Such analogies with the US are a little elastic, but fun nevertheless. Powerful armed forces, and long straight roads springs to mind for Rome. But is Pompeii, once buried in dust and ashes, a closer fit. Perhaps, at least where California is concerned. The feverish activity of the modern day alchemist frantically scratching around in the dry, parched land that is southern California, has created a dust cloud that it beginning to settle on the new fool’s gold, namely real estate. However, looking to antiquity for clues as to how we got where we are, would be mostly a desultory preoccupation. But there are more current parallels to real estate, such as the Fed’s creation of money out ether, a trait also mimicked by deft corporate financial algorithms, wealth creation’s new knight in shining armor. So is there a paradox? Francis Drake may provide a clue. He sailed nonchalantly passed these shores, never bothering to feign a whimper of interest in the featureless land, that must have seemed unsuited to profitable habitation. And his dismissive opinion is shared by many a modern day traveller passing through, finding themselves at a loss to try and understand the appeal, or rather the appeal of walking around with a large hole in one’s pocket, in an earth trembling, combustible no man’s land and as about as inspiring as …well a desert. Can it be that we have our heads buried so deep in that sand that we fail to see the anomaly? So self-absorbed in playing ‘catch-up’, the allusive mistress of ‘must have’ that we’re spinning like a Whirling Dervisher, or a top that only stops when it plunges over the edge. Perhaps it is just that we take ourselves too seriously. Ask any waiter in any country in the world that you want to pay the bill tomorrow, and they invariably laugh, “Sure, no problem!” Ask the same question in the US, and the reply is usually, “I’ll need to ask the manager”.
Is that spinning top our Pompeii? I don’t believe it is. The new Pompeii is something of significantly greater dimensions and sits just on the horizon. Just imagine for a moment if China and India enjoyed the same material trappings that Americans currently do, and there is no doubt that they are actively pursuing that course, the world would be completely devoid of important natural resources. This is just one of the many major challenges facing the world, and only one word comes to mind, one which is anathema to the current mindset, or at best dismissed as spurious invention, that word our parents taught us, “sacrifice”. That not so faint glimmer on the horizon, seems to sit uncomfortably with our hunger driven pursuit of materialism, and seems to be blinding us to what is real, and what is not? Maybe it’s time to remove the blindfold on many things including Californian real estate.
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