The future isn't unrelievedly dark; it never is. There'll be bright spots, but the important thing is to recall that even if our civilization falls, another will always surface. As William Durant wrote, "Every end is a beginning."
Excellent post, Evan.
I think that's the great frustration we all feel: In broad outlines, we know the things that must be done to make this a better world. Not a perfect world, but at the very least a more humane order than this civilization produces.
You can see the cracks in the current order now, the ever more spectacular feats of ignorance, greed, and corruption, the frantic attempts to deflect the blame, the widening disconnect between the ruling class and the reality the rest of us must inhabit.
The ruling class is clearly banking on a world defined by scarcity, typified by an unceasing, intensifying struggle over vital resources. Like their historical predecessors, they labor under the delusion that they can manage the chaos they produce.
For the vast majority of humans, it means a continuously declining status quo, with the owners' hands relentlessly tightening the screws. It's a hopeless vision, ending in the big die-off and a wrecked planet.
There is a choice; it's been before us for more than a century, and we're running out of time to make it.
An interesting and worthwhile snapshot Evan.
I do have some objections however.
I really don't think that the Mumbai operation was planned specifically as a 'kill Americans' maneuver. They wanted to kill rich people. Rich white people is good propaganda, but even moreso it gives certain world coverage. These terrorist attacks are already fading from the minds of Americans, but unlike say bombing buses or trains(which was done in the very same city a mere two years ago), these attacks have a certain cachet, much like those of 9/11. Attack the rich at their power base. Although I am much more certain this has to do with fomenting war between Pakistan and India more than anything else.
On oil and the dollar:
Liquidity pressures have really caused cash to be king again. When banks shut off the spigot, even when Congress gives them free money to keep them flowing, people start snatching dollars wherever they can find them. Oil prices plummeting are part of this reason. Oil is priced in dollars, and even though there certainly has been a drop in demand, speculators were using oil as a hedge against a weak dollar. With the dollar no longer weak(even with the inflationary effect of printing a trillion more dollars) oil has become a less desirable hedge.
The truth is all developed economies are dumping money into saving their financial institutions lest they become the next Iceland. The US dollar is desirable because it is fundamentally a conservative move, and let's face it every financial organization is being extremely risk-averse right now, and also it is a reserve currency controlled by a unified monetary policy. Many of the European countries use the euro but still maintain separate banking institutions. There is only one federal reserve in the US and it can move very quickly to change the flow of dollars into the world economy. The dollar has gained significantly against the euro in the last three months and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it nears parity with it again in the near future.
I think the biggest challenge we face is an ideological impasse. We pretended again in the 1980s that capitalism worked to make us rich and prosperous once again. With heavy industry in decline we banked our future on finance and information technology while encouraging the worldwide spread of forced labor and slavery to make our new capitalist system work. It brought immense prosperity to the top percentages of our society while hollowing out our cities and resigning the great mass of Americans and all of the world into alienation, stagnation, decline and ultimately religious fundamentalism. When people don't have security in this lifetim, they often try to obtain future security in the next lifetime whatever it may be.
Thus with the second failure of capitalist ideology(you'd think we learn after the first time), we still have this weird situation afoot where we the people are propping up the very people that screwed us in the hope that they have changed. The big three car manufacturers go to DC like the lawmakers are giving out money to passersby(possibly because they are) and unashamedly ask for 25 billion dollars straight up. Their great-grandfathers would be embarassed and ashamed! Now we can talk about the graft and corruption of 'private-public partnerships' of the past centuries, but this free bail out would've caused the carmakers predecessors to wake up in cold sweats in the night. It is admitting in big bold letters that rather than accepting your lumps and trying to come out on top in the future, that carmakers would rather throw in the towel and declare the capitalist system to be unworkable and in need of fundamental reform. This is socialism for the rich in a way that every person on the street can see, and everytime someone can't pay a bill, can't put food on the table, can't hardly squeak by in this society they are going to curse the hypocrisy of these industries that just went to the government and got free money.
Sooner or later the small government people have to be thrown under the bus so the adults can get back to fixing the problem.
Word.
What Wengler said.
"Market Forces" by Richard Morgan is an interesting novel set around 2050 in a world much like that described above by prof fate. Scarcity is everywhere, people literally fight over getting a good job. Nice post Evan
Put all the fake money you want to into the banking system, if there is nothing worth borrowing for, there is no demand for loans.
So maybe it isn't a credit crisis, maybe it is an insolvency situation. Deadbeat debtor governments. The only solution is to make these governments even bigger and deadbeatier.
Commenting by HaloScan
