I want to spread the news,Bacevich's book is another one of those "how did we end up in this mess" tracts. But, in addition to being very well written, the thing I like about Bacevich's critique is his refusal to attack the usual suspects (big government, Wall Street, politicians etc.). I mean all those people come in for criticism, but the real villain of TLP is us. It's our desire to have luxury on the cheap, to drive big cars, to spend more than we make, Bacevich argues, that's taken us to war, ruined our economy and our environment.
If it feel this good getting used
Just keep on using me until you use me up
I've been thinking about this for awhile. How much of this current crisis is just a manifestation of the American--indeed human--will? We're always talking about politicians deluding us and Wall-Street manipulating us, and predatory lenders conning us, into doing things that aren't in our own interest. But maybe we don't want what's in our interest. Maybe we like our gas-guzzling, credit-card charging, second house buying when you can't afford it, commercial culture.
The thing I always liked about Bill Withers's "Use Me" was that it was a man's critique of a dysfunctional relationship. Unlike a lot of rappers, Withers doesn't blame the girl, he blames himself, going so far as to say, "It ain't too bad the way you using me, because I sure am using you to do that thing we do." In fact he laughs at the people trying to help him, much as one might picture people laughing at some lefty for telling them "they aren't voting their interest." In that respect, I think Bacevich's critique is a man's critique of another, very similar, dysfunctional relationship. It easy to think we've been conned into this current crisis. But what if this is the world as we want it? I think it's imperative to never forget that humans are animals. What if, in the words of Bob, we're just fulfilling the book? What if it isn't even dysfunctional? What if this is just who we are?
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Your love is like a chunk of gold
Hard to get and hard to hold
Nobody beats Bill Withers for honest assessments of relationships, from the reasons we seek then to the reasons we stay in them.
this line of thought is not new. I call it the Edward Gibbon critique. A great civilization reaches inevitable decline because it has betrayed its values, or merely embraced them too heartily.
One of my favorite songs of all time. This post is perfect in every way possible. Feel free to keep reaching.
I disagree TN; although of course people are tempted all over the world by the bling, this really is in my opinion a pure result of Reagan's bait and switch Morning in America philosophy. Go over to Sullivan and read about how RR took us out of the 70s sink--the malaise speech, where Jimmy Carter told everyone we needed to put on our sweaters in the winter and turn down the heat, that we needed a new energy policy. People were talking about the environment, foreign oil dependency way back then; "think little" was the watch phrase till Morning in America shucked and jived its way into the American bloodstream. During the Bush years, the ultimate victory for the Reagan revolution, the Reagan revolution on steroids, 95% of the wealth that was generated went to ten percent of Americans. It was the biggest class warfare robbery in world history after the looting of the Americas during the Renaissance. Making a living in America has become a money losing operation. This is at conservatism's doormat. Blaming the victim of a 3 card monte scam is not my cuppa. And I can say this as someone who never in all my life have "gone for the bling," driving old used cars, buying new clothes no more than once a year and shoes every two, 62 years old, with a MA, and most of my pension, little that it was, recently wiped out, grown daughter with a preexisting medical condition--whole family working since we were teenagers--parents, kids. I don't buy it.
Even if it is the world as we want it, it doesn't seem fair to the other 5.7 billion folks stuck on the ride with us.
It's our desire to have luxury on the cheap, to drive big cars, to spend more than we make, Bacevich argues, that's taken us to war, ruined our economy and our environment.
I don't believe this, because I don't believe that people know what they want very much. I think people have some innate wants: warmth, company, food, unconditional love, touch, building things, good design. Those are very strong and people will find or create them again and again.
But I think that we also have malleable wants, like shiny crap and big houses. Those aren't actually innate wants, which is why they do not satisfy for very long and you have to step them up each time to get the same thrill. I think people who aren't attuned to their moods believe the messages they are saturated with, that they want a particular kind of watch or tv or house. You can identify those because the satisfaction can be destroyed by comparison to someone else's bigger shinier thing.
I think those malleable wants are driving us over the brink. But they aren't innate, and in fact, there is a huge industry dedicated to teaching us every day in every media that we want something purchasable. Without that driver, it'd be interesting to see how people prioritize their wants.
Well sure, if you asked someone directly if this is the type of culture they'd like to live in, they'd clearly tell you 'no.' But just going off the amount of people with $35,000 salaries, and $700 a month car payments, its tough to argue with.
"But maybe we don't want what's in our interest. Maybe we like our gas-guzzling, credit-card charging, second house buying when you can't afford it, commercial culture."
Do we like it? I'm not so sure. Maybe we feel like were stuck in it. We've linked our desire for contentment and success to commercial culture.
Reach all you want. Your points are excellent and thought-provoking.
Btw, I saw Bill Withers many years ago when he opened for an old Blood, Sweat & Tears concert (yes, with David Clayton Thomas). Awesome performance, esp. the live rendition of "Use Me."
yeah, manifestation of the american will...maybe
manifestation of human will...nope
P.S. how about the isaac hayes version of "Use me" on the live at the sahara tahoe albums...those albums, great heartbreak medicine imho
I largely agree, the problems we face are largely self-induced and blaming others isn't the way to solve it. Not to say others are blameless, but many of these problems are similar to obesity. Some deny their problem ("I'm big boned"), some blame others ("high fructose corn syrup did it all"), others deny science ("BMI is bullshit") The first line of defense is to eat right and exercise, not have a bunch of food cops. Even if the government could enact a set of policies to get people thinner, by the time it works one could already have adult onset diabetes.
A big problem is people are full of shit. In surveys, they claim we should do whatever it takes to save the environment, yet they love their SUV's, leafblowers, boats, etc. We can't even get Laurie David or RFK Jr to stop using private jets.
Thomas Friedman just wrote a column about how when he eats out, he wants to tell young kids they should be at home eating tuna fish instead of steak at a restaurant. I know bartenders who can't afford health insurance, but can somehow afford a Caribbean vacation every 3 months or $400 boots. I hear businessmen who went way into debt for the McMansion and all the furnishings, yet complain that the democrats are going to tax them into the poor house.
You should read some more on our debt culture, and how we got here. It hasn't always been this way, and there are reasons we're here now that can't be explained away by "that's how we like it."
Do we like it? I'm not so sure. Maybe we feel like were stuck in it. We've linked our desire for contentment and success to commercial culture.
I think a lot of people look at popular culture and think that they deserve everything that celebrities have, including the fame. Reality TV has made large amounts of people think they can be stars. Young people watch Cribs and think they deserve the kind of lifestyle that an NBA player has.
If someone needs a car, buy a damn Civic instead of leasing a Lexus SUV.
Well, duh... The Gibbon/TLP critique works so well because it is true. The reality is that the political, economic, and cultural leadership of the US have remarkably similar values to most Americans.
But I also agree with CitizenE about Reagan's bait and switch. In the 1970s, Americans were facing unprecedented challenges to economic and political power - the concept that there will be "more America" tomorrow than today. Reagan's Great Lie, perpetuated by Bush/Clinton(to be fair)/Bush was that the 1970s were an aberration... That Carter's "malaise" was an incorrect diagnosis from a failed politician.
The reality is that since the 1980s, bubble-based economics have kept the idea of perpetually increasing American economic and political power afloat... In the face of the same fundamental counter-realities that had caused the 1970s - decline of US manufacturing, dependence on unstable resource markets, emergence of other economic and political powers to compete with US dominance. None of those trends actually declined during the past 30 years... But bubble after bubble after bubble created an illusion that we were somehow counteracting those trends.
The reality is that we have to come to terms that the world is changing - not that the US is doomed to decline like the British Empire, or that we have to make war against China like Germany made war, or that we have to isolate ourselves or whatever... But it's a changed world, and we have to re-imagine what it means to be American in that context.
The challenge is that it's too easy to blame all our problems on elites who have led us astray or swindled us, or on weak populations who we can scapegoat. That's happened before, here and abroad. It's an easy game to play, and I'm disturbed by a lot of liberal bloggers who want to play that game - it won't end up going where they want it to go.
Interesting post and comments, but its Bill that pulled me in.
He might be more responsible than anyone for my girlfriend and me living together for 6 great years (and counting). It all started with a lunch time walk to the CD store for some great music.
That man can sing.
Yes TNC and the point of Conservatism as I understand it is to manage our fallen nature with our fallenness first in mind.
Though I'm an atheist the concept of fallenness rings for me practically right, except I don't think we had anywhere to fall from.
The excellence of Obama is the mix of optimism -- 'hope' (not to be shat on) -- with cleareyed but appropriately fazed reckoning with the callous truth of man's weakness. Bush invaded Iraq on gallons of the former; nothing of the latter.
"I know bartenders who can't afford health insurance, but can somehow afford a Caribbean vacation every 3 months or $400 boots." Doug EMI
And I live next door to a man who has been tending bar at one of the most successful restaurants in the Napa Valley for over thirty years, who's had hip replacements, a back surgery that went awry and left him unable to work for 6 months, for which he recieved no recompense because while going to the operation already drugged he signed away his rights, and then had shoulder surgery as a result of tripping over a wire on the job that he had for months been asking to have removed. Every time unemployment was far from enough to live on; he has no pension; he's over his eyes in credit card debt as a result, and recently the IRS audited all the workers and came up with an arbitrary--tens of thousands of dollars--amount of back taxes for tips (without which he would barely be earning minimum wage in a restaurant that regularly serves millionaires from all over the world). His luxury item? Direct dish tv, so he can watch the Pats and the Red Sox, teams he's been rooting for (the sox at least) since he was a kid growing up just outside of Boston. Most restaurant workers (mostly women with families to support working in restaurants that barely cover their rent) in America are meat if they miss more than two consecutive shifts, even if they're sick with pneumonia. The reason my neighbor keeps his job--he's the best bartender in the valley--in his midfifties, body shredded, living from paycheck to paycheck, paying down debt for medical care and time he was unable to work for a decade with no end in sight.
Arguably such is the nature of the beast. People have always wanted the good life, and if a person can get there without working for it so much the better.
I think that our notion of what constitutes the good life has changed over the years. For my Italian Grandmother (maternal) living the good life was merely having enough to eat. God help you if your perpetually skinny in an Italian household. For my paternal grandfather the good life was a government job with no debt and money in the bank. He'd watched his father loose a house through forclosure and seen the poverty that comes with a job that had no security. I remember vividly my grandpa on my father's side telling me stories about what it was like to dig wells in Minisota for a dollar a foot during the depression.
Somewhere along the way I think our notion of what makes for the "good life" changed. It stopped being a life without debt and started being one where we use our debt to finance our lifestyle. I don't exactly know how this happened but it seems that my parents generation has placed a higher emphasis on materialism than their parents did. In turn this was transfered to my generation. I absolutely love the line from fight club where Brad Pitt Says "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis." I think we should remember that in times like these.
I'm reading the book right now, too, and agree with TNC's take. What I've yet to read in the book is an explanation of how Bacevich's argument is going to be better received now than when Carter said it.
I am honestly a little surprised to read "the media made me do it" and "Reagan tricked us" in the comment thread. We believed what we wanted to believe. Reagan said it, but it was our choice to buy (and buy and buy) in.
Family Values
(from the current Threepenny Review)
Shame is more important than guilt.
Food is more trouble than it's worth.
We're prettier than everybody else.
Nobody gets what they deserve.
Everybody has it coming to them.
We're also smarter than everybody else.
If you've got it, spend it, and if you
Don't have it, spend it as if you do.
We deserve more than everybody else.
Look at her, strutting what she doesn't have.
Look at him, he thinks he's got it
Coming to him. Like everybody else.
We have it and it doesn't do us any
Good because nobody gets what they
Deserve more than everybody else.
—Robert Pinsky
That's true DB Cooper, we certainly bought what they were selling. I grew up in a suburb of Washington DC, and I remember vividly the transformation of my neighborhood from mostly 2 story cape cod style houses and station wagons, modestly priced for the area, to an ugly hodgepodge of McMansions and lexus SUVs/BMWs. My father refinanced our house so many times that when my parents sold it when they seperated, they didn't make that much, just enough to get my mother, sister and I to another place. All throughout this time, their income was going down, but relying on the house was enough to maintain a steady decline in living that didn't seem too radical. But it was entirely done through refinancing, we barely had any savings. I think thats a fairly typical story in the 90s/00s spending spree.
Frankly, I think it is fair to blame both the people as a whole and the politicians as well. The politicians just couldn't say no, and indeed even encouraged people to keep spending ("go shopping"). Why would they say no? It benefited their corporate patrons who wrote the laws and kept them popular. Who wants to tell the American people no? Conservatives decry the lack of personal responsibility, yet we could have used a healthy dose of reprimanding from up top. I really believe that had Bush gone a completely different route after 9/11, and dramatically encouraged saving, as well as a reduction in the lavish aspects of our lifestyles, so as to support the war effort, things would be at least a little different. But the Reagan fantasyland the Bush administration lived in accelerated our decline greatly, and here we are. They forgot to look out for human fallibility first, which to me is one of the hardest hits the conservative brands could possibly take. Thats why regulation is so important, as well as responsible leadership.
CitizenE, my comment wasn't meant to be indicative of all restaurant workers, it was more to show how there is a lot of irrespondsibility among people out there who waste money on wants and ignore needs. The girls I know who bartend make about $1000 a week, which understates things because they pay tax on less than half of that amount. For those who live on the coasts, that may not seem like a lot, but for a 25 year old in the midwest, it is more than most 25 year old college grads make.
They slurge on expensive dinners, new cars, pure breed animals, shithead boyfriends, high end purses and clothes for the clubs.
THC, I understand your point, but the blame isn't close to relative because of risks and consequences. The real estate bubble was created because the mortgage industry players believed they were making insane money while passing on the risk through the securitization process. Wall Street thrives on boom/bust cycles (internet, etc.) So market makers were making deals they absolutely knew weren't fundamentally sound (no doc loans, predatory rates, etc.).
The consumer definitely has a personal responsibility to limit risk. But the consumer's judgement of risk is amateur while the market maker's is instrumental. Without the securitization process by which the market makers theoretically avoided risk, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
So beat on consumers all you want. Of course, in many cases, they deserve it. But economically, they are paying a huge price for an industry that is contemptuous of them.
And the new rules are out now. Make your company too big to fail through expansion (including foreign) and acquisition, and you'll be in a great position to make insane profits while placing the risk on the taxpayers.
This is clearly who we are. Left to our own devices we tend to borrow to much and take silly risks for a big payoff. It is the lure of easy money. That is why we have government. It is suposed to be our collective memory. That is why we regulate banks and markets. to protect us from ourselves. We had economic crashes about once a generation until the great depression. Then we limmited up side growth in favor of stability. Until we forgot what the down side was like because we wanted the unlimmited up side and elected people who did not believe that government should regulate markets. Now we pay the price.
We are like a bipolar patient. We miss the highs when we are on our meds so we stop taking them. Then life reminds us why we sought help in the first place.
It’s been said that Americans are the best entertained and least informed people in the world. Trillions are spent to keep it that way.
It’s fair to say that we’re all to blame, and also that the blame is proportional to the influence that each of us brings to the table.
"I am honestly a little surprised to read "the media made me do it" and "Reagan tricked us" in the comment thread. We believed what we wanted to believe. Reagan said it, but it was our choice to buy (and buy and buy) in."
DB Cooper
Perhaps, I should phrase it differently: Reagan (and Bush/Cheney--go to the mall/buy those SUV's)promoted a corporate welfare advertisement (think of the Medicare prescription drug program in which Big Pharma whose number one cost is selling product or the 30 year Star Wars boondoggle or the profligate military adventurism--be all you can be and beer sells football--to support huge oil company profiteering) state--non stop right out of 1984--product, product, product as part of a tax, trade, and wage policy that all benefitted the upper 10% of Americans. Product and the $20 tax break has been the opiate of the masses, but turns out that just food, shelter, health care, and transportation to work actually costs more than people earn. People who have the jack don't run up credit card debt; it's the folks that have a family and a flat tire four days before payday and have to buy that tire, or a sick mother who can no longer live on her own. Yes, people buy into buying plasma tvs when that old 33 inch Motorola still works perfectly well, but that stuff is chump change. The reason Obama won this election was because way before the financial meltdown, he got that just living everyday life, without luxuries, is costing more than a huge swath of Americans are earning. As every economist is pointing out right now our economy depends on people being able to buy consumer goods, but conservatism, Reagonomics, has gotten people to buy into something for nothing--the no one pays taxes con, the helping the poor is the problem con, the trashing the environment has no economic consequences con, while killing the goose that lays those golden capitalist eggs, the working person. Yes we have been bamboozled, but I blame the bamboozlers, not the poor suckers who just want a home in a neighborhood with decent schools for their kids, or a car that is safe to drive their kids around in and not break down, so they can't get to work, or even those who want a big screen teevee so on their day off they can watch Oklahoma take it to Texas Tech, or want to impress their girlfriends once in a while with a night on the town.
Don't know if I agree with you on this one, TNC, but damn, thanks for the music!
Some of "us" -- the ones who lived within our means, saved, took business risks and worked hard to make them pay off, drove older, smaller cars, bought modest houses with fixed mortgage -- some of "us" take exception to the "It's our own fault" stuff going around these days.
It's not "our" fault. It's *your* fault.
That track kills. Played that guitar in my HS jazzband, but never made it sound like that!
Megan: But I think that we also have malleable wants, like shiny crap and big houses. Those aren't actually innate wants, which is why they do not satisfy for very long and you have to step them up each time to get the same thrill. ... But they aren't innate, and in fact, there is a huge industry dedicated to teaching us every day in every media that we want something purchasable. Without that driver, it'd be interesting to see how people prioritize their wants.
We already know how people priotise their wants without the drivers of media. It's very much the same as they prioritise their wants with the drivers of media. Go to a museum - heaps of shiny crap from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China and Ancient India and Ancient Rome and the Incas and the Celtic cultures in northern Europe and so forth.
I've seen big palaces built by the rich guys in Thailand, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Vietnam, France, England, USA, and I've seen plenty of pictures of them from other countries too.
Before the invention of TV, or printing, or radio or the internet, people still liked shiny crap and big houses.
There of course have been people in every culture I know of who have said basically "shiny crap and big houses is not the route to happiness". Some of them have even apparently genuinely lived that way themselves. I don't know of any data on how relatively common these people are in different cultures, but I don't see any reason to believe that modern-day USA is particularly under-supplied with those eccentrics.
Sorn: Somewhere along the way I think our notion of what makes for the "good life" changed. It stopped being a life without debt and started being one where we use our debt to finance our lifestyle. I don't exactly know how this happened but it seems that my parents generation has placed a higher emphasis on materialism than their parents did. In turn this was transfered to my generation.
Read Shakespeare (16th/17th century), or Jane Austen (18th/19th century), or Agatha Christie (1920s). Their stories are full of people running into debt to finance their lifestyles. People in England for centuries were running into debt to finance their lifestyle. I suspect that our generation or our parents' generation is no more materialistic than our grandparents, just our grandparents on average had lower expectations (what with the Great Depression and WWII). If you've struggled against starvation for much of your childhood then ample food is a luxury.
Incidentally, I live below my means because I find many advantages to doing so. My argument here is only that there is nothing new about living in debt or buying shiny crap and big houses, I'm not saying that it's right in and of itself. I also, however, think that if we are ever to achieve a major soceital change in attitudes to consumption, it will be useful to be aware that consumption has far deeper lying roots than 20th century America or media sending messages.
I'm very late to the commenting party, but just had to thank Ta-Nehisi for this great clip and comment. Yep, this is the way we are, and man this song is just perfect syncopated R&B. And the philosophy is so, so, many people I know...
It's true that acting shortsightedly and setting ourselves up for a fall is a part of our nature, and a recurring theme in history.
It's also true that blaming that fall on others and lashing out, often violently, at scapegoats is also part of our nature.
Wisdom is understanding our nature, and using that understanding to gain as much control of ourselves and our situations as possible.
DougEMI is right. There are just way too many people like that. Like the monkeys my brother told me about, who get trapped by a box with a coconut in it, and the box has a hole big enough for the monkey's hand to get in it, but not big enough for the monkey's hand with the coconut to get out of it. The monkey trapper just walks right up to the monkey and grabs him because the monkey, while panicking, will not let go of the coconut.
Some of us are like Jimmy Carter and maybe CitizenE, but most of us are like that monkey, and just unable to see the big picture or the long term. Weak. And as far as what's going to be keeping on being used until it's used up, it's probably oil for us, and it's probably topsoil for civilizations that lived where deserts are now. I think we're just going to screw it up again, but I do a little here and a little there to just slow it down.
Does Laurie David really have a private jet?
I'm late to the thread, but I'll offer a thought experiment that may help clarify how economic booms and busts relate to risk and greed.
Imagine two societies where the entirety of the economy consisted of betting on coin toss games. The coin tosses occur 10 once every 10 years and are the only way to make money (the payoffs for the bets come from an external source). Both societies use the same coin toss results, but they differ in how the bets pay off.
In the first society, if you bet $1 and you call the toss correctly, it pays out $2.10. It makes sense to play the game, since on average you'd make $0.05 per toss, so very large numbers of people bet quite a bit on the coin toss. Some people will bet on heads, some on tails, so regardless of how the coin lands, people will make about $0.05 on average; some will lose and grumble, some will win and rejoice on any given toss, but most people will end up at least slightly ahead over the course of a few coin tosses no matter the results.
The second society is like the first, but the payout for betting on heads $2.15 and the payout for betting on tails $2.10, so regardless of how you bet, or even if you chose not to play, you'll be at least as well off in the second society as the first. People will have an even greater incentive to play than in the first society and thus participate in even greater numbers, but they'll all bet on heads, since the odds of both happening are equal, but heads pays out more. Thus, in contrast to the first society, when the coin comes up heads, people make $1.15 on average and playing the coin toss game is greatly praised and recommended to all. If the coin comes up tails, people lose $1.00 on average and there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth and the coin toss system is villified.
Ask yourself not only where would you live whether you'd play the coin toss game, but what you'd expect others who may be more or less interested in money or afraid of risk to do as well.
Folks, there is nothing surprising or unsual about what is happening in the economy. What we saw in October was an old fashioned Panic. A couple of generations ago, schoolchildren learned about them in history class. The US had Panics in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, and 1893 resulting from real estate bubbles. And Panics in 1884, 1907 and 1932 due to bubbles in other asset classes.
Bubble cause Panics. No amount of regulation can stop bubbles from happening. It's not like they didn't try. After the bubble of 1720 derivatives and short selling were actually banned for decades (yes they had derivatives nearly four centuries ago--there is no true innovation in finance; the same old stuff gets recycled with new names.)
They tried strictly regulating money creation by the British Central Bank in 1845. Didn't stop the bubble and subsequent panic in 1847. America opted for a central bank after the 1907 Panic, but that didn't work all that well after 1929.
As long as income inequality is high, the rich will have the wherewithal to bid up asset prices to a point where a bubble can form. For nearly half a century after WW II, high taxes in the US kept income inequality too small to achieve the sort of sustained bull market needed to ignite a bubble.
It wasn't until the great boom of the 1990's that the rich finally had enough funds to bid up stocks to the highest levels ever seen and then some, an event that showed how "it was different this time". Only then did an old fashioned bubble develop in stocks. This bubble had *official* sanction by the passage of the 1997 capital gains tax cut which was *intended* to produce capital gains from a stock market that was *already* overvalued.
This bubble was deflated without event by aggressive Fed action that encouraged funds fleeing the stock market to go into real estate. And then in 2003, the government sanctioned *another* bubble by passing another decrease in capital gains taxes intended to stimulate capital gains in an overvalued real estate market.
This time the Fed was unable to deflate the bubble safely and so we got a Panic. Once again, central banks cannot stop these things, not in 1847, not in 1929 and not today.
Now if we end up with a full-scale Depression, it will take a long time to "recharge" and we won't have another Panic for maybe 20 years. If we manage to avoid a Depression, then we will be right back here within 10 years, unless taxes on the rich are raised worldwide to "drain the swamp" of cash available for asset purchase (i.e. investment).
It's really as simple as that. You can run a high tax, Panic-free economy like we did over 1945-1981 with the problems attendant to that, or you can continue the low-tax policy in place since 1981 and get periodic Panics.
There really is no free lunch. Each type of policy has its drawbacks. What we are going through now is one of the drawbacks of the low-tax economic policy.
Imagine two societies where the entirety of the economy consisted of betting on coin toss games.
So in other words there is no food, and I, along with anyone else, would shortly die of starvation under both scenarios. Consequently I am indifferent between your two scenarios, and I imagine most other people are too.
If there is food and other goods coming in from some external source, I'd prefer to move to where that external source is. Betting on coin tosses like you describe strikes me as an incredibly boring way of making a living. I expect most other people would do the same thing - there's a reason that casinos offer the chance of winning a jackpot and advertise the total amount loudly - what's going on in gambling is that people are attracted by the possibility of a really big win, not by the chance of making a small amount of money steadily.
I have no idea what relevance your scenarios have to policy, as I don't know how any real-world economy could calculate pay-offs as precisely as your example requires.