Are you an optimist? Maybe you shouldn't be!

I read about two-thirds of the way through "This used to be us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum and felt a bit pessimistic about our future. We have too many jingoistic, short-sighted politicians and citizens.

Then I read the little blurb to accompany the interview with Slavoj Zizek, "Now the field is open" in which he thinks that "the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over".

Consider that China, an autocratic regime, is growing faster than most other countries in the world, and that the United States, a supposedly democratic government, is all tied up in petty squabbles how to unstick a somewhat anemic economy.

China has a government rife with corruption that is trying to define the common good, and the U.S. has a government rife with corruption that is trying to maximize the profits of a few, claiming that it will promote the common good.

Until each of these two countries has a sound understanding of the "civic virtue" called for by the writers of the Federalist Papers, our planet is doomed to be "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" as described by Thomas Friedman in the book of the same title.

Markets are like the weather, never in balance

Many tout markets as the most efficient allocators of resources. This often true, but like the weather, there is no such thing as a steady state; some development will bring wrenching and even destructive change.

I thought of this reflecting on Charles Wheelan's most recent Naked Economist column, "The Human Capital Bubble". http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/167581
He says that Wall Street sucked up a lot of talent that could have been used more productively elsewhere. Now the Wall Street bubble has burst and many people must rethink what they will be doing.

If we build as if a sunny summer will be perpetual, we will be in big trouble when the imbalance in weather conditions is corrected. Our flimsy summer structures will be blown away when the hurricane or tornado strikes.

Similarly, if we act as if a particular segment of the economy will continually grow, we will be caught short when the market has enough of whatever we have to offer.