“3/17/2008, 11:53am EST”
Wall Street: Follow-up
The reality is that the current economic paradigm is doomed to breed these cataclysms, and if this present cataclysm is as bad as the tea leaves suggest, then we should expect things to get worse. It doesn’t seem so far-fetched to imagine dwindling access to resources resulting from, among other things, environmental degradation and overpopulation of voracious consumers. Further, the modes of distributing these resources will fail more and more frequently. These distribution channels will be strained by the disenchantment of the labor force, as (i) they and their families, like everyone else, will have a hard time getting the basic resources they need to live with any sort of contentment, and (ii) the chimeric nature of the motivation they’ve clinged to for so long — the “American dream” — will reveal itself.
Now imagine what happens when there aren’t enough basic resources (e.g. food, clean water, medical supplies) to go around… or when there isn’t anyone to regulate the manufacture of these supplies… or when confidence in the ability of the superstructure to deliver/monitor those goods in the future is badly shaken: Starvation. Disease. Every man for himself. Looting and rioting. A complete breakdown of the constructed lubrications that keep the machine running — i.e. the laws, norms, decencies that by and large keep us from killing each other on a daily basis. Are we ever really very far from that state of affairs?
To crudely analogize, humanity has taken out a long-term subprime loan from the Earth, and, at some point, the debt must be paid. I don’t know if it will be humanity just yet, or if we will continue to make the rest of the planet bear the brunt of our short-sightedness. But as surely as human animals ultimately rely upon a healthy planet, the longer we wait to make good on our debt, the worse it will be when that moment comes.
There is another way, but it requires us to challenge the core assumptions of our present way of life.
Never leave home without it.
