Article From Zerohedge About Disaggregation

I’ve been reading a site called Zerohedge for about a year now. It is written anonymously by a group of Wall Street people who think what is going on in the economy is quite a mess and will lead to disaster. Most average people don’t really have any concept of economics besides the 30 second sound bite they hear on the news every day. I listen to those too and I have to say most of the time it’s either wrong, or a flat out lie. But I digress.

This article talks about how in any economic transaction, you have the buyer, the seller but you then have people who insert themselves in between and take a cut. These are the middlemen. According to my Theory of Disaggregation, their days are numbered because you don’t need them to aggregate resources any more.

From the article:

Humans avoid changing current arrangements until there is no choice left but to change them–usually when the arrangement collapses in a heap. Greece is an interesting example of just this dynamic: the political parties left, right and center are desperate to keep the corrupt Status Quo intact, while those whose slice of the swag has vanished have already moved on to new arrangements that no longer depend on Central State swag or the many layers of middlemen that skimmed off most of the wealth for various monopolies, cartels and Elites: After Crisis, Greeks Work to Promote ‘Social’ Economy.

It’s a fascinating to look at how the people in power tend to protect the system above all else. Eventually though, it collapses. I think higher education in the US is at this point. It has sustained itself with massive decade long tuition hikes but this only works as long as you can get a job when you get out. This is no longer true to a certain extent so fewer people want to take the risk anymore. This trend is accelerated by social media and thus within a few years, something will have to happen. It’s important to understand that just because your school has been around for years doesn’t mean it won’t disappear in the future. Nothing is eternal folks. I have speculated what happens then in this post called Are Universities Too Big To Fail?

The article has a section at the end about Higher Education but I recommend reading the whole thing. It’s a look over the precipice.