There has been a lot of loose talk on this Blog about Fundamental Transformation not being an urgent need, especially in the Commonwealth of Virgina.
Our friends the Tiger Riders may have not been reading the headlines.
Last Saturday the Business section of WaPo was headlined by: “Flying Is Going to Get Even Less Fun.” You may recall our column 21 April column “The End of Flight as We Knew It.”
Early this week AOL Money featured an analysis of recent stock trends and suggested 17 large Enterprises that, based on stock market performance, may not be with us for long. Number one on the list and four of the top 5 were airline Enterprises – American, United, Northwest and Delta. Five of the top 8 were airline Enterprises.
Add the cost of aircraft impact on the upper atmosphere to the price of a ticket and the US of A will be back to one flag carrier, airport overcapacity and very few who can afford to travel. Deregulation and cheap fuel sure did improve air travel.
Think of all those Households (formerly known as “families”) who believed it was fine to disaggregate and scatter across the globe because they could always fly “home” for the holidays and when there was an emergency…
On the AOL list were three were major financial institutions and the two biggest Autonomobile manufactures – Chrysler already having been towed away after a fire sale. They also believed their own ads and the chant that demand for Large, Private Vehicles was inelastic.
On 13 June WaPo had a headline “Medical Fraud a Growing Problem” and in the same issue the Business section headlined “The Economy’s Steady Pulse: Health-Care Sector Is Poised to Keep Growing, But so Are Its Costs.”
Not likely any Tiger Riders are going to try to track down fraud or cut costs if medical services is the only sector of the economy – other that flood damage repair and ad revenue from the Internet – that are expanding. The health and welfare of other nation-states is better with a different system but this one makes some more profit in the short term.
On Monday the 16th WaPo had a full page ad by HybridTechnologies touting the value of lithium battery powered vehicles. The ad was not there to sell cars, it was selling stock in a company that will sell the cars. Small, efficient vehicles are good, but are not a good investment without fundamental change in settlement patterns. See “Aptera and the Tiger Riders.”
On the 17th one of the above-the-fold front page stories was headlined “McCain Seeks to End Offshore Drilling Ban.” WaPo commentators had a field day with the flip-flop from prior positions but the real story was that the flip side of the jump page was that overexposed crying baby ad paid for by ‘The people of America’s Oil and Natural Gas Industry’ that asks “who really pays when congress taxes oil companies?” The children of well paid energy CEOs?
A society that has seven parking places for every Autonomobile and five bed places for every body needs to reconsider where the current trajectory is taking everyone, including those at the top of the Ziggurat.
Perhaps citizenS need to come up with a new metric for well being.
It is enough to make one want to add some paragraphs to THE ESTATES MATRIX.
EMR
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