A Sudden Crisis Makes All The Difference

This post is a follow-up to last Sunday's One Million Pageviews On DOTE. In that post I explained in basic terms why a blog like DOTE will never be wildly popular. But I must confess to being discouraged lately. It appears that in the last year my blog traffic peaked, and lately it has declined a bit. I'm not going to change what I'm doing to attract more readers, but it occurred to me that there's something else going on that I didn't mention. It starts with fellow blogger Bill Hicks' comment on last Sunday's post. "Bill Hicks" (a pseudonym) writes The Downward Spiral.

Congrats on getting to one million page views, Dave!  

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the audience size of blogs like ours the next time we hit a crisis like the fall of 2008. Most people who still have their jobs are complacent right now, and those who don't are too busy just trying to survive.

Yes, it would be interesting to see what happens to the traffic on Bill's blog and my blog if we have another crisis. Everything I said in my Millionth Pageview post still rings true, but I should have been thinking in these terms as well.

It is reasonable to conclude that one of the reasons my audience is flat or shrinking is because we have several slow-motion crises going on. These crises are only slow on human time scales, not on the historical time scale. And in so far as the average American has an attention span of five minutes or less, anything that takes years to unfold is effectively invisible.

I initially wrote about this problem in The Empire And The Boiling Frog.

Think about it. Does it make any sense to say the country was doing just fine right up to the moment (more or less) when it wasn't? For example, did the Wall Street banks become overly powerful and greedy in just the few years before the Housing Bubble collapsed? Did their undue influence on our venal politicians begin during those years? Of course not! Events like the financial crisis don't just come out of nowhere. To understand them, you must examine the historical antecedents. You must understand that the ground for what happened today was prepared many years before...

Why does the boiling frog story apply to people if not to actual frogs? The answer is simple. Human beings are built to adapt to new conditions. Generally speaking, they don't notice gradual change, they simply get used to it. People were designed by Nature to react quickly to sudden changes. They were not designed to notice that this year, and for many years before that, conditions got a little worse than they were the year before. Humans live in an eternal present. This observation is well-known to those who study such things. It is not original with me.

Thus Americans are being boiled alive, and while opinion polls indicate they know that conditions have not improved, they are not fully (or even partially) aware of just how far gone America truly is. Consider the recent remarks of Bloomberg senior economist Richard Yamarone.

When asked what’s really happening with the US economy, Yamarone responded, “I think people are just running out of money. We have contracting, real disposable incomes. Most of the job creation that we have is from minimum wage type jobs.”

Richard Yamarone continues: “I’m fortunate enough to travel and speak to chambers of commerce with 300 to 500 people in the audience. They all tell me, ‘Hey, listen, I am letting go of workers. I’m hiring them back at a fraction of what I used to pay them.’

You hear from the other side, ‘Hey, I finally got a job after two years of being unemployed. I used to make $100,000 (each year), now I’m making $45,000 or now I’m working part time.’ Or (you hear), ‘I used to make $500,000 and now I’m making $200,000 or making $125,000.’...

This grim assessment is not decidedly different from what I often say on DOTE. Yamarone is not some kind of wacko, and neither am I. And neither is Bill Hicks. But we don't have a shit-hits-the-fan, in-your-face, full-blown crisis going on as we did in late 2008. That's a big problem from the point of view of the realistic blogger.

Instead we've got all these slow-motion crises, a "new normal" as some people refer to it. But the "new normal" is not normal in any sense, even when we compare what's going on now to the recent (albeit illusory) situation we had before the Housing Bubble imploded.

In the shorter term, we've got slow-moving crises in the fragile, corrupt banking and political systems, in the exploding Federal debt, in incomes for ordinary people, in lack of opportunity, in health care, in education & student loans, and a hundred other things. In the longer term, we've got slow-moving crises in the crude oil supply, the climate and our degraded oceans. But none of this appears to be happening right now. We are the boiled frogs.

And 2012 is distinguished by the fact that we've got an unusually large pile of bullshit to contend with, mostly around the inconsequential political elections.

So the obvious conclusion which Bill Hicks alluded to is that it takes a sudden crisis to get people's attention. The poor schmucks who have already been thrown under the bus are powerless and forgotten, a group which includes the 46 million people receiving food stamps, the 50 million without health insurance and those with faith-based retirement plans.

The next time I get depressed about my dwindling blog traffic, I'm going to try to keep all this in mind. A sudden crisis makes all the difference.

Bonus Video — Aimee Mann, Today's The Day

Better pack your bags and run
Or stay until the job is done
Baby you could sit and hope
That providence will fray the rope
And sink like a stone
Or go it alone

And isn't it enough for you
Isn't it enough?
Isn't it enough for you
Isn't it enough?
For you...

 

Comments

[Don Levit]

A sudden crisis makes all the difference.

Well, the crisis you spoke of in 2008 resulted in what kind of difference?

In my opinion, that was our moment to shine, as were the events of 9/11.

Unfortunately, we squelched the opportunities.

The only thing worse than having a crisis is having a crisis and not learning from it.

Don Levit

[Dave Cohen]

Don --

Of course you are right.

Did I neglect to say that human beings don't typically learn from experience?

Mea culpa. But from the DOTE point of view, which was the view I was taking here, it will take a sudden crisis to attract a wider audience.

-- Dave

[Craig]

I believe that the 'controlled demolition' of the economy by TPTB has an additional benefit (to TPTB) besides the boiling frog syndrome. Not only does a slow-motion crisis stay under many people's radar, it also tends to provide fertile soil for the misdirection of blame.

Because job losses happen one person at a time, I believe there is a tendency in individuals to focus only on their immediate, individual situation (e.g. I lost my job because my company didn't hit its numbers), rather than seeing that the numbers weren't reached because of resource limitations (accelerated by a broader and less noticeable funneling of money into the vampire squid).

As former presidential candidate Herman Cain so eloquently summarized: "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!"

[Dave Cohen]

Craig--

Re: the 'controlled demolition' of the economy by TPTB

This attributes a level of control and intelligence to The Powers That Be that they don't possess, could never possibly possess, and will never possess.

Simple corruption, self-interest and lack of character (e.g. greed) explain it all. And self-serving opinions and ignorance.

You would like to believe there's somebody in charge. Perhaps that belief is comforting somehow. It makes things make sense. But nobody is in charge of this mess.

Go easy on the paranoia.

-- Dave

[Bill Hicks]

Great analysis as usual, Dave. In my own case, it took oil prices shooting up to triple digits in early 2008 before I finally woke up to the realities of peak oil.

Before that, I remember reading a newspaper article while on vacation in Canada back around 2004 or so asserting that North America's highway-centric economic model was not sustainable and it caused a "does not compute" reaction in my mind. It really does take a crisis to focus people's attention, even those of us who have a heightened sense of perception to start with.

[S P]

There's now a considerable number of blogs discussing similar themes: oil drum, zero hedge, automatic earth, orlov, charles hugh smith, john michael greer, daily reckoning, max keiser, kunstler, energy bulletin. Those are just the big ones that come to mind.

So even amongst the informed there are choices out there, and there's only so many you can visit. But I come here and I do appreciate what you do.

[Dave Cohen]

@S P --

Well, I'm going to get myself in some deep trouble now, but fuck it.

Re: "the oil drum, zero hedge, automatic earth, orlov, charles hugh smith, john michael greer, daily reckoning, max keiser, kunstler, energy bulletin"

One problem is that most of those websites suck. Or have a narrow focus. Or don't know what they are talking about. Or have a religious tone. Or offer false hope.

So much for informed choices. I like to think people can tell the difference. It's not an accident I mentioned Bill's blog, and none of the above.

And a special thank you for sticking me in the Generic Doomer category. Now I'm even more depressed than I was before.

And one more thing. Most of those blogs you mentioned don't want to have anything to do with me. And the feeling is mutual.

-- Dave

[Ben]

@Craig Our political and economic elite are just as unaware of the current state of the nation as the average American, case in point the recent exchange between Glenn Hubbard and Larry Summers in the financial press.

Hubbard initiates: http://tinyurl.com/7g6c9z2
Summers responds: http://tinyurl.com/7eaqpyj
Hubbard responds to the response: http://tinyurl.com/6tgy34b

Both haven't a clue what they are speaking about.

[Ben]

"And a special thank you for sticking me in the Generic Doomer category. Now I'm even more depressed than I was before."

Dave, if it is any consolation you've helped me greatly. Your honest and insightful blog entries have helped me to better understand the current state of affairs, and where the nation is trending. Thank you.

[Lew Stewell]

I pretty much hit all of the aforementioned blogs/sites as well as yours and TDS everyday. (as a software engineer, I spend an huge amt. of time at the computer). I'm a bit surprised at your reaction to them. I really don't see that large of a difference. Keep in mind, I'm an idiot.

[FiniteResource]

@ Lew Stewell. Ditto. And couldn't have put it better myself.

JM Greer's current series/next book about empire is excellent. Perhaps Dave will give it a pass for absence of overt religious content. Not that Druids are all that religious.

Dunno if it affects DoTE's page views but I read DoTE posts on my Kindle via Send To Reader - a delicious irony of terminal complexity.

[Cab]

I may be one of your dwindling number of page viewers. Round about 2007 (for in the UK that was when we experienced a real life bank run) and for the next four years I devoured 'left field' blogs obsessively. All my life, I had been baffled by 'normal people' who seemed to know something that I didn't: that it's OK to borrow money and splurge it on a new car you'll be bored with in a month, or a trip round the world, because somehow you won't notice having the loan hang round your neck until you die. And that it's more than OK to borrow yourself to the hilt and buy a house, then renovate it with very expensive fittings, because it's an investment that can't fail - even though everybody else has got the same idea.

The first signs of economic trouble were the most exciting news I'd ever read, confirming that my financial misanthropy and curmudegeonly-ness were, in fact, quite rational. Reading non-mainstream blogs also gave me the inside track on where things might be headed, and allowed me to impress my friends (and I did! - briefly.). Also it confirmed my lifelong suspicion that all this stuff we consume is just a temporary blip - just too good to be true. Basically, putting it all together, it was a revelation a bit like 'The Matrix'! I proceeded to gain some small understanding of where money comes from, how GDP is measured and what we really mean by "national output", and why people worry so much about GDP "growth". I was looking forward to a lot of formerly-smug people eating a lot of humble pie.

But what has happened? As time has gone on, it has become clear that virtually no one else understands any of this. The failure of the economic system is only seen as a temporary failure of the financial system. Its continued failure is seen as the result of policy blunders. People think that if only the politicians would impose more austerity/spend more, the inevitable recovery would already have happened, and if they don't get it right, there may be a 'lost decade' of low growth. If only.

In my personal circle of friends, the most intelligent don't even have the faintest clue beyond what the mainstream news says, but they do have strong views on party politics and politicians - which baffles me.

So, my reading of your blog and some others, has diminished because it's just easier to think about something else. I don't talk excitedly about radical economic ideas with my friends any more, because it's like banging my head against a brick wall. If the brightest people I know don't 'get it' then there's no point in my even thinking about it.