• is the problem really this simple?

    by  • August 17, 2008 • The Global Picture • 0 Comments

    Newcapitalistpyramidnt1

    http://dmiessler.com/blog/why-america-is-screwed-pic

    What’s missing? Credit card debt. Student loans. 50% taxation. What’s missing is that this is what the people want and you can tell that because 50% or more those who vote, vote for it every year. It’s not like reform candidates haven’t run, from Perot to Nader. It’s not like local political action isn’t possible, on a myriad of issues. It’s not as if fair trade and community supported agriculture don’t exist.

    No, my friends, the issue is that the system serves the will of the people. Maybe not their conscious, expressed will, but none the less it serves the will of the people. Everybody gets to blame their politicians, but never asks why their food is so cheap while millions starve. When you balance the books, however you balance them, the American people own the beast, not the other way around. The Germans owned Hitler, too.

    Yes, one can talk about phase transitions in materials, about a climate of fear, about agency, but at the most basic level, “no, I won’t” is enough to ensure freedom, from Gandhi to Heinlein, if people are serious about it.

    There is a possibility that the mall is a superstimulus, like the large ceramic eggs which birds will choose to nurture over their own small, real eggs. A plethora of stuff appealing to our instinctive desires which over-rides conscious consideration with the illusion of What You Want. Possibly, just possibly it’s that. It could also be the sea of synthetic hormones suffusing the population in the form of birth control pills, altering aggregate behavior by changing what many women want, which changes what men do, which changes how culture functions.

    But whatever it is, do not doubt that the will of the people, in aggregate, drives it. At the mall, at the gas station, when houses are purchased, when people choose jobs, when they serve on juries, when the elect their leaders – all the way through the society it echos, a million little decisions of collective will adding up to the American Way of Life ™ in which it is possible to die on the street in similar conditions to those working in the factories that make such cheap goods possible, or rise to become a billionaire.

    It’s not all bad: America does the vast majority of the world’s medical research, for example. The standard of living is high, the American Dream is beautiful, but the problem is that dream has obscured the reality long enough and must be torn asunder for people to return to reality, to understanding physical limits and the real cost of “anything is possible” culture. The place where this is showing up is the national debt, personal debt, balance of trade and therefore the overall financial stability of the nation as a whole. The no-limits, we-can-do-anything aspects of American culture have turned into the preconditions of debt-slavery as those who owe become owned, forced to work the third job to pay for the credit card debt accumulated because the second job didn’t generate enough cash to sustain the lifestyle that they desired.

    The European model generally features a much lower standard of living in incidentals (not many three car families) but has problems that I like even less involving long-term ossification of critical cultural and social infrastructure. Also I fear fascism in Europe even more than I fear it in America because of the nondemocratic foundation of institutions like the EU.

    It is this persistent ignoring of physical limits that has pushed the planet to breaking point. I’ve written elsewhere about the absolute horror of the cold war from a non-participant’s perspective – a squabble between two nations with different ideas about how to divide up scarcity turned into a threat to kill every life-form on the planet. This sickness is very real and very dangerous: ignoring the physical limits, getting confused about how important living under one ideology or another really is without focusing on the quality of life produced…

    Will of the people. They took it from their leaders as doctrine, although it made no sense at all, and accepted it passively. And this is consent.

    The myth of the left is that somebody else is responsible. They lean on the right, on their position as underdog opponents: the right does the dirty work which allows the left to continue to exist (and vise versa.) The myth of the right is that it’s OK for them to do these things because they can, and that there is no impact or cost for personal irresponsibility because of escapes like the Divine Right of Kings aka Manifest Destiny.

    I do not know what it’s going to take to get Americans and, in general, anti-life Capitalism types (a thread I’ll expand on later) to look around them and understand where they are, who they are, and what is important, but my bet is that the process is going to be long and ugly enough to get a name that carries in history for a long, long time.

    How long do we have? I can’t see the next president inheriting a healthy America. The fact is that the disease is clear for everybody to see especially bankers and international currency traders. Radical muslims know what McCain represents: years more war which means they have to continue operations or be swept aside by history. Political blocs like Europe and China (more a political bloc than a country, but more on that realization later too) all know that the clock is ticking.

    Nobody will pull the trigger, but as soon as the situation can be handled by a combination of irrational investor behavior and slow response from other nation states, America may find the dollar is finished. Likewise, the electoral hacking that will put McCain in power in all probability may well cost America it’s status as a democracy…

    What is the will of the people? This is the will of the people. You’re seeing it. But I think the will of the Other People, who aren’t in the 300 million, is about to be seen. The mandate of popular support from the world which went with America after WW2, and to a more limited extent through the cold war is withdrawn, and how that loss of support turns into an America which no longer floats in the clouds above the world directing its affairs remains to be seen.

    What we need is a reality that works for everybody. We are not being taken there by the American dream. We know that now, and so it’s over.

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    Vinay Gupta is a consultant on disaster relief and risk management.

    http://hexayurt.com/plan

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