That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [156]
Seidman argues that this was all possible because we created, first in our own minds and then in our actions, two different worlds in which we operated. He illustrates the point with a reference to the scene in The Godfather in which Sal Tessio, having plotted the assassination of Michael Corleone, the head of the Corleone crime family, is discovered and sent off to be killed himself. Before his execution, Tessio asks Tom Hagen, the family’s trusted adviser, to tell Michael that he had not been planning a personal act of vengeance. “Tell Mike it was only business. I always liked him.”
We did the same thing, according to Seidman. “We created a separate sphere where we could behave situationally. The business world became that sphere. All those subprime mortgages—they were ‘only business.’ The idea was that there was an amoral space where as long as you were not breaking the law, your only responsibility was to ‘shareholder value and pursuit of profit.’”
The damage inflicted by the rise of situational over sustainable values has affected public life as well. The short-term, me-first, never-mind-the-future attitude that did so much harm to the country’s financial system also obstructs the necessary responses to America’s major national challenges. Reinvesting in our formula for greatness—in education, infrastructure, and research and development to assure continuing economic growth and a rising standard of living—making broadly shared short-term sacrifices to reduce the federal budget deficit so that future generations are not burdened with huge debts, and cutting back carbon emissions today to mitigate climate change in the years ahead, all qualify as sustainable policies. The baby boom generation, in thrall to the situational approach to the world, has failed to undertake them.
Delaware governor Jack Markell spelled out the negative consequences of the shift from the Greatest Generation’s sustainable outlook to the boomers’ emphasis on the short term: “People acted as though they forgot that we owed at least as much to the next generation as to the current one. Lots of politicians argued that cutting taxes was the right thing to do because it gives people money back that actually belongs to them. What they weren’t saying, but should have, is that absent spending cuts that nobody wants to make, what we’re really doing is borrowing from our kids to give to the current generation. Not very responsible. Instead of investing for the long term, we focused too much on what will impact the next poll and the next election. Businesses have similar problems when they focus too much on the next quarter. They fail to make the investments they need for long-term prosperity and eventually they die. Government follows this pattern to the peril of all of us.”
We now have day-thinking politicians trying to regulate day-trading bankers, all covered by people Tweeting, blogging, or commenting on cable TV moments later. When the two powerful forces of technology and markets converge in a way that encourages or even forces everyone to think situationally, it is hard to expect that the society and political system will produce sustainable thinking and outcomes. Everything gets shortened—from the time you are prepared to hold a stock, to the time it takes to form an opinion or fire off a comment, to the time you devote to studying any subject, to the length of time you should take amassing a savings before you buy your own home. When there is no time to think sustainably, it is not surprising that we see so many people acting situationally.
The Decline of Authority
At a Tea Party rally in Colorado in October 2010, the Financial Times reported (October 25, 2010), one of the speakers had this to say: “I am not an expert in anything. But look