it.

I point this out because, to many early Baby Boomers (or those born during World War II) the height of the last crisis, the summer of 1967, was a really good time. It was the carefree “Summer of Love,” and it is often seen to have been that way, still, in the misty chords of memory called nostalgia.

Moving Forward on Immigration

S. 1348, the Immigration Bill, is dead on arrival.

Bush can't get Republican support, not with the grassroots so angry, not with his lame duck status, not with Teddy Kennedy carrying the water for it. Democrats have no incentive to cooperate. My guess is it won't even get the votes necessary for debate in the Senate.

So what happens next?

Can I offer a modest proposal? It's time for a true national summit with Mexico, in which all issues are on the table. Since Bush won't cooperate, it's completely logical for Congress-critters to step forward.

This could start with a letter to, say, Univision or Telemundo, suggesting it be done as a TV series. And if it gets some ratings, get it on NBC's fall schedule. Or, a Democratic challenger (hint hint) who wishes to distinguish themselves from the pack could go the Mexico City, meeting with government officials, with business leaders, and speaking Spanish on Mexican television.

There are enormous issues right now beyond immigration facing both countries:

• Drugs, which are destroying the Mexican state.
• Jobs, which Mexico doesn't have enough of.
• The hollowing-out of Mexican cities and towns, which have become dependent on payments from workers in the U.S. for their survival.
• Energy, which Mexico is still exporting to the U.S.
• Trade, and whether NAFTA should be maintained.
• Border security, both for goods and for people.