The Housing Bubble

by ahansen

“The government had absolutely nothing to do with [my economic success at Halliburton].”

–Dick Cheney 10/5/00

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

-Irate voter at Simpsonville, (!) SC town hall meeting. 7/28/2009

“I don’t see that being a problem.”

-Cathy Maples, DOD contractor who paid $63,500 to dine with Sarah Palin, when asked if her airfare to the venue might be an issue. 9/19/09

Have we become so oblivious to the pervasive influence of our government that we actually believe we’ve got where we are by dint of our own hard work and perseverance? That our accomplishments and accumulations were achieved in a free market vacuum, unaided by a thriving social structure or abetted by the enormous leg-up we get by living in a technologically advanced system like the United States? Do we truly think that our entitlements were somehow earned and immutable, and not bestowed by a benevolent society?

If so, try building your material science research facility in Somalia or an agricultural conglomerate in oh, say, Zimbabwe, and see where it gets you.

Edmund Burke, often called the Father of Modern Conservatism, used the words “government” and “society” interchangeably. Although he argued that the two requirements of good governance, strong institutions and civil liberty came from contrary sources, he also understood that they were inextricably linked.

As our national dialog becomes more strident and the stakes more critical, perhaps we should take a moment to remember that we, you and I, are our government, and that without a regulated social structure, none of us would be enjoying a life— even the most impoverished among us— that compares admirably to a life of royalty a mere few generations back.

Compared to the average citizen of Burke’s time, we ALL live like kings, with virtually unlimited travel opportunities and communications, myriad foodstuffs and entertainments, freedom from starvation, enslavement and epidemic, and at least a cursory education for anyone who wants to pursue one. We Americans are among history’s most fortunate beings.

The average Kansan no longer lives in a sod hut, nor the average Californian in a hogan. Our diets are far removed from the maize, squash, beans and lizards of our recent progenators. (For most of us, anyway…Happy Birthday, Olygirl, BTW.)

City dwellers no longer come home to the flat and flatulous fare of onions, cabbage, and beer that awaited our great grandfathers, and cholera, polio and unresolved dental issues are no longer endemic to our outlying suburbs.

Personal preferences aside, we don’t necessarily have to spend our summers chopping firewood, or our autumns gathering acorns and grubs. We have indoor plumbing and outdoor “entertainment centers.” And Cheetos. We have Cheetos.

All this for a relative price tag that pales in comparison to what our peasant ancestors were expected to cough up into the public um, coffers.

Yet we still rail and complain and beat our breasts about creeping (or outright) “socialism” and about how “they’re” taking “our” money to pay for the sins of the unworthy while we toil in near-slavery. See our fingers bleed….

Just for the sake of argument, let’s consider our American economy as a game of Monopoly. Patented by Hasbro in the depths of the first Great Depression, Monopoly was the interactive virtual reality game of its day. To call it a metaphor would belittle its poetry— the thing is a cleverly-disguised propaganda tool; a simulacrum of free market capitalism that ultimately results in one player holding all the fake money while everyone else is forced into bankruptcy.

As the game begins, we start with a clean board. We get the same bankroll, the same opportunity to accumulate, allocate, and divest. We get to roll the same dice in turn, and deal with the same chance cards.

As the game progresses, most of us get setbacks. We land on the wrong squares, buy houses we can’t afford, and lose our hard-won holdings. But we suck up our losses, pay our fines, wait out a turn or two in jail, and if we’re broke, start back into the game when we pass GO and collect our $200 grubstake from the community bank.

Sure we’re peeved when the guy holding Boardwalk and Park Place slips his wormy little brother a railroad to keep him in the game. And yes, that bossy girl next door is scheming with her toadies to control the utilities and buy out our hotels. But with the proper tactics and respect for the rules of the game, a dedicated group of Monopolists can go on for hours, even days. (According to Hasbro, the longest sanctioned Monopoly game lasted an arse-numbing 1,680 hours—70 days.)

Let’s take this a step further.

Say you’re playing with a couple of neighborhood kids who have never seen a monopoly board, can’t count, and don’t know the difference between a house on Baltic and a hotel on Atlantic. While it might be personally gratifying to kick their butts and take all their pieces, it’s not going to be a very interesting game. And if you persist in cutthroat tactics and snide ridicule of their ineptitude, don’t be surprised when that dullard Kenny from across the street takes offense, upends the board, and sends your tokens flying all over the rumpus room.

Likewise, if one player always wins, it won’t be long before she winds up playing alone while everyone else is out in the sandlot swatting baseballs, or breaking into the parents’ liquor cabinet. If no one else ever gets a chance to win, it’s only a matter of time until they stop playing at all.

Without willing players, and a means of starting anew when the game becomes hopelessly lopsided, there IS no game—it’s just a hunk of laminated paper and some trinkets in a cardboard box.

And so it goes with our economy. With so many people at the table, and so many new and improvised rules being tossed into the mix, it’s hard to recognize what game is actually being played anymore. The intentions may well be Monopoly, but the execution is so murky now that we might as well be playing Yahtzee. Or 53 Pickup.

Lately it seems that the corrupt and canny among us have institutionalized cheating, gaming the system to nab the rewards that should rightly go to those of us who have taken the trouble to read the instructions on the box and play by the rules on the lid. We’re not supposed to get free houses and unauthorized bailouts, or sneak money from the till while the banker is distracted—let alone be rewarded for it!

From where I sit, it looks like this particular game may just about be over, and since all of our fake money is gone and our pieces are all in the hands of the “winner,” we need to decide whether we want to start a new game or go outside for some fresh air before we clean off the table and sit down to do our homework.

No one says we have to be happy about it. We might even waylay the jerk in the bathroom and punch him in the teeth for cheating and being so smug about it.

In real life, the end result of a monopoly is an aristocracy—or a dictatorship. That’s why we have a democratic government– our society– to keep the game in check. Reallocation is nearly always a better option than revolution, and periodically declaring a winner and starting over allows the game to go on. After all, you can only gloat over your boxful of plastic houses, pre-determined chances, and fake money for so long. Eventually it’s nice to have some competition again. And when you’re playing for real food, and shelter, and the survival of people’s families, the consequences of sitting alone behind your walls fingering your booty get a good bit more dire.

Our national dialogue may become rowdy and uncouth, but that’s a good thing, I think—it keeps us from getting too complacent and letting any one group or ideology become entrenched to the point of monopolizing the game. And as odious as it seems, sometimes we just have to declare a “winner,” clear the table, and redistribute the money if we want the game to continue.

So the next time you find yourself gnashing your teeth over loan forgiveness to keep some FB in a house they had no business “buying” in the first place, or so mad you can’t see straight about some corrupted functionary in a community “redevelopment” organization, ask yourself:

Do you really want the Paris Hiltons and Genna Bushes of the world running our Country?