Dispatches from the Culture War
By the time I could pay attention, The Greatest had already rejected his slave name, embraced the Nation of Islam, and refused to serve the armed forces of the United States.1He was not a draft dodger. He just said fuck no, put me in prison if you have to, but fuck. No. That ain’t no dodge.
References
We live in the golden era of consumer bliss.
A few mouse clicks and we can sit back and wait for front-door delivery of everything we never knew we wanted. At a discount. And without the nuisance of having to spend time actually talking to a clerk or salesperson. Eventually, those pesky clerks will experience the joy of excess leisure time as robots assume their non-essential functions and the brick-and-mortar stores die away. Disruption!
A few weeks back we took a look at some of the downsides of our new “sharing” economy. It’s worth taking a look at some of the really positive aspects of the expanding embrace of entrepreneurial enthusiasm.
I know a number of top-cut people who are entrepreneurs. I mean this with absolute sincerity and conviction; these are people who would bail my ass out of a crack without hesitation, people who give back and pay forward as a matter of character and habit. People with greater social compassion and engagement than I have to offer on my best day, and who do it pretty much without a break.
A couple of phrases that get tossed around pretty casually these days are sharing economy and market disruption. While these terms have been so overused as to disable any attempt at precise explanation, this same overuse makes it crucial to at least try to scrape some of the barnacles off. Allow me to declare at the outset that though I am likely to fail to penetrate to the hull, I might succeed at knocking away a small part of the encrustation.
