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End of the Recession? Who's Kidding Whom?
The media are telling us that the economic “crisis” is over, and that the world-economy is once more back to its normal mode of growth and profit. On December 30, Le Monde summed up this mood in one of its usual brilliant headlines: “The United States wants to believe in an economic upturn.” Exactly, they “want to believe” it, and not only people in the United States. But is it so?
First of all, as I have been saying repeatedly, we are not in a recession but in a depression. Most economists tend to have formal definitions of these terms, based primarily on rising prices in stock markets. They use these criteria to demonstrate growth and profit. And politicians in power are happy to exploit this nonsense. But neither growth nor profit is the appropriate measures.
There are always some people who are making profit, even in the worst of times. The question is how many people, and which people? In “good” times, most people are seeing an improvement in their material situation, even if there are considerable differences between those at the top and bottom of the economic ladder. A rising tide raises all ships, as the saying goes, or at least most ships.
But when the world-economy becomes stagnant, as the world-economy has been since the 1970s, several things happen. The numbers of people who are not gainfully employed and therefore receiving an income that is minimally adequate goes up considerably. And because this is so, countries try to export unemployment to each other. In addition, politicians tend to try to deprive the elderly retired persons and the young, pre-working-age persons of income in order to appease their voters in the usual working-age categories.
That is why, appraising the situation country by country, there are always some in which the situation looks much better than in most others. But which countries look better tends to shift with some rapidity, as it has been doing for the last forty years.
Furthermore, as the stagnation continues, the negative picture grows larger, which is when the media begin to talk of “crisis” and politicians look for quick fixes. They call for “austerity,” which means cutting pensions and education and child care even further. They deflate their currencies, if they can, in order that they reduce momentarily their unemployment rates at the expense of some other country’s employment rates.
Take the problem of government pensions. A small town in Alabama exhausted its pension fund in 2009. It declared bankruptcy and ceased paying its pensions, thereby violating state law which required it to do so. As the New York Times remarked, “It is not just the pensioners who suffer when a pension fund runs dry. If a city tried to follow the law and pay its pensioners with money from its annual operating budget, it would probably have to adopt large tax increases, or make huge service cuts, to come up with the money. Current city workers could find themselves paying into a pension plan that will not be there for their own retirements.”
But this is the looming problem for every state within the United States who, by law, must have balanced budgets, which means they cannot resort to borrowing to meet current budgetary needs. And there is a parallel problem for every nation within the euro zone who cannot deflate their currencies in order to meet their budgetary needs, which has meant that their ability to borrow leads to exorbitant unsustainable costs.
But what, you may ask, about those countries where the economy is said to be “booming” such as Germany and most particularly, within Germany, Bavaria – called by some “the planet of the happy.” Why then do Bavarians “feel a malaise” and seem “subdued and uncertain about their economic health”? The New York Times notes that “Germany’s good fortune…is widely viewed (in Bavaria) as having come at the expense of workers, who for the past decade have sacrificed wages and benefits to make their employers more competitive….In fact, part of the prosperity comes from people not getting the social security they should have.”
Well then, at least, there is the good example of the “emerging economies” which have been showing sustained growth during the last few years – especially the so-called BRIC countries. Look again. The Chinese government is very concerned about the loose lending practices of Chinese banks, which seem to be a bubble, and leading to the threat of inflation. One result is the sharp increase in layoffs in a country where the safety net for the unemployed seems to have disappeared. Meanwhile, the new president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, is said to be disturbed by the “overvalued” Brazilian currency amidst what she sees as the deflating U.S. and Chinese currencies that, together, are threatening the ability of Brazilian exports to be competitive. And the governments of Russia, India, and South Africa are all facing rumbling discontent from large parts of their populations who seemed to have escaped the benefits of presumed economic growth.
Finally, and not least, there are the sharp rises in the prices of energy, food, and water. This is the result of a combination of world population growth and increased percentages of people demanding access. This portends a struggle for these basic goods, a struggle that could turn deadly. There are two possible outcomes. One is that large numbers of people will reduce the level of their demand – most unlikely. The second is that the deadliness of the struggle results in a reduced world population and thereby fewer shortages – a most unpleasant Malthusian solution.
As we enter this second decade of the twenty-first century, it seems improbable that by 2020 we shall look back on this decade as one in which the “crisis” was relegated to a historical memory. It is not very helpful to “wish to believe” in a prospect that seems remote. It does not help in trying to figure out what we should do about it.
69 Comments so far
Show AllA most cogent analysis, leaving the question of now what? Limiting population growth might be a good start, as would abandoning the premise that unlimited growth is good, which, as someone once pointed out, is the philosophy of the cancer cell. One might consider isolationism, but the United States has sold most of its once-envied manufacturing capacity, and we would have to scramble to re-invent it. Strange how the Victorians, as exemplified by Malthus, have become today's realists.
Nit picking: In the second paragraph the final word should be "measure." It is a failing of mine that I find it hard to consider seriously any argument that is not grammatically expressed.
Rather than analyzing some of the authors words, I challenge the author's assertion that we are experiencing a depression rather than a recession.
Labeling it a RECESSION or DEPRESSION implies that the economy will return to some semblance of its previous incarnation as it did after each 20th century recession and the great depression. Although many solutions have been proposed to restore a 20th century style economy, the corporate rulers and the politicians they own have been legislating in the opposite direction that is resulting in a PARADIGM CHANGE.
The US is becoming a third world nation so rapidly that nobody alive today will live long enough to see the type of turnaround needed to return to any type of US economy that existed at any point during the 20th century, even if the will to do so arises at some point.
yes, the word 'depression' is a lie...
the implication that this is a dip with a rise on the far side that will bring everyone back to whatever level of comfort they hold dear is critical to maintaining current course without collapse, and to avoiding a bloody mess...
the truth, that the planet is entering phases of physical distress never before encountered, quite possibly irreversible, and that these stresses are the direct result of human industry, does not play well in a room full of folks unable to consider anything but their need for money to pay mortgage and rent...
we need to stop paying mortgage and rent...the rest will follow...provided we still have air, water and food...
Depression? no, regression...
"The US is becoming a third world nation so rapidly that nobody alive today will live long enough to see the type of turnaround needed to return to any type of US economy that existed at any point during the 20th century, even if the will to do so arises at some point."
That is my take on things too.
I agree. The fact is that the world is running short of all of the easily gotten (cheap) natural resources needed for a continuously GROWING economy (not to mention the almost exponential growth in consumers to over 7 billion) and that those resources that remain are going to be more and more expensive to retrieve and use, has not entered the mind of most 'economists' or, if it has, the fear of what it will mean has buried it too deep to register on their consciousness.
Reality is a bitch and we are finally getting a taste of it here in the US. Anyone who expects a return to anything near pre 2007 life-styles in the US are in for a great disappointment. Most sources, even the US government, now agree that Peak Oil was reached around 2006 and that we are on a bumpy plateau for a while until the world accepts it and changes...at which point, growing GDPs are a thing of the past. Mean while, the resource wars will continue as the US tries to control everything in the world for our own greedy waste...oops...use.
China understood the importance of controlling population growth. Western eyes saw this as a cold (& conveniently communist) invasion of privacy. But China was right in rigidly enforcing the one-child-per-couple policy. Untold misery would have visited innocent children if such a measure had not been in place.
In the USA I keep bumping into families of 3 & 4 toddlers everywhere I go. Today, it's irresponsible to produce more than 2 kids per family, no matter on which demographic rung. it's not enough to justify having large families because you've got money; the liabilities and stresses resulting from that kind of reasoning is shared by the entire society.
One first step to discourage people from having too many children: limit the tax child deduction to the first child...any other siblings would have ZERO deduction...and perhaps adding a tax surcharge (per child & tax rate based on income) starting with the third child would begin to address the problem.
According to this it's those who can't afford it who are having the children:
"The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) gave states greater flexibility to formulate and implement initiatives to reduce welfare dependency and encourage employment for members of low-income families with children. For the nation, in 2006, 10 years after passage of the Act, the birth rate for women 15 to 50 years old receiving public assistance income in the last 12 months was 155 births per 1,000 women, about three times the rate for women not receiving public assistance (53 births per 1,000 women)."
From the August 2008 Census Bureau study "Fertility of American Women: 2006."
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/08/if-you-subsidize-something-you-get-more.html
"Limiting population growth might be a good start,"
I believe this is a wrong headed approach. The fundamental and overarching value of respect for all life is essential to our survival. Nature best dictates population limiting measures and has many to choose from. Yes there will be pain and death, still it is a better way than man's solutions that will likely result in the death of all of humanity. My 2 cent opinion.
I would guess that you live in the US or at least a Western country that has not seen death from starvation. Try peddling your idea in some 3rd world country that would love to have access to birth control or food for their one child. Easy to say that nature will thin the herd when it is not your herd...
Or that you think you are not part of those who will be thinned. It'll be all those other people who will do the suffering and dying.
ChrisII
I, for one, certainly understand your final sentiment.
My father taught high school English for many, many years. In fact, it was a small town, so he taught me, as well. His ongoing critiques and corrections made me feel that how one spoke was more relevant than what one said. As the saying goes ... don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Duplicate
As well, there has barely been an increase in hourly wages since the eighties.
Case in point: my 18 year old nephew applied (he was told he was one of 60 applicants) at the retail store Urban Outfitters--wage per hour: starting- 8.25/hr.
I actually worked at Urban Outfitters in NYC when they first opened. Wage per hour in 1988? 7.50.
Also, the fake stats on "there are 5 applicants for every job opening" is more along the lies of 100+ for every professional job opening. These fake stats serve the illusion of Americans "wanting to believe" the economy will improve.
Can you say THIRD WORLD NATION ?
The US Government no longer issues statistics. They do have their corporate owned 'news' outlets publish tons of propaganda to the dumbed down citizens who still believe it. You have to go other sources like this one or globalresearch.ca to get other views and some real insight into what is happening in the US or US interests. If you read the novel "1984" you have some idea of what the future seems to hold. It ain't pretty!
Good article with a few faulty conclusions.
Depession...not by any real measures in the majority of counries.
"The second is that the deadliness of the struggle results in a reduced world population and thereby fewer shortages"
You assume he must be speaking of war, but then after every war there are more people and greater demand...so...how does he arrive at this?
Answer: genocides coming to a neighborhood near you. That's the big elephant word in the room that non one dares utter.
Overpopulation + finite resources + lack of full employment (i.e. workers are disposable) = a manufactured malthusian scenario (i.e. virulent flu strain, Monsantian control of food production, making health care inacce$$ible) = 25% reduction in population. I know...a rather cold calculus, but one that tea partiers, cartels, corporate monopolies, oligarchs, banksters, the MIC, the ruling 1%, etc. embrace wholeheartedly.
Everything that's been gradually happening in this country for the last 3 decades is pointing in that direction. Hope I'm wrong---but this nation has yet to go through its "Germany phase." Chris Hedges wrote a brilliant essay about the "2011 dystopia" ---a fusion of Huxley & Orwell worlds. Examine carefully the society we live in through the prism of a "Brave New World" and a
"1984." It presents a chilling roadmap.
I believe you are quite wrong as to any "genocide" We can control our population if needed far easier than other countries.
Could you define your definition of "Germany phase"
I agree. What is our eternal war stance, but genocide?
Have you noticed the growing cancers in Iraq as a result of our depleted uranium munitions used there?
How about our use of 25+% of the world's resources, mostly for war?
Then there is the genetically engineered "food" we are forcing countries to use that can be cut off anytime we want. Since those strains do not reproduce, we control production in those countries that adopt widespread use of the US products.
Then there is the polluted waters off our southern coast. Cancers will increase there also in coming years. Wait and see. Genocide is coming to the US.
If you check behind the curtain, you will find that most of the problem areas in the world are of our own making. The CIA has been busy for decades, destabilizing the world for US profit and power. It will only get worse.
The wealthy elite would be happy if 6+ billion of us would just die and leave enough slaves to produce the things that they want and need. We are just using "their" resources. If you disagree...check into the Bilderberg Group and study their plans for the world. Genocide...
It is too early to look towards Malthus in making predictions about the Earth's future. Population will not plunge because people cannot afford food. Not in the immediate future, anyway. That scenario may play itself out as climate change exerts its influence, but it will not happen as a result of the failure of economic systems.
More likely, people will begin to enact violent protests against being squeezed economically. Lawlessness will become common--some of it directed towards banks, some towards immigrants and minorities. Governments will become less democratic and will attempt to conceal wrongdoing however they can. The internet will be closed off as much as possible to prevent people from learning the truth. Secret operations to protect monied interests will spread throughout many countries--not just the United States. At the same time, the wealthy will have to protect themselves from angry people. They will withdraw even more into their enclaves in the Arab countries or in guarded territories in China, Europe, and the United States.
All of this is happening because of two factors: the growth of population and the globalization of the economy. A growing population means cheap labor. Globalization means capital can travel wherever it wishes to secure labor markets most willing to tolerate low wages and environmental destruction. Those two things--along with the monopolization of media--make the present state of affairs inevitable. There is little possibility of change as long as people are divided from each other by media controlled by the wealthy. Odd--it seems to me--how the oligarchs prefer such a world to the one we all hoped for forty or fifty years ago, a world without war, a world in which technology would end the drudgery of manual labor, a world free of disease, a world that provides for the basic needs of all its people. The boundaries of human greed extend farther than I ever imagined.
I would refute the claim of a Golbal economy. A Golbal market yes, but a Golbal economy, no. The rise of economic nationalism is astounding in its rapidity to me at least.
Very interested in your comment about Obamas power grab to control the internet and shut down unfettered exchange of information.
It won't be just Obama trying to control the internet. China has already moved in that direction--and, no doubt, other countries, too. We should stop looking at the world's problems in terms of a single nation--the US. There is a worldwide oligarchy that runs things--and those shadowy figures are not limited to the confines of a single country. The US, China, Russia, the rulers of the Arab countries, European billionaires--work in concert--not necessarily as a cabal, but sharing common interests--to manage what information is presented to the world's people as well as how it is to be displayed. As capital knows no national boundaries, neither does the politics that is practiced to insure continuity of the present criminal system.
Interesting. Certainly true as to China and others. I find your frame of an international oligarchy or groups with common interests in outcomes quite reasonable as I agree with it. :)
I would suggest that its not that we look at the worlds problems in terms of a single nation as much as it is only in our nation that we have any chance of making real change.
Pax
DROSERA: Excellent posts (of yours) on this thread.
MIGHTLY: It's global... not golbal. Dang! Are you Dyslexic?
He might type like I do. One finger on each hand . One hand reacts to the next letter to type quicker then the other :)
Get used to it : this IS the collapse of the fascist amerikan empire ! Good news is that the potential is for a peaceful nation, and World Peace, once amerikan imperialism ends.
That depends on who the new hegemon is.
Is it time to stop looking at this as an economic problem and to start thinking of this as a resource problem?
I beg to differ with Prof. Wallerstein.
Neither recession, nor depression, but rather the Long Emergency, namely, the wobbling and painful exit out of a living arrangement that relies on fossil fuels for its energetic needs.
It is wobbling and painful, and will be more so as time passes, because our world leaders are in such denial, when they are not downright ignorant fools.
"It is not very helpful to 'wish to believe' in a prospect that seems remote. It does not help in trying to figure out what we should do about it."
Nobody has been able "to figure out what we should do about it" yet because it's too complex. Economies are ecological: they consist of a lot of pieces and process affecting all others in ways that are not predictable despite the claims of economists. It's like the weather. All they can come up predictions based on probablilities based on a lot of variables. It's also like nutrition: anyone who can plausibly present as an expert can put a point of view or prediction out there and, if it sounds like it could be true and enough people buy in because it sounds hopeful, it will be believed.
People don't realize -- and have no motivation to realize -- that money is totally faith based. When enough people stop believing that it has value, it will not have value. Gold has become a racket; the price has already gone up beyond the purchasing capacity of most people.
There really is no way for an individual or a family to prepare for what's to come because we have no way of knowing. Will an economic collapse come? Will there be a "tipping point" making everything to go back quickly, or will there continue to be a succession of crises and worsenings that stretch over time? And how much time? Will people pull together or panic and degenerate into each-for-him- or-herself grab what you can kill for foodscraps barbarism? Will the various factions of the leadership retain their current loyalties or try to lead the way out of the situation? Will different leaders agree on a direction to go or all yell a different "Follow me! This way!" in many different directions?
Anyone have any ideas as to the right thing to do right now?
I've been thinking of this question for some decades.
The only answers I have so far come up with are:
keep good health and fitness
learn some basic survival skills such as farming and mechanics etc
have citizenship of a remote country, eg Australia or New Zealand
try to be inexpendeable
try not to be first against the wall
"People don't realize -- and have no motivation to realize -- that money is totally faith based. When enough people stop believing that it has value, it will not have value. Gold has become a racket; the price has already gone up beyond the purchasing capacity of most people."
It is hard to say how many people realize the faith based nature of money. If you spend any amount of time thinking about it, it quickly becomes clear that is the case. Even gold is somewhat faith based. I would think gold would not be worth much in a total collapse of society. Take a total collapse where things get as bad as depicted in the book and movie "The Road". In a situation like that, if I was offered a lb of gold or a gun that came with a fair amount of ammo, I personally would take the gun.
"Anyone have any ideas as to the right thing to do right now?" IMHO, get out of debt if you can. Get a place to live that allows you as much self sufficiency as possible. Learn how to fix things, cook from scratch, grow, and preserve your own foods. My latest addition to my self sufficiency was to purchase a bread maker that actually makes a good loaf of bread. I bought it about a month ago and ha not had to buy a loaf of bread since.
Money is faith based but the food and shelter money pays for is utterly and uncomfortably real, and if people were to stop believing in money all at once, massive homelessness and public starvation would ensue.
I don't think there's time for seven billion people to find places that would allow them to live as self-sufficiently as possible. Years ago I visited a friend who was living the "hippiebilly" life outside of Mendocino -- no electricity, home grown food, etc., growing herbal stuff as the only source of income (they certainly weren't getting rich that way). They worked all daylight hours but were afraid of the "city people" down the hills who they were convinced would swarm up and take what they had away. I remember thinking that it was absurd to live like a third world peasant and be afraid people from civilization were going to come up and take it all away. Looking back now, it doesn't seem quite that absurd.
Those suggestions and the ones about getting out of debt and learning skills like mechanics and farming are OK advice for individuals who want to increase their odds of surviving no matter what, but I don't know that survival in a world full of starving scared angry refugees is a future I could look forward to with anticipation.
Increasing the gas tax would hit those working poor people who must drive back and forth to their jobs hardest just as a Value Added Tax would hurt poorer people who need all the money they have to make ends meet.
Here are some more useful ideas: learn how to live in a mud hut; home school your children; give up electricity and plumbing, and inure yourself to seeing your family,friends and neighbors die of what were once easily preventable diseases.
This is not my idea but I read somewhere that if we used just 1/6 of our available farmland to grow hemp we could provide all of our nation's fuel needs from it.
Only after a process to replace the fossil fuel-run vehicles with ones that run on the hemp-derived fuel. The coal-run power plants that make most of the electricity would have to be replaced with those that run on hemp-made fuel. Designing, engineering, and constructing such plants would be, to say the least, difficult using hemp-fuel to fuel the process of building the plants that would create hemp-fuel.
Once again the issue is time and agreement on a plan and sticking to it.
1/6 of our farmland: probably that growing corn for which similar claims have been made. If anyone knows a way to get past the well funded corn lobby to get them to switch to growing hemp, I'd like to hear it. If that 1/6th were motivated to switch (is there a crop we grow that we can sacrifice?), we'd probably lose money on agricultural exports and may not have the makings of a sandwich for ourselves.
Sorry to say, we're in a pickle.
Hello PP, I think you have hit the high points of the problems with hemp fuel. I did wonder how much of our available farmland is lying fallow anyway due to subsidies which I admit I don't understand. The engineering feats, while difficult, could be done. Overcoming the corn lobby, coal lobby, oil lobby, etc. would be the impossible part.
I agree Oikos...
We are hitting the resource constraints predicted long ago
by "The Limits to Growth" MIT computer simulation in 1972
by the Meadows and their fellow researchers.
The first resource constraint is peak oil - oil today crossed
$92 per barrel. As soon as the economy shows hints of growth
and oil demand rises the price of oil will rise above $100 per
barrel which will likely lead to another economic drop.
The best way to get around this is for the US which consumes
77% of the world's gasoline to raise the gas tax, stop building
highways and instead fund public transit.
Unfortunately since 2008 150 public transit systems have faced
service cuts, fare hikes etc.
By simply running already existing public transit in major
cities, providing shuttle vans we could easily save 20% of
our gluttonous oil usage.
The Federal government subsidized operating expenses for public transit up until Reagan (of course!).
Instead of wasting $7500 to subsidized electric cars which
use as much energy as a house, there is we should be investing for transit.
Let GM build electric shuttle vans instead of $40K Volts...
We'are in agreement.
"As soon as the economy shows hints of growth and oil demand rises the price of oil will rise above $100 per barrel which will likely lead to another economic drop."
Yes, in that sentence you're describing one of the aspects of the phenomenon of wobbling. And this precisely due to the fact that the planet has hit the end of cheap oil. From now on, all new oil will be extreme oil, i.e., oil drawn under extreme conditions (under miles of ocean water and rock, etc.), and the more extreme the oil, the more expensive it will be, until such time as when it will take more than one barrel of oil to draw a barrel out of the ground, and then that will be the end of the oil-based civilization altogether.
Goodbye large standing armies, goodbye cars, skyscrapers (elevators, heating, air conditioning), the space program, particle accelerators, satellites, huge telescopes, mega cities, nuclear plants, agribusiness -- in brief, goodbye to all the stuff that requires oil in one way or another.
"stop building highways and instead fund public transit."
And that (i.e. building more roads) is one of the instances of the foolishness of our leaders.
Great article with excellent points. I hear many people saying that we are becoming a third world nation and unless you have traveled to a third world nation, not a resort but the real thing, then you have no idea what conditions those people are living under. I don't think that the citizens of the U.S can survive third world conditions and if those predictions are accurate let us all work together to prevent those predictions from becoming a reality.
Praise for Malthus !!! Good grief !!! Here's what Karl Marx had to say about this prophet of doom and his initial fans:
"If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose " Essay on Population " appeared in 1798, I remind him that this work in its first form is nothing more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, &c., and does not contain a single sentence thought out by himself. The great sensation this pamphlet caused, was due solely to party interest. The French Revolution had found passionate defenders in the United Kingdom; the " principle of population," slowly worked-out in the eighteenth century, and then, in the midst of a great social crisis, proclaimed with drums and trumpets as the infallible antidote to the teachings of Condorcet, &c., was greeted with jubilance by the English oligarchy as the great destroyer of all hankerings after human development."
For me it's never been a Recession' and was always more a 'Depression' no matter how dressed up the media, polticians and business pundits tried to make it out to be.
In the early days of the 'Recession' all the so-called 'experts' were saying that it would only be temporary, a few possibly short harsh measures and then all would be well.
But it just kept dragging on and on, and they tried to put on ever more cheerful faces and talk it all down in direct proportions to how bad things were getting. The worse things got in reality, the more propaganda spewed out that things aren't as bad as it seems and would soon get better.
In fact if you dared to complain you were seen as a 'defeatist', somebody who was passing on unsubstantiated chinese-whispers that could threaten all the 'good' the powers-that-be were enacting on all our behalf.
Then a new ridiculous approach was presented and which I kept complaining about as being not only asinine but more as propaganda to placate the unthinking. - That approach was to forecast a harsh number or amount (say for instance job layoffs) and then when the event passed they 'experts' would declare "that it wasn't as bad as had been forecasted"........as if that actually mollified the harsh event or amounts themselves. That new approach has now become de rigueur and confers some sort of 'righteousness' to these forecasting 'experts' almost as if they can actually influence matters to a more favourable outcome.
But more than a 'Depression', this current era is actually a 'Collapse', a confluence of many things both economic (including the natural barbarous culmination of capitalism), resources hegemony, the monetary system, climate disruption and so on.
It's a hugely unsettling levelling down of everything but not in a neat and tidy manner but unpredictable and jarring with forecasted experiences and events liable to occur but by no means certain.
There's those who say it's the end of life as we know it, a veritable armageddon which many also blame on 'overpopulation' and which will lead to extinction. They blame human life completely and call for its rapid end.....but strangely they're never forthcoming in offering their own immediate personal suicide to lead by example. They'd rather complain.
Then there's those who say that mankind will all be enslaved, a veritable serf class ruled by a few elites with the power of life & death over all.
But then there's others who look upon all of this current era as a progression, an opportunity for transition to something better, a profound change, a new paradigm that will enable mankind & the planet to thrive and prosper in an ongoing manner without detriment, one without the shackles of religion, a monetary system, and the insanely parochial approach humankind has existed in.
I prefer to exist for the latter outcome, not as some touchy-feely mystical existentialist approach but as something real and tangible. It's a progression that we're heading for and those that are driven by greed & selfishness can see will end their elite living and power mongering ways of life....and so they're trying ever more harder to try to fend it all off in more harsher manners than before.
Whatever avenue you wish to believe in, just don't believe all the propaganda that anyone with half an ounce of common sense knows to be false. Stop supporting all the mechanisms of your own ill fortune such as the military, politics, consumerism and so on.
The sooner things fail and then are disdainfully regarded, the sooner we can move onto the start of a better life for all.
Desperately hanging onto outmoded thinking because you refuse to accept a new paradigm and instead continue to wish to believe in entrenched mythologies & illusions will only serve to extend all the things that have lead to this current era of collapse with increasingly harsh existence and will allow it to extend.
The problem has been, since September 2008, the final breakdown of H. sapiens social contract - and it has to do with POWER, not to do with with MONEY except as a false or hypothetical metric. Redistribution of it is not going to work this time, because humanity has learned a one percent portion of plutocrats do not feel bound by any contract - and are fully prepared to kill their species in order to retain their toys and nookie.
It has to do with the value of Capitalism to the entire species - and to the wrong belief that Humans are CAPABLE of making a Better World. We can't. All we can do is constantly shift the definition of BW to Flatter the Present, e.g. longer life spans while making no judgment on the quality of the time gained.
It's Legerdemain. Smoke and Mirrors. "I promise I will take this out and never hurt you like this again. I promise. Here - have a piece of candy."
Trylon
Progressives are rightly tasked with inventing our new future. We are the dreamers, the creative minds, the inventors, the survivors of brutal political and economic policies. We CANNOT awaken and save everyone, the task is too big. We CAN arrange our lives to succeed in hard times and to replace the existing corrupt and dying paradigm. We have a good start so lets get to it and save ourselves. We know how so lets get busy fully defining and implementing the new paradigm in 2011. Centralization is out, decentralization is in and effective. Let's save ourselves first. That is the prime way that we can lead to a better future for all. Allow the nonsense of plutocracy and propaganda to feed on and destroy itself. It's time to move on.
I have no clue what you just said John.
John, as we have seen a lot of 'moral codes' are highly immoral; they stem from a belief system, rather than consciousness and insight. What exactly do you mean by 'morality'? Are you referring to the so-called 'Christian' code of ethics, or do mean something else by it?
It is the era of lowered expectations. It will continue to get lower and lower, as long as there are cheap electronic toys manufactured by child and slave labor available to distract the masses. We are the frogs being slowly boiled to death.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Every time I try to present a constructively thought-out alternative to the present over-populated neo-liberally raped & crashing biosphere with a system that allows for small and medium-sized business ownership (outlawing large multinational corporations and eliminating legalistic "corporate personhood"); parallel cooperative worker-run parecon industries & farms with local and regional production/consumption planning committees; a plan to very gradually transition from fiat currencies to work-credits and altruism credits; limiting stock markets to trades only in environmentally sustainable products, services, renewable energy systems and R&D firms that generate them, and a global democratic body of non-corporate scientists relying on objective science to create and help implement habitat-based regional harmonization plans for sustainable human populations/industrial zones/agricultural zones/ wilderness areas & green buffer zones that includes the humane, gradual reduction of human over-populations to achieve sustainable regional habitat population goals, a gaggle of hysterics cruising CD bashes my "utopian dream" and calls it "fascism"--as if what is already deeply, globally under way somehow isn't a global fascist dystopia that is a billion times more horrific than even the worst possible consequences of ideas like mine, which at least try to be economically equitable, environmentally sustainable, globally democratic and objectively scientific (as opposed to the present global resource allocation system that relies on the subjective, now brazenly self-interested decisions of bought politicians and neo-liberal capitalist economists).
Global demand for fresh water is expected to surpass available supply by forty percent (40%) within 20 years, folks. Extreme weather shocks are proliferating globally--like the floods that made 20 million people homeless in Pakistan last year, and multiple super-blizzards that struck the U.S. over the holidays with hurricane force winds topping 80 to 100 miles an hour in several places--simultaneously featuring lightning, thunder and even ocean front sea swell flooding in Massachusetts. This stuff is the tip of a climate change tsunami that may last for centuries once it's fully revved up. All you fossils clinging to the neo-liberal/neo-conservative status quo must be pretty long in the tooth not to care what happens to the human habitability of this little over-crowded world.
The plutocratic oligarchs (High Finance, Big Insurance/Pharma, Big Weapons/Mercs, Industrial Agri-Giants, Corporatist Media) are taking turns methodically screwing global working-classes out of economic viability, environmental sustainability, resource commons and civil liberties. They want us on our knees, under full spectrum surveillance, ill-equipped financially to organize, unable to individually resist direct assaults on our civil liberties, economically crushed and easily manipulated by their self-aggrandizing, self-enriching, arbitrary and capricious god-like whims. They operate under delusions of god-hood and billions of us have tolerated it for far too long.
The neo-liberal plutocrats are DELIBERATELY setting up conditions for an unprecedentedly MASSIVE loss of human life around the world in coming decades--in terms of BILLIONS of people dying between, roughly, 2045 and 2099--that they think they own or control the governments, militaries, finite resources and technology to protect themselves and their servile top functionaries from. THAT is the path we are now on, people. My "utopia" or something like it is the only sort of scale of thinking that will allow some sanity and human dignity to remain on this squalid Planet of the Apes in lieu of spreading neo-liberal resource & economic wars pitting the VAST majority of humanity against itself to the very bloody and bitter end of billions of human lives and billions more aborted futures.
metal - copyright 2011
Well! you're obviously not an Oprah fan.
METAL: I appreciate your complex thought process and capacity to think in terms of so many interwoven variables, and an equal number of meshing human necessities.
You've probably heard of Eric Van Daniken. He found cave paintings and other ancient depictions of a "sky people" or alien race that long ago likely arrived on this planet.
That theme is also found in:
Twilight Zone episodes
The X Files
Gore Vidal's "Journey to a Small Planet"
tangentially related to Star Wars & Star Trek
The Biblical reference to Ezekiel seeing the wheel (way up in the middle of the sky)
and no doubt other sources...
I've read that more than one alien race seeded this planet. And while David Icke's work seems inordinately farfetched to me, the idea that our present day, cold-blooded reptile-like leaders may have descended from a different alien race than the rest of us (more warm-blooded empathic types) no longer seems like the fiction it once did.
Having said that, it's one way to understand how it is that those in positions of power seem to be doing all they can to insure a massive die-out, or cold, planned culling of the human herd.
For all the solutions, or novel adaptations you propose, there is a dearth of leadership in pursuit of such courses of action. Certainly those with money must realize that a planet that no longer sustains life will make their money worthless. There's only so much security you can purchase when oxygen levels, harvest cycles, and fish supplies drop to near nonexistent levels.
Your posts are profound. Thank you for sharing them. As you demarcate, there are things that could and should be done... what's missing is the will to do these things on the part of those who own power. Control of media is another way of insuring that the masses don't understand the problems, and therefore are not positioned to demand the changes that might help to save them (i.e. us).