For a post-Cold War generation, socialism is more appealing than scary.

Of all the diagnoses for the reasons behind the financial collapse and slow (or at least uneven) subsequent recovery, this Time piece on the “financialization” of the economy seems to pinpoint the broadest underlying cause with the most specific reasoning. Well worth a read. This excerpt gives you the general idea:

Over the past few decades, finance has turned away from this traditional role. Academic research shows that only a fraction of all the money washing around the financial markets these days actually makes it to Main Street businesses. “The intermediation of household savings for productive investment in the business sector—the textbook description of the financial sector—constitutes only a minor share of the business of banking today,” according to academics Oscar Jorda, Alan Taylor and Moritz Schularick, who’ve studied the issue in detail. By their estimates and others, around 15% of capital coming from financial institutions today is used to fund business investments, whereas it would have been the majority of what banks did earlier in the 20th century.

…

“Across all advanced economies, and the United States and the U.K. in particular, the role of the capital markets and the banking sector in funding new investment is decreasing.” Most of the money in the system is being used for lending against existing assets such as housing, stocks and bonds.

To get a sense of the size of this shift, consider that the financial sector now represents around 7% of the U.S. economy, up from about 4% in 1980. Despite currently taking around 25% of all corporate profits, it creates a mere 4% of all jobs. Trouble is, research by numerous academics as well as institutions like the Bank for International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund shows that when finance gets that big, it starts to suck the economic air out of the room. In fact, finance starts having this adverse effect when it’s only half the size that it currently is in the U.S. Thanks to these changes, our economy is gradually becoming “a zero-sum game between financial wealth holders and the rest of America,” says former Goldman Sachs banker Wallace Turbeville, who runs a multiyear project on the rise of finance at the New York City—based nonprofit Demos.

And after this broad introduction it goes into finer details. The decrease in small business loans (and hence small businesses being started), the increase in cash upfront home purchases (and hence the decrease of younger families entering the home market), and the skyrocketing of debt, both personal and corporate.

How has this rampant “financialization” — lower interest rates, higher debt, lower loan availability, greater income inequality — affected you?

Have you put off or ruled out any options that would have been more viable at this stage in your life, say, 20 or 30 years ago?

Would you be happier in a world “pre-financialization”? How would your life be different?

The circle of (modern sedentary) life.

Occasionally you come across a trend or opinion piece to which the only appropriate reaction is, “Umm, I think that’s just you.” Getting to judge fancy writers for fabricating a societal trend out of personal experience can be fun and satisfying.

Here’s one: The Times Magazine, “Is Staying In the New Going Out?”.

In it, the author suggests that with all the great technology available to us, from on-demand entertainment to one-click food delivery to right-swipe dating…

…Food, entertainment, romance: The traditional weekend staples are now available entirely on demand. The centripetal force of our homes has never been stronger…

We have memes about staying in (“Netflix and chill”) and phrases like “binge watch,” which suggest pathologically homebound behavior. We no longer dismiss the urge to remain warm, hidden, fed, cushioned and entertained indoors as a lamentable womblike regression.

Though if we were to use actual data, one could reasonably assume that staying in vs going out is a function of some combination of:

1. Aging – having less energy, settling into a comfortable routine, having more obligations and therefore less free time.
2. Relationship status – Not being single, and therefore less pressured to go out to meet potential love interests, or even having a reliable social circle and seeking fewer new friends.
3. Temperament – Being the kind of person that was never that into going out in the first place, and therefore feeling less pressure to do so with each passing year just to impress others.
4. Financial situation – Not having a lot of money to spend on restaurants, shows, Uber/cab fare, bar-priced drinks, and so choosing to stay in out of necessity.

For any given person not still in college, the statement is probably true that “I go out less than I used to” or alternately “I go out less than I’d like to”. I’m just super skeptical that it’s directly related to the rise of mobile apps or streaming services. What do you think?

Do you go out less than you used to? Or less than you’d like to?

What are the reasons behind your growing urge (or tendency) to stay in?

If you feel bad about it? How might you combat it?
If you’re embracing it, why don’t you feel bad about it?

When we reward law-breakers with more puppy access, we’ve definitely screwed up.

This topic is a hot one. I am not even going to attempt to address it personally, other than to voice that as I personally see more and more of these stories, particularly in campus environments, it’s hard for me not to question if something has gone haywire in what we label as unacceptable behavior worthy of regulating.

Luckily this Atlantic article, “How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm”, does a much better (and much longer) job, not only addressing how it came to be, but both the benefits and potential dangers of a heightened sense of what’s allowable and what’s over the line. One researcher quoted in the article puts it simply:

A university that tries to protect students from words, ideas, and graffiti that they find unpleasant or even disgusting is doing them no favors. It is setting them up for greater suffering and failure when they leave the university and enter the workplace. Tragically, the very students who most need the strength to face later discrimination are the ones rendered weakest by victimhood culture on campus.

You really ought to read this one. By framing it around the term “concept creep” and addressing it academically, we’re given a much more rational way to digest and discuss a strange symptom of today’s evolving discourse. Which is just what people love to discuss over beers, right? So.

How does this trend make you feel? Has it affected you personally?

Are you happy to put up with the negative effects for the positive gains? Or vice versa?

Have we reached a tipping point, or will this go even farther? How far can it go?

A good warm-up question: who in your life do you lie to the most?

As mobile computing, big data, location services and voice recognition converge, new possibilities emerge we probably never even thought about. The Atlantic had a smart piece on one possibility: the future of fraud-busting.

They cover several potential avenues that technology could protect us, but one in particular seems like it could change a lot more than how often we have to change our credit card numbers.

Picture yourself walking down the street when a man approaches and asks for bus fare; he says he lost his wallet and needs to get home. Right away, your phone buzzes with a notification: Stay away. He’s a fraud. The same voice has been asking for money in different locations all week. Such a possibility sounds far-fetched, but your phone company already gathers information from all the phones in its network, and several tech firms are developing voice-biometrics software that can identify individuals and even catch emotional patterns that may indicate deceit. [emphasis added]

The idea of catching on to repeat offenders with data is one thing. But what if someone unlocks that next level of real-time analysis, decoding an individual’s voice patterns and emotional cues, to foil lying? Imagine a world where an effective lie-detecting machine is in everyone’s pocket. Conversation would never be the same again.

Would you want this technology to exist, understanding that you’d know when people were lying to you, and they’d know when you lied to them?

Even if that meant the polite deceptions we use to smooth things over with friends or in relationships are no longer possible?

How else would this change our lives — at work, in commerce, in dating, even in public life like politics or dealing with the law?

Annie Johnson, the first African-American ever (and first woman since 1983) to win Homebrewer of the Year.

This article, from Thrillist of all places, does most of the work for us in asking the interesting question here:

So, in the absence of statistics, I set out to answer a simple question: where the hell are all the black craft brewers, bar owners, bloggers, aficionados, and nerds? Why is craft beer — the consumer side, and especially the business side — so white?

The article goes on to explore this idea in greater depth, touching on several possible explanations/causes, and asking the big questions:

1. Black people don’t drink much craft beer

2. There is an ugly history of racism in beer

3. Craft brewing requires money and time

4. Does it even matter?

And however sticky it may be, this last point offers the most interesting debate. The article makes a strong case that the lack of diversity in participants also leads to both a lack of diversity in creativity, and a lack of sharing in the associated economic opportunity. These are basically irrefutable arguments.

What may be tougher to tackle are how these play out on an individual level:

Do enough people care enough to push change, from either side?

For those in the craft beer scene, how do they feel about the current makeup of the crowd? What could they do on a personal level to change it? How would they personally benefit?

For those outside of it, do they even want to be brought in? Why or why not? Are they missing out, or just sitting out?