1861

Crisis - 1861 - The Secession Winter

In the Northern Hemisphere, winter begins on December 21. In the United States, presidential elections are held every four years. In 1860, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November that year, Americans cast votes that would result in an electoral win for Abraham Lincoln. The very thought of this Ilinois Republican holding power over the South inspired South Carolina to openly secede on December 20, the day before the start of winter. Five more states would secede in January, and Texas would secede on February 1, 1861. 

The decision to secede wasn't sudden. The Republican Party had risen from the ashes of the Whig party, drawing together diverse interests with the unifying principle of ending the extension of slavery. (Not its abolition, at least not initially, although it was regarded as an abolitionist party by at least some in the South.) That the party hadn't existed 8 short years before - that it had won the presidency on only the second such election in which it had existed - showed that there was a strong interest in such a party.

In half of the country, anyway.

While easily winning the Electoral College, Lincoln had only received 40% of the popular vote countrywide - and practically none in the South. Opposing slavery in new territories and states, it was clear, meant that the slave states would become a less powerful bloc as they become more of a minority. The success of Lincoln and the Republican Party made obvious to the southern states that this result was inevitable, as long as they were part of the United States.

At the time, the oath of office was not given until the start of spring - March 25. After South Carolina's secession,  the sitting president, James Buchanan, still had nearly 3 full months to take action. The seizure of eleven federal forts and arsenals would have been reasonable grounds for a military response. What he did, though, was...nothing. As more states seceded, he continued to do nothing, eventually leaving Lincoln with a sundered country and no Federal response. The American Civil War would begin in April at Fort Sumter, and would last through Lincoln's presidency, past his re-election and second inauguration. Four long years of war.

Predictions

Just because this guy was right before, doesn't mean he's right now. There were plenty of predictions about which way the economy was headed in the mid-Oughts.  Some were going to be very right, and some were going to be very wrong - but nobody remembers the wrong ones.

For that matter, Mister Rajan throws a lot of possibilities at the wall, here. Something is bound to stick.

Having said that...yes, the stock market is in a state that can make one uncertain of the meaning of "value." There are assets out there that appear improperly priced. Cheap money may be behind it all. Bull markets don't last forever - even when they represent an economy that has barely recovered from five or six years ago.

And if the economy was to go into decline from here, the effect might be akin to one of those aftershocks that knocks down buildings weakened by the main earthquake.

In any case, his prediction last time took two to three years (depending on who's counting) to come to pass. There might be time to prepare, for anyone concerned.



Note: Do not watch this video before reading the Time article because you will not be able to get the cadence of Brawndo catchphrases out of your head.

Negotiations

This is not really Crisis-driven as such, although it is an unexpected combination of two recent posts:

Amazon is in a dispute  - or negotiations, hard to tell the difference sometimes - with Disney over the pricing of DVDs Blu-rays physical copies of movies for home use. Like Hatchette, some Disney-sourced products -- pre-orders of Captain America: The Winter Soldier being specifically mentioned - are not currently being offered for sale. Unlike Hatchette, Disney is a household name that Amazon is not going to be able to sneak under the radar. (Coincidentally, Hatchette recently purchased former Disney publishing house Hyperion.)

Also unusually, the article includes the following sentence:

A particular concern of Amazon, those people noted, is that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. and other brick-and-mortar retailers sometimes charge less than the wholesale price for a new disc to lure people into stores so that they will purchase other, more profitable items. Amazon often tries to match those prices, but doesn't reap the benefits of drawing customers into a physical showroom.

Usually, when "Amazon" and "warehouse" and "brick-and-mortar" are in a sentence, it's to note that a brick-and-mortar store is being treated as an Amazon showroom. This often includes a note about the costs of having a physical location, which Amazon doesn't have to deal with. In this case, however, the advantage of an actual store is touted - and, indeed, Amazon is trying to get something like preferential treatment to allow for it. While it isn't exactly like slowing down your customers because you don't like the deal you gave them any more, it's also not exactly a "let the market decide"tactic.

And while it's not clear how much it has to do with the Crisis, it's also mentioned that Amazon may be using these hardball tactics because it's under pressure from its stockholders. Evidently the stock dropped after the most recent earnings were released with a larger-than-expected loss. There are times it seems like Amazon is still living in the dot-com Third Turning, and is only now realizing the Crisis has arrived.

Robin

There's a post from a while back that notes that while Generation X may discount the importance of the Awakening, there were still unavoidable influences that weren't always adversarial or otherwise negative.

Similarly, while Boomers may be Gen X's least favorite people as a group, many of them had a direct and positive influence. Including the late Robin Williams.

There are people who think Dead Poet's Society is not only a great but an important film.  There are probably fewer that consider Hook a compressed microcosm of the post-Awakening Boomer mindset, even if it seems like an example to Gen X of What Not To Do When You Grow Up. (It does, however, have a Prophet who succeeds without sacrifice, based on pure moral superiority, in an effort to save the next generation....)

If there was one undeniable chunk of his art that touched us when we were willing to listen, though, it was the comedy album Reality ... What a Concept. Frequently played at parties or wherever people were together in the early 80s,  the source of its subversive attitude wasn't easy to pin down.  It was definitely different from the albums put together by the previous generation of comics. The only similarity was in having cuts where one section ended and another began, usually where a specific persona was started or stopped. The rapid-fire references, and lightning moves from one line to another, all said that How Things Were Done didn't have to be the only way. It was funny where you knew what he was saying, it was funny where you didn't, it was funny when he was ridiculing Old(er) Hollywood ("send in the clowns") or then-active televangelists ("I know you can walk without that chair!").

Prophets are supposed to rebel against What Came Before, tearing down so that a new world can be built up again. Some, Robin Williams, do it more thoroughly than others.  Nobody will quite be able to walk in his footsteps, for he made quite a mark.

Throttling

Simply because the government may be a focus of this Crisis doesn't mean the rest of our society will get off easy.

"All the kids do it" was never something that worked with me when I was growing up and it didn’t work with my kids.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Verizon's defense of its plan

for handling heavy users of unlimited data plans. 

Verizon had previously set up unlimited data plans for use with smartphones. These were okay when a common use was web access and the occasional file download. As apps with heavy data usage requirements became prevalent - video apps like Netflix and Youtube, audio like Pandora and iTunes Radio - "unlimited" started to become a significant issue.  In fact, you can no longer buy unlimited data plans.  If you have one, though, and you don't mind not signing a new contract - which also means paying full price for any replacement phone - you can continue using it. Evidently, some people are using it more than Verizon would like. The company plans to slow down these users when the network is busy.

Chairman Wheeler doesn't consider this a reasonable limit for "unlimited" users. Verizon responded that it has become a standard industry practice. And that's where Wheeler's comment above comes in.

Is it right for Verizon to change the rules on people with unlimited plans? Is it right for people who have a pre-existing agreement with Verizon to pay the price because the company didn't do a proper assessment of the true costs of their offers? Is it right for the government to insist that the company update its infrastructure to support the offers made to, then accepted by, their customers?

There are people who will say the market is right, and the government should stay out of it. There are those who say that it is the responsibility of the government to support the enforcement of contracts, and that the market doesn't mean much if contract terms can be ignored simply because they have become more expensive than when the contract was signed.  The force of the Federal Government is not something that any company can withstand for extended periods, regardless of whether the government's case has merit. On the other hand, an individual user does not normally have any leverage over a company like Verizon, except as made available through government actions.

There appears to be a need, ultimately, to balance out the power differentials in both equations.The government needs to enforce lawful contracts, while avoiding abuses. And companies cannot be allowed to hide behind its customer's relative ignorance of their rights. It is easy to imagine these becoming the focal point of the Crisis - that people will demand more accountability from the government while also expecting companies to do the right thing.

It's not like Corporate America has a higher approval rating than the Feds.

Paperback

As previously noted, when a phrase comes up in the background frequently, it's often because it's in the news. So it is with "paperback," today.

There's a mashup of Paperback Writer with My Sharona on Youtube:




The song came up recently because of the dispute between Amazon and the publishing house Hatchette. Amazon is trying to charge lower prices for ebooks, Hatchette and others are resisting something they expect to cut into profits. At least some authors are concerned about their cut, as well.

Amazon is comparing the situation with what happened when paperbacks came out. Penguin Books started publishing paperbacks in 1935, for a much lower price than the hardcovers before them. Amazon trots out George Orwell as someone who opposed what was effectively a lower price for his products. The implication was that Hatchette was objecting to ebook publishing for similar reasons.

A continued reading of the Penguin Books wikipedia article indicates that the company was able to use its initial success to be a major publisher during World War II. It then took advantage of its privileged position in paper rationing to continue expansion after the war. Evidently their paper availability made it possible for them to acquire publishing rights more easily in the post-war era. Which may be where Amazon is looking. And it's worth noting that 1935 is about the same point in the last Crisis that we are in now.

Paperback Writer was released as a single in 1966. Being roughly 30 years after the launch of Penguin Books, whatever may have been the popular perception of paperback books, it probably wasn't quite the same as Orwell's, any more. The story goes that Paul McCartney's aunt wanted to hear a song that wasn't about love. Seeing Ringo with a book soon after, he wrote a song about writing a book.  So perhaps no deeper meaning about paperbacks, there.

Note that this story is attributed to A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song by Steve Turner - published by Harper Paperbacks.

Trust

A CNN poll, just in time for the 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, says hardly anyone trusts the government.

Just 13% of Americans say the government can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time, with just over three-quarters saying only some of the time and one in 10 saying they never trust the government, according to the poll.

There is a mention of a generational divide with regards to Watergate, although it's marked at "older than 40" and "under 40." This is less a generational divide than a division between those who remember the time and those who do not.  Generation X would be those 53 or younger; Millennials 33 or younger. It's hardly a surprise that Boomers would consider Watergate a "very serious problem." Nixon was GI Generation, so they might have had his back, except that few are left.

A bigger question is whether the government can effectively continue with numbers like these. Go outside, find 10 people, and one of them will say never to trust the government. Not ever.  Only one of them - perhaps two - believes the government will usually do the right thing.   It makes clear that one serious possibility of this Crisis is a Jeffersonian revolution - not necessarily with as hopeful an ending as Jefferson expected.

And while trust is being discussed, take a look at Bitsy Bear. A young monkey isn't careful, and his parents lose track of him for a moment, so he naturally ends up kidnapped by a bear with a banana. Strauss & Howe mention "neurotic" as one of the negative attributes of Artist generations, and this sort of misplaced concern is probably how they end up that way.

Not that it's surprising that parents will be especially protective, even to a fault, during a Crisis.