The economy

Don't know why I keep thinking about the economy. I never studied it in school. I'm doing good to balance my check book and get it to agree with my monthly bank statement. (Happy to say I'm doing a lot better at that than the government and several big businesses now days!)
But back to the economy thing. Way back last summer and before, back even before this last big election was starting to heat up I was saying that the economy just couldn't keep going the way it was. It was unsustainable. It was gonna go flop any old time.
Surprise!
It did!

Now what did I think made our "great American Economy" unsustainable despite the fact that in form and use it has been exported to every other nation in the world?

First there is that basic out look it has that is best summed up in a spiffy little 3 word battle cry. One that a motivational group charged a factory I once worked for lots of money to try to indoctrinate it's workers with. The company paid them in the hope that we would become good little employees and be motivated to work harder, faster and make the company more money for less wages. At least that was MY view of it. This spiffy little slogan was "FASTER, HIGHER, FURTHER!" Sounds great don't it. Stirring even.

Sigh. In my mind it translates to Faster production, Higher quotas, and going further to help the 'company' make 'it's' goal of a bigger bottom line.

Odd thing is it can also be the theme of our over all economy. Faster growth, higher profits, furthering bigger bottom lines.

Now this general outlook ends up also giving us the 3 things I (and some others) see as the things absolutely required to support our present economy:

1) An ever growing, preferably single, source of cheep, easily obtained energy to run factories, etc.

2) An ever growing source of cheep, easily obtained uniform materials to feed into factories to make ever more 'stuff'.

3) An ever growing population of easily controlled workers for the factories and easily controlled buyers for the products of the factories. (This can be simplified down to just 'an ever growing, expanding population.)

Now I'm certain that just about anyone who looks at our economy in this light can see that it is totally, completely and insanely un sustainable.

Lets look at the requirements in order and I'll show why I think they are unsustainable.

1) The fuel for our economy at present is hydro-carbons. Usually in the form of oil. I know lots of people refuse to believe this but we are running out of oil. It's getting harder to get. Yes, we are getting more out of old oil fields that were shut down. They were originally shut down because the oil stopped just pouring out on its on and they started having to pay to pump it out or even had to start doing things like 'frac' (pump water or gas into the formation to expand and crack -fracture- the rock so more oil could be sucked out). All that cost money and until the price of oil went up it wasn't worth their labor to get it. Coal is still plentiful but it has an even worse polluting effect on the atmosphere than oil and if it's very deep you have to risk a lot of peoples lives and health to get it up where we can use it. If it's near the surface all you have to do is completely destroy the land above it and make an open pit mine. Nuclear power has no immediate emissions, unless there's a melt down which is not as likely with modern reactors. - I'm told. - But I still have to ask...What the heck do we do when these fancy new reactors become old and unusable. Turn their radioactive hulks into apartments or what?

2)One of the favorite and cheep materials now days is the ever present and ubiquitous plastic. Guess where most plastic comes from. -Oil.- That stuff that's disappearing. Or Coal, that stuff that's so expensive to the environment and people to get out of the ground. Metal deposits aren't as close to disappearing as the hydrocarbons but they are getting harder to find and get to. We've just about used up the hardwoods that grow down in the jungles of the southern hemisphere. And I'm not even going into what's happening with the soft woods we use to make paper or houses. Oh, all these materials can be got and often fairly 'cheaply'. All we have to do is turn our backs while multinational conglomerates move in and rape the ecology of delicate biologically diverse areas and/or steal the land of native peoples, forcing them to move into urban areas where their thousand plus year old cultures are lost forever and they become alcohol and drug soaked hangers on of society. No skin off our backs, right. Until they start picking up guns or backpacks full of explosives and coming after us.

3) This one is the real crux of the problem I think. It is an absolute requirement. Why? because we need ever more, preferably cheep, easily controlled labor to use the energy from 1 and the materials from 2 to make all the various 'stuff' that those of us here in the US and other '1st world', 'advanced' nations have been taught to think we can't live without. The companies that make this stuff are convinced that they have to have an ever expanding, bigger and bigger 'bottom line'. (faster, higher, further!) Therefore, they must have more and more customers while their workers must produce more and more product. Now, there is also a slight (?) disconnect here. The owners of the companies want that ever growing population of workers to work for as little money as possible while they charge as much as possible for their product. Thanks to modern advertising it was easy to convince those workers that it was perfectly okay to go deep into debt to get all those goodies they were making. Then it was just as easy to convince them that it was sencible to throw those goodies away, before they finished paying them off, so they could go into more debt in order to buy the 'NEW! IMPROVED!" model. We know how that has ended up.

Now the outcome of all of the above is that we now have a population greater than the planet can support, an atmosphere polluted with all kinds of stuff our ancestors never had to put up with and a generally degraded environment. Not even mentioning Global Warming. Which is another problem I think this 'run away' economy is responsible for whether anyone reading this dose or not. Worse, this totally unsustainable economy, after getting us this far in style and luxury, is finely starting to stumble. As I see it, this horse just can't run no further. We've run it into the ground. Literally.

Unfortunately the powers in charge at the moment, instead of trying to really change the economy to something sustainable is, instead, trying like all get out to prop up the old one. They are doing all they can to kick that tired, nearly dead, old horse back from it's present stumbling trot back into a full out gallop. I think we are headed for disaster here folks.

However, I can see the problem the powers that be have. They have grown up, been educated to see, the present kind of economy as the only one that will work. "It is really what defeated the communists" I'm sure they like to tell themselves. Yep, I agree. But we beat the commies only because the Free World had more of two of the three things needed. I'd say all three but while the communists didn't have quite as big a population it was very controllable. At least they thought so.

I have had a deal of trouble myself trying to picture what a sustainable economy would really look like. I had no luck at all until I decided to take the above 'rallying cry' of the present economy and the 3 things it has to have and reverse them. Just to see what would happen.

Now let me be clear here. I am not advocating any kind of controlled markets, communism or any such kind of thing. Mainly because they are even less sustainable than our present economy as the past few decades have shown. What I do advocate is individual independence, self sufficiency, responsibility, respect for our fellow beings; human, plant and animal, as well as cooperation with our environment and each other rather than competition.

Now let me show you what happens if we turn the present precepts of our economy on it's head.

"Faster, Higher, Further!" Becomes "Slower, Lower, Closer to Home." Note the absence of an exclamation point.

In other words, doing things slow enough to be sure they are done right and well. Maybe even thinking about the thing to be done enough to realize that it might not need to be done at all!

Lower expectations. Not nearly as bad as it sounds. How many folks out there get up and go to jobs they hate just so they can live a 'high life' that they don't even like living? How many young people are going to end up facing huge bills for college loans even though they know they would be lots happier working on the family farm, welding, or even throwing pottery rather than being managers or businessmen? How many Scientists are out working for companies whose philosophies and plans they don't agree with just so they can make enough for a high life when they'd be happier at a University, teaching new scientist (who really want to be scientists) and making new discoveries? And why must we have an ever higher income other than to buy more stuff we don't need? What's wrong with haveing just enough to get what we need? And what's so grand about buildings being so high you have to have an elevator?

Closer to home sounds dull I know. But there is a movement afoot already that emphasizes the better nutrition and taste of foods grown close to where they are eaten. The same is true of cloths and building styles as well as materials for all kinds of other things. I can see moving some things around. Lets face it, EVERYTHING, can't be grown or made locally. But loads can.

Now for the needs of this new economy. Remember I'll be turning the needs of the one we have upside down.

1) A steady supply of sustainable, renewable energy from various sources that can often be produced by individuals and used close to their source. (or added to a grid where it can be shared)

2) A steady supply of sustainably produced material that is often processed and usually used close to it's source. (or moved, sustainably, to where it is needed)

3) An individualistic, thinking, self sufficient, well educated population that maintains itself at a sustainable number of individuals.

What that kind of economy would actually look like in detail, I don't know. What kind of society it would evolve, I don't know. I'd like to think it would be a peaceful one as there would be no excess young bucks any government would want to send off to war to use as cannon fodder just to get rid of them. Indeed our government would likely be a shadow of it's present self what with an independent, well educated, and self sufficient population keeping an eagle eye on it. I also doubt there would be much pollution either.

I'm not, no mater what some may think, advocating doing away with technology or our present or future knowledge of the sciences. We will need those, and need them desperately, as our 'alternative energies' will be based on them. Nor do I want to see a one size fits all religion, or social structure rise out of this sustainable economy. I think it should be obvious that individuality, self sufficientcy and clear thinking will be the things of greatest value in such an economy.

Yeah, I know. I made no provisions for criminals or the insane. Frankly, niether dose the present economy.

So much for this rant. Feel free to rant back.