Cyreenik Says
In 2010 half of America's work force became female for the first time, and there were more female college graduates than male.
You've come a long way, baby.
Now that you have, you need to think about the surprises that may come with this dramatic shift in the relation of men and women. One shift to be sensitive to is what is happening in the realm of male enfranchisement.
Enfranchisement is the sense that a person belongs to a community, and that the community pays attention to the opinion of the person. Enfranchisement is not an on-off thing, it is very much a shades-of-gray thing.
When the feeling of enfranchisement is high, the person feeling enfranchised acts responsibly. He or she pays attention to the consequences of what they do. For instance, the enfranchised person may drink, but they don't drink to the point that they do things that cause long-term damage because they are aware of the consequences of their actions, and they care.
The theme of the disenfranchised person is, "I don't care." The disenfranchised person may drink, and they may do long-term damage when they do because... they don't care. This is the danger of disenfranchisement.
Historically, employment has been a strong enfranchiser for men. When men are providing, the community has a strong incentive to listen to them, and they feel they are valuable to the community.
An example of the converse -- chronically unemployed men -- is the condition of many aboriginal communities when they are displaced from their traditional hunting and gathering activities by an incoming advanced technology group of settlers -- in America and Australia this was European settlers coming in to displace Native Americans and Aborigines. The displaced communities suffer a lot of culture shock and the stereotypical image of the men is they become drunkards and fighters. This happens because they become disenfranchised.
It is important to remember that this reverting to drinking and fighting can happen in technologically advanced communities, too, and the results can be very damaging for the community.
So, while women are to be congratulated for how far they have come in our technologically advanced communities, these newly empowered women must keep in mind that famous Spiderman slogan, "With great power comes great responsibility." In this case, the responsibility is a curious one:
Women must keep their men enfranchised.
Here's an article in the February 3rd LA Times about the aftermath of North Korea's won revalueing of Dec 2009. North Korea's economic moves bring new misery. In this move North Korea exchanged new Won notes for old ones, and set a low limit on how much of the old money could be traded in for the new.
Ouch! I personally witnessed a similar disaster when I was a soldier in Vietnam in 1968. Then it was the US military changing from one style of Military Payment Certificate (MPC) to another. The day the exchange happened it was a surprise to us regular Soldier Joes, and the military bases were locked up tight while the exchange took place.
In both cases -- Vietnam and North Korea -- those people who had been keeping their savings as cash were wiped out.
In both cases the action was taken because government officials felt too much cash was getting into the wrong hands, and doing the exchange was a quick and surgical way to solve the problem.
It now appears that in both cases, the result is not going to be a surgical strike, but a social earthquake.
It's not talked about much in Vietnam history stories, but that MPC exchange in 1968 was a huge blow to the credibility of the US-supported government. Many of South Vietnam's aspiring middle class that was supporting the US intervention had been collecting their savings as MPC notes rather than inflation-ravaged South Vietnamese Pi notes. Yeah, some of those MPC notes were finding their way into Viet Cong hands, too, but it didn't occur to the US government officials that pulled off this stunt to check how much damage it would cause to US supporters, and that damage was huge. In my humble opinion as a soldier there at the time, it was damaging on the same order of magnitude as the much more famous Tet Offensive, but in its own way.
Apparently the North Korean officials did not take a lesson from that obscure footnote in Vietnam War history... not that surprising.
But now that they've done it, they are witnessing a similar effect. The government officials have confiscated the wealth of their saving class -- the merchant class as the North Korean media has decided to define them -- and they are printing new money to be handed out by the government-favored classes instead.
Ummm...! Mess with someone's money and you seriously mess with their loyalty. Plus you scare everyone around them. Could it happen to them, too? ...When will it happen to them, too!
Now that some of repercussions of this are starting to leak out, I see big, big problems coming from this for months-to-years down the road. This could be the start of a government-toppling crisis.
Bad money contributed to toppling Chiang Kai-shek/Jiǎng Jièshí in China in the 1940's, it helped topple the Vietnam government in the 1970's... by my estimate it could bring down the Kim government in the 2013 to 2017 timeframe.
A bad money stunt such as this one doesn't kill the regime right away, but it tells the masses of people who have been quietly building a good life for themselves and quietly supporting the government as well that the writing is on the wall. They have been badly burned, which means the government can't be trusted to work in their interest any more, and they need to be looking for an exit strategy.
I've gazed into my crystal ball... I see a big blunder... Now we get to see what happens next.
March update: A 26 Mar 10 WSJ update on North Korea North Korea on the Edge by B. R. Myers. More about how desperate things look, and pointing out that 2011 is a symbolic year for North Korea, and the regime is now promising its people a prosperity miracle in 2012.
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