entertainment business, and construction, dropped off a cliff
yesterday, and is certainly the one to watch for signs of radical
deflation. Having no faith whatsoever in its "accuracy" should not
deter us from reading it for nervous volatility, and even signs of
aphasic silences. The reason is that this index seems to track a
peculiar variety of dying simulacra in the global economy. What do
real estate, financial services, hollywood, and the construction
business have in common? They rely for their livelihood on
controlling access to "skills" and "values" that are either mired in
crisises of self-doubt or are rapidly democratizing as we speak;
respectively: location (real estate), capital growth (financial
services), entertainment (obviously), craftsmanship (construction).
If learning to live means learning to be skeptical enough about these
"skills" and "values" to be able to chose either to become good at
them or resist their hegemony, then this whole sector will be well
and truly done-for - at least in its current modality.
What of manufacturing, then?
No comments:
Post a Comment