Surreal Times: Election 2008

by Mike Farmer

Real Estate Broker

Author website

Every day around the world there are brilliant people going to work performing complex tasks that make all our lives better. There are companies developing and implementing service oriented architecture (SOA), information technology solutions more sophisticated than the world has ever known. Few people outside the inner workings of these companies know what is happening, because it isn’t reported. The leaders in industry building incredibly complex systems that respond with such a high degree of flexibility that reaction time to market changes is almost immediate are mostly unknown — they aren’t sexy and they aren’t political.

There are brilliant people making discoveries around the world: scientists, mathematicians, physicists, engineers, programmers, biologists — they are mostly unknown. There are entrepreneurs with vision reshaping the way we do business in a 2.0 world. These people take chances and gamble on innovative ideas — they step forward, yet most people don’t notice them.

Every day there are improvements to the cars we drive, the medicine we take, the homes we live in — online search makes information easy and useful to access, buying and selling goods and services is offered up improved and less expensive, medical procedures extend our lives and add to the quality of our lives, entertainment is offered in diverse packages that make our lives more enjoyable, private charities are getting help to needy individuals in more creative and efficient ways. It’s all due to the myriad individuals who use their minds daily and development better and better management and delivery. The real leaders of the world, for the most part, go unnoticed.

Not only do they go unnoticed, they are disparaged directly and indirectly by politicians building power bases. It’s especially noticable this election year. You would think the world revolves around and depends on the choice between three people. Government has positioned itself in the hearts and minds of many people and in the press as the true leadership that will reshape the world and improve mankind. If this idea wasn’t so dangerous, it would be hilarious. All one has to do is sit back objectively and consider the brilliant people at work each day building, innovatiing, managing and delivering the goods and services that keep the world together and improve our lives on a daily basis with the three political choices we have who are supposed to “save” the world. It truly is a comical picture when you think about it.

Yet, you will hear a vague speech given at a rally with a few key words like “greed” and “change” and “rich” thrown in and people cheer wildly as if the brilliant people keeping the world going are the problem and government (who screw up every project they start) is the solution. How can people still believe this?

And this year housing will be a big power-base building issue. Our three stooges who pretend to be saviors will offer up bail-out schemes to bring even more unsuspecting people into the political fold, grateful dependents of Big Brother who can thank the government for being compassionate. This surreal scene played out on the national stage in the “theater of the absurd” would be hilarious if not for the fact it’s so dangerous.

Any scheme the government develops to save the “victims” of housing and finance will create unintended consquences and make rational planning difficult or impossible for all the companies and individuals involved in the housing and finance industries. A downturn left to its natural course is fairly easy to plan for and deal with, but government involvement can extend and temporarily ameliorate the underlying problems so that no one knows where the end is and when these underlying problems will overcome the bandaid approach and create an even deeper problem. 

The housing and finance problem has received the attention it has because now it’s a political issue. Real estate touches everyone — every voter. Who knows what “creative solution” the candidates will come up with from now to the election to cash in on building a greater power-base and receiving more votes. If we’re lucky there will be only promises and after the election the winner will leave the free market to deal with the problem. However, the balloons will be floated to see how they are received in polls, and if enough mush headed voters want the government to “fix” it, they will. They’ll take money from the responsible people, and the brilliant people I wrote about above, and they will give it to the irresponsible — in the process they will throw a natural recovery off its course and who knows how long we’ll have to deal with the consequences.

Each election I say — This is the time that people will begin seeing government for what it’s become and will embrace the true leaders of the world, the brilliant people who daily make it work in better and better ways. I don’t know. Maybe the next election.