Subject Batter

In my previous post, you may have noticed Y2X in the title. If you did, thanks for reading it, and you can use it all you want.

I decided to coin 2010 as Y2X simply because it was nerdly delicious. An algebraic decade! But the more I think about the moniker comes from, and where we were at in Y2K, I hope that this new Y2-decade will be more meaningful.

The first decade of the 2000′s had way too much of a financial focus. It was so much about booms and subsequent busts that even kids all of a sudden could tell you where the Dow was at, or how much a gallon of gas costs, or why people were losing their houses just a handful of years after losing their retirements in dotcoms.

By my count there were three boom/bust cycles, and we’re in a fourth if you count the current gold boom.

Each Boom contributed to a loss of understanding in money, finances, and most importantly — value.

And each Bust contributed to a loss of understanding in accountability, as if “The Economy” was some external uncontrollable force that toys with our lives in ways we cannot control.

Here’s the only lesson you need to understand the economy: Spend less than you earn. Do that whether you are an individual, a corporation, or a government office, and economics won’t matter so much.

Anyway, it is my hope that Y2X will be the year of reckoning though. Where we are all held accountable for our complete lapses in logic and sensibilities. The money we handle every day is largely bogus; the symbol of an economy propped up by the same fake money that took it down three times.

We need a reset. We need accountability. We need culture. Let the economy fall.

I’ll gladly watch the sense of community and compassion we hold for each other as we extend our reaches beyond our closed front doors, and help our neighbors pick themselves back up. We’re all in this together, and we have a lot to gain by getting out of it together.

Then, once the dust settles, we can move on to 2020 and hopefully look back at a decade that was meaningful, fruitful, and stood for something, because it was about society coming together to achieve greatness, instead of individually trying to buy it.

Filed under: Economy, Society by Cody Riddar on Tuesday, January 5, 2010