An economy that is dependent on people buying things they don't need, ever new gewgaws and gadgets, with money they don't have, is not worth saving. An economy that has to grow just to cover its own debts is not worth saving. An economy dependent on the energy of fossil fuels to avoid collapse is not worth saving. Why is an economy where most of the profits go to one percent of the population worth saving?
Our current economic system, which might be called global corporatism, is based on growth fueled by IOUs. The IOUs are not only to banks, but to future decades; not merely financial debts, which could be cured by hyperinflation or default, but real debts -- that is, debts to the land and the air and the water -- that we can't just buy our way out of. Skimping on maintenance is an IOU. Burning carbon is an IOU -- a big one. Squeezing the middle classes into working more for less is an IOU. Increasing poverty and poor health is an IOU that society will have to pay -- now and also later.
While it is true that the financial meltdown and the catastrophic gulf oil leak can be partly blamed on the lack of oversight by the government, especially during the Bush administration, the roots of the problems are in the structure of the economy itself. That is, an economy hooked on growth spurred by fossil fuel energy and controlled (if that is the right word) by global corporations whose sole purpose is amassing monetary profit. If a corporation can make money by shifting the cost of redeeming their IOUs onto the public, they generally do so, whether the corporations are in the business of extraction or merely playing financial games. What a coup! Let the public pay, then let's all give ourselves another fat bonus. Greed is called a virtue. How can such a morally corrupt system be worth saving?
Let the recession come. The earth needs a recession, badly, globally. The future needs a recession -- not a "correction," but a recession, and a long one. The earth needs a permanent recession. Society needs a permanent recession. It's time to turn off the lights and to roll up our sleeves. There is a lot of work to do. And let's make the gamblers do their part, like everyone else. They are very smart, after all: maybe they could learn to do something useful, such as repairing radios. Maybe they could learn to hoe some of the cream they've been skimming off back into the soil of the commons.
Creating money with IOUs is like using a drug -- like, say, cocaine. "Stimulus." The pushers move in, everyone feels good for a while. Then we are all hooked. And not only hooked, but in denial. "How could burning the earth's carbon warm the climate? The scientists might be wrong." We'll deny it to the end. We'd rather fight than switch. The specter of bread lines is paraded before us. We'll bail out our rich pushers if they bust, so we'll be sure to get our next fix.
As in "the first one is free," during the growth cycle life is easy. Since maintenance and cleanup are being charged to the future, it feels like prosperity, so no one makes a stink that the lion's share of the profits are going into a few pockets. Then the bills start to come due: a shipment gets busted, there is an accident, people are getting sick or dying from the waste of the slag heap. Then the pushers double the price and make their demands: work harder, maintain this sick system or you'll be hurting. While in the euphoria of the early stages of addiction, we hardly noticed that our once viable alternatives were disappearing. Having done their work of consuming the resources of the earth, both natural and cultural, having exhausted the last government bailout, the mega-corporations will simply close their doors and let the sand dunes bury their once proud windows.
As any junkie knows, tapering off voluntarily is extremely difficult. Why suffer when the cure is right there, in the pipe? So almost always a junkie uses the dope until it is all gone. Then it's panic and cold turkey. Then you can't work, because you are too sick. And you are nasty, and desperate. You're ready to steal, or kill.
Tapering down--say, cutting your dose in half, and then in half again--requires a resolve that is rare, but it can be done. First you have to face the truth: that growth cannot continue forever with IOUs sent to the future. As Lenny Bruce said: "You gotta pay dues." It's going to hurt but if we are all in it together we can commiserate and figure out how to get by. Maybe we could have a neighborhood barbecue: start it with the last cup of diesel and burn paper money and coupons and the national debt. Or we could write checks for ten thousand dollars each and burn them. We could grill some rats and share them around, the way Jesus fed the five thousand. We could sing sad songs but we could all be in it together.
There are plenty of rascals in our government, both elected and appointed, who seem to place the next quarter's bottom line of their corporate donors above the common good. Of course we need to throw the rascals out. Of course we need to demand that our government reinstitute regulation and independent, scientific oversight of our environment and our industry. But we also have to give up our addiction to consumption and false mantra of "growth" that is, really, simply the looting of the future.
Sustainable cultures are not built overnight. Generations are required -- not only for particular skills and techniques to be developed, but for the social and philosophical and spiritual values that underpin such cultures. We have lingered an extra hundred years in our adolescence, binging like teenagers: find oil, use it all up; get the most toys; get the most money. Profligacy has been our mark, and not in a sacred manner.
We need to mature into a post-growth adulthood, in which we can find comfort and grace in a long slow recession -- otherwise we will be the only species to move from adolescence to senescence with no maturity in between.
It doesn't matter--our current lifestyle is unsustainable. We'll reach peak oil in a couple of months, and after that we're going to be right back into the Great Depression#2 no matter what anyone does.
We need to seriously curtail our addiction to cheap consumer goods, and devote are economic resources towards durable, long-lasting goods.
It's not like we are still raising and lower interest rates to give the economy a tweak adjustment. We hit it with a sledgehammer and nothing happened. It's time for more drastic changes; but, politicians are usually mice when it comes to new policy. So, I don't expect anything from them until November.
paragrapg. I said this for the past tens yrs to people.
Great article, you wrote what I usually say. You are a plagarist (kidding) I am not a blogger.
Thanks
I say let this system train wreck it self.
But alas, we are left to our own devices as a receding Empire has neither the financial resources or the will to bring about a "sustainable" future.
It is my belief that events will be the instigator of change, not a Utopian vision.
We will be forced to cede our current way of life due to the pressure of Empiric decline which can occur due to any number of political, environmental, and financial catastrophes happening in succession or all at once.
Are we already in the midst of this?
Catabolic collapse is something that can take several generations and apparently can only be seen in hind sight.
Good luck to us all!
It seems like so many major problems we are having boil down to the economic and monetary system. As well as much of the resistance to necessary change.
Sometimes it is easier to see what not to do rather than a full solution. I think it will be an iterative process.
Personally, I think that birth control is better than death control.
best, and thank you for your comment.
TED talk, berlin 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nORI8r3JIyw
also, thomas greco
thanks for your article
It's time to kick around some solutions:
1) means testing social secutiry
2) social health care insurance ala medicare for all
3) estate taxes reinstated to the pre Bushwa days
4) a progressive income tax with 75% rate for income above $1mil
5) no cap gain tax rate preference
6) no outsourcing of jobs writ large and limits to imported workers
7) the empire, the military empire, which is the hired gun for big biz is limited to 2% of gdp
8) the nation institutes a national energy policy with "conservation" as a practice
9) corporate lobbyists and contributions out of government.
Wall street paper gains need to be dealt with by either regulation or taxation. And republicans need one of these "come to jeezus meeings" about what conservation means.
I support all of your action items, but would expand on two of them.
1.-a corporate charter law that clearly states that corporations are not persons; that in exchange for limited liability they are to perform work for the public good; that they cannot meddle in politics; and, perhaps, that they do not have the right to buy other corporations. This is a "simple" legislative change, only requiring will and resolve. Fat chance, yes, but no one thought that the Berlin Wall would fall or that the Soviet Union would break up, either.
2.-implement the "fee and dividend" plan to tax carbon fuels at the source. The fees are put into a special fund to be divided equally and given back to the citizens yearly. Everyone gets the same annual rebate. Simple, no loopholes. Rx to be gradually increased, as the patient may bear. I think your concerns in point 6 might follow as a natural result of the increased costs of transport.
Perhaps a recession or a depression can be staved off for yet another decade: the ability of global corporatism to shore itself up at the expense of the general citizenry and the earth itself is remarkable. Eventually, however, physics and arithmetic will win. But if we PLAN for a no-growth economy--that is, "taper down"--perhaps the worst of the "withdrawal pains" may be averted. Fat chance, yes, but still possible.
junk food doesn't bring health.
kudos to the investors pulling out of BP and drilling.