Emoting the economic collapse?

A new study has found that over the long course of time, we have become less emotive in our writing.  Although we seem like a pretty weepy bunch to me, and the study does confirm that Americans are more weepy than Brits, anyone who has read H.P. Lovecraft's adjective larded horror stories (pulp fare of the 1920s) will understand that we are more restrained in our language today.

 

But there some other interesting items.

Overwritten, Maybe, But Less Overwrought
Tom Jacobs, 20 March 2013 (ht: Freakonomics)

Researchers mining a Google books database report a decline in mood-related words in English-language books over the past 100 years.

Both of those trends are fascinating, for different reasons. Recent research has found a strong link between disgust sensitivity and social conservatism. Does the decline in references to disgust signal an increasingly liberal society, at least on issues such as gay marriage?

It’s also worth noting that the rise in fear-related terms coincides with what has been called “the great risk shift,” in which middle-class incomes have stagnated even as employment has become less secure. That insecurity seems to be reflected in our writing.

Giving it all away: Steps to success?

Cheer leading our way through dystopia.

As the corporate landscape become bleaker and bleaker with the winner take all CEOs, COOs, and CFOs grabbing up the vast majority of the retained company profits.  The corporate Napoleon Hills are having to work harder at finding ways to keep their nose to the grindstone so that they can get ahead.  With the reality that, within the corporate world, unless you are on the upward track within 2 years of corporate world arrival, you have about as much chance of getting to the top as you do finding the winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk.

Giving isn't the secret
Mathbabe, 1 April 2013 (hat tip: NC)
The latest idea, is "strategic giving."  Selflessly giving of yourself so that people will notice and appreciate you and move you along to where you want to go.

In other words, [Adam] Grant (NYT link)... is selling us a message of working really hard with the underlying promise that it will make us successful, especially if we do it because we just love working really hard.

What?

First, it really matters what you work on and who you are helping. If you are not a strategic helper, you end up wasting your time for no good reason. How many times have we seen people who end up doing their job plus someone else’s job, without any thanks or extra money?

If you work really hard on a project which nobody cares about, nobody appreciates it. True.

And if you aren’t a political animal, able to smell out the projects and people that are worth working on extra hard and helping, then you’re pretty much out of luck.

But let’s take one step back from the terrible advice being given by Grant and Sandberg. What are their actual goals? Is it possible that they really think just by working extra hard at whatever shit corporate job we have will leave us  successful and fulfilled? Are they that blind to other people’s options? Do they really know nobody in their private lives who found fulfillment by quitting their dead-end corporate job and became a poor but happy poet?

As Yves Smith noted, it's a lot like the networking meme.  The idea of getting to know people only for what they can do for you.  What was once thought of as rather creepy, is know thought of as an ideal.

Vigilantes

I am surprised that you don't see more of this.  Although access to firearms is theoretically restricted in Mexico, that obviously doesn't stop the bad guys.  And since so many of the police are aligned with the bad guys, it is not clear why people would be particularly concerned about their opinion.  I am not trying to criticize, just clarifying my confusion.

Mexican Vigilantes Seize Town, Arrest Police
Borderland Beat, 27 March 2013 (Sourced from: NY Times, Maspormas, Miami Times)

Hundreds of armed vigilantes have taken control of a town on a major highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, arresting local police officers and searching homes after a vigilante leader was killed. Several opened fire on a car of Mexican tourists headed to the beach for Easter week.

Members of the area's self-described "community police" say more than 1,500 members of the force were stopping traffic Wednesday at improvised checkpoints in the town of Tierra Colorado, which sits the highway connecting Mexico City to Acapulco. They arrested 12 police and the former director of public security in the town after a leader of the state's vigilante movement was slain on Monday.

As I understand it, the areas with the largest vigilanti movements, are also the areas where the citizens have a history of confrontation with the central government.  Other areas report vigilanti justice, but that seems to be of a smaller ad hoc nature, rather than community based.

Apocalypse Egypt?

Maybe I should call "Collapse Egypt"?  After, all it is an Apocalypse when it happens to you, and a collapse when it happens to someone else.  To the best of my knowledge, I have no non-ancient Egyptian connection.  But fighting over gasoline is a pretty common start to a lot of apocalyptic novels.

 

Egypt is running out of cash to import fuel and food.  The ongoing strife that got rid of their strong man (and U.S. allie) Mubarak, has torpedoed the tourist economy and makes for to much uncertainty for foreign investment.

 

Egypt's economy is so heavily socialized and subsidized, it can be difficult to know what exactly is going on.

The government is blaming black marketeers, and hording for the current shortage, and are trying various schemes to close of illegal channels of acquisition. 

Short of Money, Egypt Sees Crisis on Fuel and Food

David K. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, 31 March 2013

A fuel shortage has helped send food prices soaring. Electricity is blacking out even before the summer. And gas-line gunfights have killed at least five people and wounded dozens over the past two weeks.

Independent analysts say that the growing shortage of fuel and the fear about wheat imports now pose the gravest threats to Egypt's fragile stability. "It has the potential to make things very, very bad," said Yasser el-Shimy, an analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Egypt has held two years of unsuccessful talks with the I.M.F., and the current government is still balking at the politically painful package of overhauls - even as rising prices and unemployment make those measures more difficult with each passing day.

"They are operating on the notion that Egypt is too big to be allowed to fail, that the U.S. and the West will step in," Mr. Shimy said. "They think Egypt has a right to get the loan, and I think they will probably keep pushing all the way."

If diesel is still scarce next month when the harvest begins, "There will be a revolution of the hungry," said Adbel Moneim Abdel Hady, 40, another wheat farmer.

At the empty Mobil gas station in town, attendants said profiteers, hoarders and desperate farmers were already threatening them with knives, clubs and shotguns. At harvest time, "People are going to kill each other," said Hamdy Hassan, 37, a truck driver hanging out at the shuttered station.