Albrt: Naked Capitalism – a Home for the Heterodox

By albrt

This is fundraising week for Naked Capitalism.  I’m going to tell you, in a roundabout way, some of the reasons why I support Naked Capitalism, and why you should too.

If you already have your own reasons to support Naked Capitalism (and you probably do), you can go straight to the donation link. Please give generously!

For those of you who prefer a little small talk with a pitch, my parents grew up in the 1950s.  They were WASP-adjacent, and liberal in the sense of buying into what later became the foundations of the Professional Managerial Class.  My mother, probably the single greatest influence on my world view, was a heterodox thinker in her own way.  She voted for Nixon in 1972 and then became a semi-radical feminist, to the left of even such legendary figures as Betty Ford and Geraldine Ferraro.

All three of my parents were university professors (for at least a brief period), so when I turned eighteen in the early 1980s, I rebelled the only way I knew how.  First I refused to go to college, and then later I flunked out more than once.  I had many jobs during the 1980s and 90s, most of which did not pay well.  I was a cook, a bartender, a hotel night auditor, a member of a worker-owned collective, an editor of a small-town newspaper, a union organizer, and a 411 operator, and that is nowhere near a complete list.  Eventually, I decided that I wanted go to law school.  I obtained an undergraduate degree and did very well on the standardized test for law school aspirants.  I was soundly rejected by several Ivy League schools, but was offered scholarships at third-tier schools and did well at one of them.

The point of all this that there have been very few places where I felt like I fit in – a third-tier law school, Naked Capitalism, and the local saloon (as long as I remember to tip well).  The community of heterodox thinkers is a reason to support Naked Capitalism.  Click the Tip Jar link. Give the snow leopard kittens a big meal to help feed the site.

In the middle of my 20+ years as a lawyer (so far) came the Financial Crisis of 2007-2010, which seems like a blur in retrospect.  I was reading Naked Capitalism and other bubble-related sites in the runup to the crisis, which is one of the main reasons I was able to stay solvent when others around me were levering up and buying more houses than they needed or could afford.  As those of us who were here during the Financial Crisis can testify, information accompanied by skepticism and common sense can be extremely useful when others are losing their bearings.

That is a very practical reason to support Naked Capitalism.  Please click the link and go to our donation poge. Naked Capitalism depends on your support!.

Unfortunately, it seems as though most people in the United States never really regained their bearings after the Financial Crisis, particularly the elites who hold the levers of power.  The stock market recovered, but our culture and politics did not.  We appear to be descending into what Jim Kunstler called the Long Emergency, with two or three emergencies as big as the Financial Crisis going on at any one time.

I’ve reached a point in my career where I can sort through most legal issues for myself if I want to.  Good for me.  Unfortunately, I lack expertise in many other areas, and what Sarah Palin aptly called the lamestream media has become increasingly unreliable.  Naked Capitalism cuts through layers of corporate and government bullshit and gives me links and background I need to figure out at least a small fraction of what is going on in the world.  Naked Capitalism is as important today as it was during the Financial Crisis, even though (or perhaps because) it may seem less and less clear exactly what is wrong.

The work done by Yves, Lambert, Conor and Nick is simply not being done by anybody else.

I started posting on the internet again last year, when Yves was gracious enough to accept a blind submission.  I’ve been unusually busy with the complex needs of an Aged Parent for the past few months, but I’m hoping to become more productive soon.  One of the benefits of working closely with an Aged Parent is that it puts things in perspective.  Writing here and elsewhere while I still have semi-coherent thoughts to post will be more of a priority for me going forward.  In the short term I’m working on more posts about identity in our culture and politics, including aspects of identity arising from ascribed status, and how we build functional identities out of applied heuristics (simplified mental models of how the world works).  I might even manage a law-related post on the Fourth Amendment and bodily autonomy.

If any of that interests you and you haven’t already clicked the link for better reasons, please click the link now! Your backing is critical to keep this vital and independent endeavor humming.