Ooooo Shiny!

“Try not to pick up every shiny object that comes your way, sometimes, it’s a chainsaw.” (this post is a rant)Published July 16, 2008

Written by Joey

Photography introduced me to the 'new media' evolution. I currently do community management at Meraki in San Francisco, but this blog is about journalism, some UX design, and the occasional rant. more →

@joeybaker | joey@byjoeybaker.com

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Warning: This post a rant. It is highly political, and … well, I really just want to get this off my chest.

Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system [the free market] is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society.

-Americans may be losing faith in free markets – Los Angeles Times

I’ve blogged several times (1, 2, 3, more) in the last couple of weeks on the success of the free market in correcting downward trends in the news business. I’ve got a lot of faith in the law of supply and demand to eventually correct itself.That’s the keyword: eventually.Markets don’t correct themselves overnight. There is no such thing as a quick fix when it comes to economics, but it seems that the US populace has become so enamored with instant feedback that we expect everything to just happen.

just happens

Bardgelina’s

just happens

9 soldiers dying

_Iraq

_{(oh right, we already forgot about that war)}

just happens

Global warming doesn’t just happen.The energy_oil deficit doesn’t just happen.The Presidency eroding constitutional rights of the Congress, the Judiciary, the Press, and the People, doesn’t just happen.An economic recession doesn’t just happen.A robust economy doesn’t just happen.

This society, that so needs instant gratification, needs to learn that there are limits to what technology provides.

Just because the cell phone lets us say “I’ll just call you,” instead of planning ahead,Just because you can text message, twitter, facebook status, IM, or blog,Just because you can find, meet, date, engage, online,Just because we can watch live pictures of our tanks rolling across foreign boarders,It doesn’t mean that technology has solved all the world’s problems. Our country, our society, has a system in place that works. Yes, the system needs to be changed from time to time, we’ve done it a lot. But do we need to abandon our Constitution, our economic policies, our way of life just because there are bad times?The free market works. It goes in cycles of good and bad times, but it works. It’s natural. Please, please, just because we’ve allowed our government to abandon its system, don’t think the economy needs to change. It’s not worth it! It’s not right!STOP with the ADD! The grass is not always greener, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Try not to pick up every shiny object that comes your way, sometimes, it’s a chainsaw.