The economic landscape has seemed to drop out from under everyone in the past week as markets took a nose dive. My response has been giddy laughter at the panic of all of the people on the news as they describe what has happened and what may happen next.
No one is asking me my thoughts on the matter because I am one of the millions of unwashed Americans who have no business discussing the matter at hand. But I think that what is happening is the result of an unprecedented time of growth following the historic events of 2020. The decline was inevitable because the growth wasn’t organic by any stretch of the imagination.
When the markets started to go absolutely haywire and only up, I knew what was coming, and it was just a matter of time until the momentum died and took the economy with it. I continued to watch them climb with no end in sight and as it happened I saw the cost of living for everyone creep up at the same time. Now the idea of achieving anything even remotely close to the old American dream is dead and buried.
Restoration will require a dramatic decline, and I personally want to see people throwing themselves off buildings. I want the markets to bottom out and I want the rampant capitalism to have a reckoning. People need to have the excess stripped away so they can see what actually matters. It isn’t their 401k or their real estate holdings, but they may only realize it once those things have lost their perceived value. Because none of these things, money included, have any inherent value, only the value we assign to them.
I realize that just because a thing doesn’t have inherent value doesn’t mean it can’t ruin your life in very real ways. No money is no way to live, and that’s just a sad fact of the life we find ourselves in. But if you could just find your way to enough and be satisfied with it, then you will be a more generous person in the event that you have abundance.
When the world is on fire, I won’t be looking for toilet paper, milk, and eggs. I will gather the ingredients for smores.