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Larger crisis calls for new solutions
K.C. Cole
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
KAI RYSSDAL: For all the federal government has been throwing at this recession -- stimulus plans, interest-rate cuts, new rules and regulations -- most of it seems like stuff straight out of the standard economic playbook. Just more of it.
Commentator K.C. Cole says once a problem gets as big as this one is, the answer isn't always more of the same.
K.C. Cole: By now it should be obvious that the current financial meltdown is not just bigger than previous downturns, it's qualitatively different. Most people think that quantity and quality are two different things, but fundamentally they're not. So it's not really that surprising that big numbers of bad bets turned seemingly rock-solid investments into something more like quicksand.
Take an everyday example like boiling a pot of water for your pasta. You add more and more heat and, for a while, well, you just get hotter water. But suddenly the water boils, then turns to vapor -- a different state of matter altogether, one far more volatile and hard to keep a lid on.
Physicists call such properties "emergent" because they only "emerge" when there's enough of something. A few neurons can't make a mind, but put enough together and we seem to get consciousness. The number of electrons buzzing around atoms determines whether something is sweet, stinky, acid or blue. There's nothing in our universe shaped like a teacup the size of Jupiter because when things get big enough, gravity crushes matter into spheres or disks.
If a star gets really big -- say, bigger even than George Clooney, several times the mass of the sun -- the gravity of its sheer size will eventually cause it to implode, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in space-time -- a black hole, a one-way street to oblivion.
At a certain point, size is all that matters.
It's the same with the economy. Treating the current collapse as just a bigger version of what's gone before won't work because so many bits of bad news have plunged us into a different kind of hell.
Consider this: The boiling water in your pot can be dumped down the sink. But once it's turned to vapor, good luck getting it off the walls.
Qualitatively different situations call for qualitatively different solutions.
RYSSDAL: K.C. Cole is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
Its understandable that this commentator is a professor of communications...she makes such an attempt to make her point, that she gets lost in actually making her point.
Its like the classic Japanese saying, "if a hammer is in your hand, all your problems look like a nail."
Instead of trying to make an abstract idea concrete by giving common examples, she should have stuck with expressing the common idea: that what got us into this situation, may get us out for the time being, but it doesn't tackle the actual problem.
The problem with our economy, is the problem with our health care: too many middlemen making too much money clogging up the works. Getting rid of them will put them out of work in order to save us.
I am surprised that someone from a school of communication would present such a confusing and inaccurate commentary. Listing some things that change state under specific conditions does not prove or even advance any observations about a financial situation.
Moreover, when one uses analogies, one had best use them correctly: water changes to a gas at the boiling point, not a vapor. It takes at least nine (9) solar masses to even begin to form a super nova, and probably many multiples of that for a black hole. Smells and colors generally occur at the molecular level, not the atomic one. Getting water "vapor" off the walls is unnecessary as it tends to evaporate on its own (an analogy hardly in keeping with the main topic).
This tangled collection of disparate phenomena proves nothing and supports nothing. If one wants to discuss a contrarian view of the relation between quality and quantity, one must at least acknowledge Stalin's quote: "Quantity has a quality all its own." This, I expect from a professor at a school of communication.
Ms Cole's opinion was being broadcast from my local NPR station WAMU when I was coming home this evening.
Her skillful and insightful exposition of her point struck me as remarkable. The example of phase change from water to steam was good, but the example of black hole created by implosion due to gravity from the largeness/massiveness is such an outstanding comparison that I felt compelled to give my feedback to Ms.Cole to congratulate her on her vivid and appropriate example. Well done Ms. Cole.
It seems that there is a little bit of an astronomer/physicist in her. Best regards.
Goutam Bagchi
