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To: CYC who wrote (13370)	9/13/2001 12:19:46 PM
From: AllansAlias	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 209892

I want to mention something and I hope that it will not be misinterpreted as trying to spread doom and gloom. Although most would see Tuesday's attacks as a random event, I maintain that it is related in some fashion to the bubble. It is no accident that terrible things happen in bear markets. There have been many people who have warned us over the last few years about the dire consequences of allowing the bubble to get so far out of hand. Just think about how many writers over the last 100 years have warned us that "the bigger the bubble, the worse the hangover". Well, we are in the biggest bubble of all time. I have spoken in the past about the need to face the possibility of the terrible consequences waiting at the other side of the bubble, usually to a chorus of emotional vitriol that indicated to me that people are just unable to engage in a serious debate about nearly unthinkable events; things like economic depression and increasing violence. I am a Christian man and these things are unthinkable to me as well. Still, I will not shrink from the evidence that lays before me just because it is distasteful. I was born in the fifties, so I am by no means old enough to have "seen it all", but never in my life have I seen the sort of exuberance, excess, and unrealistic expectations that I have witnessed in the last 10 years. It's patently absurd. Middle-class westerners think they have a birthright to a good life and that there is nothing at all odd about many of their neighbours having a rarely used sports car (or whatever) in a garage that cost as much as a decent home did just a few decades ago. Call me weird, but I just find this sort of thing bizarre. Our forefathers worked very hard and many of them actually fought for their lives to ensure our future. However, I am quite sure that the future they hoped for us was not one so dominated by consumerism and unmanageable debt. What can we do? Well, it's is an oft-quote maxim in the software industry that "easy is hard.", in other words, that building something easy to use or seeing the simple solution is the most difficult thing. Until we become more interested in equality than accumulation, until we recognize our xenophobia and look to the wider world, until we accept reasonable expectations about what property, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness might better mean, I think we are in for a hard road. I am not preaching. I am asking these questions of myself. I sure wish to hell I were wiser.