Methamphetamine is a slam-dunk beauty of analogy for this here economic recovery.
Let's run through a few facts on both, which are damn useful.
Methamphetamine is a stimulant drug. The body has some natural regulation on its functions and states, and alertness is one of these systems, coordinated by the RAS (reticular activating system) of the brainstem. When your body sends out signals of fatigue at the end of heavy use, you get snoozy, and will go to sleep, no matter what.
The Frontal Lobes, the site of rational analysis, gets pissed-off sometimes at the rest of the brain for bringing out compelling signals which make the frontal lobes feel like they're being bossed around. Even the focus of will cannot shut out the demands of the rest of the brain - ask anyone who's fallen asleep driving, and survived.
The frontal lobes takes on an idea similar to Socialism regarding the rest of the neurons, and figures that it ought to be boss - that there is an entirely RATIONAL approach to body management, which should preponderate over the largely-irrational other parts of the brain, which work mainly on urges.
Thus, the miracle of meth. Just about anyone in good health can work a 16-hour shift, stay up and party all night, and stay awake a good part of the next day, with or without meth. But the tweaker can do some meth along the way, work ANOTHER 16-hour shift AND party the next night, AND wake up again..... for a long god-damn time.
The Reticular Activating system is all fuddy-duddy and conservative about this stuff, and calls for a snooze FAR before the body's run completely out of fuel. It's like topping off the tank every time it reaches 3/4 full, and the frontals luxuriate over their new-found power.
Unfortunately, the Lockeans are just as right on brain chemistry as on politics - power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What about the overwhelming exhaustion? Later, deal with it later. Methamphetamine is simply life on brain credit. Every day of tweakin' is a day without "depression," the slow-down when nothing much happens. And what you don't maintain, you burn out. The "meth system" of excessive activity was designed as a temporary override during emergencies; meth just locks it on, full-time.
What we're doing to the economy, is actually identical to what the tweaker's brain does with meth.
We pretend that we're smart enough to jam it into overdrive for a while, using credit the same as crystal. When we had our "credit crisis" recently, it was simply the same as the tweaker's going "over the top" into the slide and crash which accompanies the meth binge after a week or two of non-stop power use. The edict "don't save money, spend it!" is just the same as "don't sleep when you can tweak!"
The actual Meth Economy itself is pretty similar to the stimulus, too. On classical terms, meth boosts the economy. People working relatively unwanted jobs - those with crappy pay and low skills, which shows that they are marginal jobs barely adding any product for commercial transaction - create a flurry of activity in the economy, which allows them to work long shifts at the meat plant, at the price of their physical well-being, but f**k it, it's money. The dollars spin around inside or out of the USA, for meth manufacture, rolling hundreds of thousands of dollars through hands which have formerly worked at twice minimum wage. In classical Keynesian terms, the meth economy IS RECOVERY writ large.
However, when one looks at commerce as the bringing of a useful product to market, it sucks. Nothing about meth manufacture, distribution, sales or use puts a warm blanket on a kid, or a hot meal, or a better roof over their heads. That's the measure of "useful" in an economy. Meth simply drains what could have been gainful production, and rolls it into the shitter.
So, what's the fate of the green shoots we're seeing? They're just the product of increased productivity as a result of continued spending of investment capital into malinvestments, caused by an overly optimistic assessment of the economic future. In other words, we just lit off another chunk of meth, and we're READY TO ROCK AGAIN! for the second show. But as for sustainable economic recovery?
Smile when you ask that question, bubba....
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