Investors see a whole realm of business possibilities.  Lots of hardware, including all those 3-D virtual reality helmets, will be needed.  Also lots of software.  And lots of programming of the different worlds.  Some are saying that the metaverse will be the future of fashion, with people spending lots of money to buy impressive clothes for their avatars.  And though American manufacturing of actual products has been outsourced to China, corporations are seeing a future in producing “virtual goods.”

We’ve blogged about the Metaverse–which promises to let us live our lives inside shared virtual worlds–concluding that turning ourselves into video-game avatars for work, school, and social life is not an attractive idea.  But the corporate world is going all-in on the idea.
Not only has FaceBook changed its corporate name to “Meta,” as it seeks to turn social media into an immersive 3-D environment that can replace even more of your life, Wall Street investors are pouring money into the technology to make that happen.
I was struck by the rhapsodic way that the huge multi-national investment firm the Jefferies Group recommends its clients invest in the metaverse, going beyond money talk to claim that the technology will change life as we know it.  From Markets Insider:
Jefferies has said the metaverse will be the biggest disruption to how we live ever seen, as Wall Street bankers warm to the idea of virtual worlds and economies.
Investors need to be thinking about the metaverse as akin to the internet in its early days, according to the firm’s analysts.
“A single metaverse could be more than a decade away, but as it evolves, it has the potential to disrupt almost everything in human life,” the analysts, led by equity strategist Simon Powell, wrote in a Monday note.
“Everything in human life”!   Not just work, school, and social life, but entertainment, politics, and religion!  Already, in these early stages, a couple has gotten married in the Metaverse, with avatars of themselves taking their vows, avatar children serving as ring bearers and flower girls, and an avatar best man giving a toast before all the avatar guests.  (Click the link to see the happy avatar couple.)
Investors see a whole realm of business possibilities.  Lots of hardware, including all those 3-D virtual reality helmets, will be needed.
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Some progressives have started to define racism as “prejudice plus power.”  According to this understanding, only the race in power–that is, whites–can be guilty of racism.  Members of oppressed races might be prejudiced, but that’s not so bad.  Thus, black people cannot be racist.

We Americans do have some consensus, despite our polarization.  Most Americans agree that “racism is bad.”  This is why the charges of racism that we blogged about yesterday have their force.  Progressives say that conservatives are racist, but conservatives deny that they are.  Yes, we continue to have racial problems and we differ on their nature and what to do about them, but very few Americans embrace racism as something good.  But complicating the efforts to resolve our racial problems is that Americans have different definitions of what racism is.
Some say that racism is prejudice against other human beings because of their race.  Under that assumption, the goal of anti-racism is a “color-blind” society, one in which the color of a person’s skin simply does not matter.  This was the view put forward in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, as in Martin Luther King‘s “dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
But some progressives have started to define racism as “prejudice plus power.”  According to this understanding, only the race in power–that is, whites–can be guilty of racism.  Members of oppressed races might be prejudiced, but that’s not so bad.  Thus, black people cannot be racist.
Will Shetterly  in an article on the subject, gives this account of how the term acquired this new meaning:

In 1970, Pat Bidol redefined racism when she wrote in Developing New Perspectives on Race that “racism = prejudice + power”. Judith H. Katz popularized the equation in White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training. The theory is that everyone is prejudiced, but only white people can be racist because racism requires prejudice plus power, and people of color do not have power in a racist society.

This explains how the major progressive efforts to be “anti-racist” end up judging people by the color of their skin instead of by the content of their character.
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Contributing to the rise of unlimited government as a result of the pandemic were the above bailouts.  For the first time, the government gave vast amounts of money directly to its citizens,  extending the social safety net not just to the disadvantaged but to everyone.  Again, maybe this was necessary and a good policy, a compensation to businesses for being shut down and to the public for not being allowed to go to work.  I’m just saying that this largesse, justified or not, greatly expanded the role of government, as well as the willingness of citizens to accept that expanded role. 

Yesterday we discussed how the Black Plague of the 14th century contributed to the rise of economic and political freedom.  Today I want to discuss how the COVID pandemic is contributing to the loss of economic and political freedom.

Again, the Black Death led to a massive labor shortage, which drove up the economic power of individual workers, and to the decimation of the feudal elite, which led to the decentralization of power, with peasants and city-dwellers electing their own leaders.

COVID, which is far less fatal, has also led to a labor shortage and to the consequent rise of wages.  But notice the difference.  The labor shortage this time is caused not by the death of millions but by people leaving the workforce, either voluntarily or because of government-imposed lockdowns.  We now face the additional prospect of the labor shortage getting even worse because of vaccine mandates, either from governments or from private companies, as large numbers of workers in key sectors are vowing to quit their jobs rather than get vaccinated.
But the wage gains from the labor shortage are being cancelled by the surge of inflation.  According to the Econ 101 textbook explanation, inflation comes from too much money chasing too few goods.  Productivity is down because of the world-wide lockdowns, as well as the labor shortage.  But the government has been pouring money into the economy, beginning with $4 trillion-dollar bailouts and continuing with the recently-passed trillion dollar infrastructure bill, with an additional $2 + trillion social infrastructure bill waiting in the wings.

Incredibly, President Biden is describing his infrastructure bills as inflation fighters because they will put more money in people’s hands.

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We should not be dismayed at belonging to a “little holy group.”  We are, indeed, pilgrims and priests. Insofar as we are faithful, we can still be salt and light to a world that does not understand us.

“A church is like a human being,” I have often heard. “If it is not growing, it’s dying.” But is that really true? Our models and our expectations for “successful” churches tend to focus on growing in numbers. But is that realistic? If our culture is becoming increasingly secularized, the number of Christians, by definition, is going to get smaller. But Christian minorities gathered into small congregations can still function effectively as the Body of Christ. In fact, that may be the Biblical norm.
Jeremy Hoover is a Canadian minister and church planter who writes about his frustration that the Ontario congregation that he had started —while in some ways doing quite well—just was not growing. He writes about this at the Patheos blog The Evangelical Pulpit in a post entitled Church Growth.
He says he was helped by a comment from one of his members to the effect that the small group meeting together was not just “trying to start a church” but that they were “the church.” And he read a book by Stefan Paas, a Dutch church planter working in Denmark —societies even more secularized than Canada, which is even more secularized than the United States—entitled Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society.
“Pass noted that, in secularism, where choices abound and following the Christian faith is simply one choice among many,” Rev. Hoover writes, “the church will always be small.” He says that, in this context, Christians in their congregations must think of themselves as (1) pilgrims, banding together as they travel through a strange land headed towards their heavenly destination; and (2) priests, bringing God’s blessings to the world. That would include, I assume, the Gospel of Christ, Christian service, and other priestly tasks, such as prayer and intercession. “The church will always be a small band of believers, who see themselves as priests,” Rev. Hoover writes, “offering blessings to the community around them.”
Paas’s book draws on the experiences of Christians and their churches in highly-secularized Europe as he explores “Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society.” It may well be that the far more religious United States will soon resemble today’s Europe, which is not so much atheistic but, to use Hoover’s term, “apatheistic,” being completely apathetic about religion. And yet, what Paas is describing seems to accord with what I have observed in Denmark, where he serves, and also in Finland and Australia. Namely, Christian believers of great spiritual vitality. There just is not many of them. And they gather in congregations that also demonstrate great spiritual vitality. They just tend to be very small. Nevertheless, I always find visiting these Christians and these congregations, with their dearth of “nominal” Christians, to be bracing and inspiring.
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