And so the sun seems to stand still this last
day before the resumption of business-as-usual, and whatever remains of labor
in this sclerotic republic takes its ease in the ominous late summer heat, and
the people across this land marinate in anxious uncertainty. What can be done?
Some
kind of epic national restructuring is in the works. It will either happen
consciously and deliberately or it will be forced on us by circumstance. One side
wants to magically reenact the 1950s; the other wants a Gnostic transhuman
utopia. Neither of these is a plausible outcome. Most of the arguments ranging
around them are what Jordan Peterson calls “pseudo issues.” Let’s try to take
stock of what the real issues might be.
Energy:
The shale oil “miracle” was a stunt enabled by supernaturally low interest
rates, i.e. Federal Reserve policy. Even The New York Times said so yesterday (The Next
Financial Crisis Lurks Underground). For all that,
the shale oil producers still couldn’t make money at it. If interest rates go
up, the industry will choke on the debt it has already accumulated and lose
access to new loans. If the Fed reverses its current course — say, to rescue
the stock and bond markets — then the shale oil industry has perhaps three more
years before it collapses on a geological basis, maybe less. After that, we’re
out of tricks. It will affect everything.
The
perceived solution is to run all our stuff on electricity, with the electricity
produced by other means than fossil fuels, so-called alt energy. This will only
happen on the most limited basis and perhaps not at all. (And it is apart from the
question of the decrepit electric grid itself.) What’s required is a political
conversation about how we inhabit the landscape, how we do business, and what
kind of business we do. The prospect of dismantling suburbia — or at least
moving out of it — is evidently unthinkable. But it’s going to happen whether
we make plans and policies, or we’re dragged kicking and screaming away from
it.
Corporate
tyranny: The nation is groaning under despotic corporate rule. The fragility of
these operations is moving toward criticality. As with shale oil, they depend
largely on dishonest financial legerdemain. They are also threatened by the
crack-up of globalism, and its 12,000-mile supply lines, now well underway. Get
ready for business at a much smaller scale.
Hard
as this sounds, it presents great opportunities for making Americans useful
again, that is, giving them something to do, a meaningful place in society, and
livelihoods. The implosion of national chain retail is already underway. Amazon
is not the answer, because each Amazon sales item requires a separate truck
trip to its destination, and that just doesn’t square with our energy
predicament. We’ve got to rebuild main street economies and the layers of local
and regional distribution that support them. That’s where many jobs and careers
are.
Climate
change is most immediately affecting farming. 2018 will be a year of bad
harvests in many parts of the world. Agri-biz style farming, based on
oil-and-gas plus bank loans is a ruinous practice, and will not continue in any
case. Can we make choices and policies to promote a return to smaller scale
farming with intelligent methods rather than just brute industrial force plus
debt? If we don’t, a lot of people will starve to death. By the way, here is
the useful work for a large number of citizens currently regarded as
unemployable for one reason or another.
Pervasive
racketeering rules because we allow it to, especially in education and
medicine. Both are self-destructing under the weight of their own
money-grubbing schemes. Both are destined to be severely downscaled. A lot of
colleges will go out of business. Most college loans will never be paid back
(and the derivatives based on them will blow up). We need millions of small
farmers more than we need millions of communications majors with a public
relations minor. It may be too late for a single-payer medical system. A
collapsing oil-based industrial economy means a lack of capital, and fiscal
hocus-pocus is just another form of racketeering. Medicine will have to get
smaller and less complex and that means local clinic-based health care. Lots of
careers there, and that is where things are going, so get ready.
Government
over-reach: the leviathan state is too large, too reckless, and too corrupt.
Insolvency will eventually reduce its scope and scale. Most immediately, the
giant matrix of domestic spying agencies has turned on American citizens. It
will resist at all costs being dismantled or even reined in. One task at hand
is to prosecute the people in the Department of Justice and the FBI who ran
illegal political operations in and around the 2016 election. These are
agencies which use their considerable power to destroy the lives of individual
citizens. Their officers must answer to grand juries.
As
with everything else on the table for debate, the reach and scope of US
imperial arrangements has to be reduced. It’s happening already, whether we
like it or not, as geopolitical relations shift drastically and the other
nations on the planet scramble for survival in a post-industrial world that
will be a good deal harsher than the robotic paradise of digitally “creative”
economies that the credulous expect. This country has enough to do within its
own boundaries to prepare for survival without making extra trouble for itself
and other people around the world. As a practical matter, this means close as
many overseas bases as possible, as soon as possible.
As
we get back to business tomorrow, ask yourself where you stand in the
blather-storm of false issues and foolish ideas, in contrast to the things that
actually matter.