Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again
May 16, 2010, NYT Article, “Fears Intensify That Euro Crisis Could Snowball“:
“the public finances in the majority of advanced industrial countries are in a worse state today than at any time since the industrial revolution,” Willem Buiter, Citigroup’s top economist, wrote in a recent report.
The ideology of free-markets prided itself on the notion that unfettered markets are self-regulating. Like Humpty Dumpty, if left to their own greedy dynamics of individual self-interest, they would sit atop the wall, cyclically tilting this way, then that, but always balancing themselves out over time.
For a long time now, there has been growing evidence that Humpty’s free-market gyrations have been growing evermore erratic as the winds of change have swirled more strongly about him. With each new gust, he has been titled ever closer toward a tipping point from which he cannot recover. We should rightly ask if Humpty is still on the wall, or if he has already fallen?
Some believe that Humpty can be sheltered form the winds of change and his balance restored or even improved, but there is a great deal of evidence that suggests that he is already fallen.
- Jobless economic “recoveries”
- Increasing polarization of national and global wealth
- The Euro meltdown
- Oil gushing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico
- Endless warring over global resources
- Unbridled proliferation of guns and bombs
- Melting ice caps
- The return to the nuclear option for energy
- Mass extinctions and decreasing bio-diversity
- Ever-increasing environmental degradation
- Endemic hunger and deprivation
… the list goes on.
If Humpty has already fallen, we are wasting our time arguing about how to put him together again — “All the kings horses and all the king’s men can’t put him together again”. Maybe it’s time we be done with business as usual and start thinking about how we can survive and prosper in a post-Humpty Dumpty world.
