I received this query from someone we will call AK via e-mail:

Was wondering if you might be help with a mental exercise I’ve been toying with the last few weeks pertaining to the roll of timeframe of consequences, and whether we will be hit with a shock or slow-burn when gravity finally kicks in.

I’ve had the opportunity to work in a position where I’m able to interface with many different people, for a very large electronics company. Three very distinct themes come to mind when I attempt to summarize my experience thus far;

1) My generation (recently graduated from college or currently enrolled) will be the first generation in American history that will experience a decreased standard of living, when compared to the previous generation. 2) The current investment/return ratio (starting salary, post-graduation) on an undergraduate education for most major Universities has completely fallen apart. A significant portion of my friends are either doing Teach For America, Peace Corps, or making $11/hr. Their parents, with the same level of education 25 years prior, were able to leave and find a job with a $50K starting salary, no sweat. 3) The gutting of the middle class will continue until there’s nothing left.

Obviously, these are some very broad observations to make from a technical sales role, but I feel privileged to have this experience. It has truly opened my eyes to how grossly dysfunctional things are at the ground level. The boomers are particularly breathtaking; the modus operandi is ‘buy first, ask questions later’. I have never encountered or have read about a system in nature in which this type of behavior is sustainable.

This isn’t to say opportunity has left completely. On the contrary, times have never been better for the truly brilliant. A good friend has been the recipient of venture capital funding, and his company has received a few (very) large rounds of Series-C funding. Again though, the truth can be found in the numbers; compared to my one friend who has ‘made it’ vs. those making roughly $11-15/hr., how does this historically compare to my parent’s generation? Not favorably.

The grand unified theory on this, which with more scholarship, I feel woud yield a few Professor Emeritus positions in the few remaining Political Science departments that can still afford such chairs, is that the United States stopped functioning as the country we currently know directly after 1971, when Nixon axed Bretton Woods system of exchange. When we left the gold standard, we abandoned truth, and deferred consequence. The largesse the country had been living off of post-WW2 had vanished, and real wages have been declining ever since. The proliferation of nuclear weapons has boxed us into waging satellite wars over countries with abundant natural resources, in an effort to keep pumping a necropsied heart with epinephrin.

Another lesson I’ve learned is that the Universe over the long run is a perfectly balanced and reflexive system. Which brings me to the question I’ve been pondering for the last few weeks; since humans deal extremely poorly with unknowns and typically chose to defer consequences, should we continue in the attempt to bring the truth of transgressions to the public, or would our efforts be better spent preparing ourselves for the forthcoming panic, and to establish release mechanisms that may alleviate the ‘creative destruction’ that may be wrought (wrongfully) on those who have attempted to enlighten. To be frank, I sometimes worry that innocent parties at the margin might be swept up in the fervor when emotions are finally released.