Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Economics Page 42 of 91

Personnel: A Potential Achilles’ Heel for Progressive Electoral Politics

By

On July 17, 2016

Comments

(Just so no one misunderstands, this is Mandos writing, not Ian.)

Over the years I’ve collected a laundry list of potential problems that left-wing movements have in obtaining and exercising official power “through the system” in developed Western societies, but at least two of them have to do with the question of personnel and talent. These are problems that that manifest themselves both in the way that movements operate in the electoral space and then again reveal themselves if the progressive-leftist party gets really lucky and manages to hold official power. Some of them apply to populist right-wing movements too (but I think less so; the reasons for this we can leave to another day) and is at least a contributing factor to the extent to which the neoliberal order appears so crisis-resilient.

(1) Personnel for Getting into Power: We live in a mass media society where cheap communications means that messages are propagated very quickly. This means that almost all political campaigning is going to involve an aspect of mass advertising and marketing. I know that a lot of lefty people for obvious reasons have a bit of an allergy to the idea of political ideation as selling something, but unfortunately, that’s what it is. Selling stuff is a profession, talent, and skill.

The neoliberal establishment side of the equation has a lot of money to attract the kind of talent who can sell stuff. But that’s true of everything: The left always lives with a headwind of money that favours the establishment. What is more fundamentally difficult, however, is that the neoliberal demeanour has a very natural and smooth affinity to the notion of selling and is very deeply founded on the idea of competing psychological influence over individual choice; in fact, it openly celebrates this as a cornerstone of its fundamental political truth. The modern left, on the other hand, views advertising and marketing as an attempt at corrupting individual authentic choice. But in an environment of technologically-accelerated information dissemination, there’s no escape from selling political ideas and from a need for the talent required to do that. It seems unlikely to me, however, that, money aside, the sales talent is in large numbers going to abandon an ideological affinity for the governing neoliberal attitude.

(2) Personnel to Run the Show: Once in power, the problems have only started. Large industrial societies actually require a great deal of technical skill to run, both on matters of economy and finance as well as general administration and regulation. While leftists deride the prognostications of academic economics, there are nevertheless technical skills and concepts that are still required to have a modicum of control. Unfortunately, most people educated in these disciplines were also made sympathetic to neoliberalism. We saw in the Greek crisis that there was a layer of Greek bureaucracy that actively resisted the original form of the Syriza government. That is partly class interest — but a lot of “technocrats” genuinely believed that they were doing a good deed from preventing what they thought was stupid or impossible policy from being implemented, rather than respect democratic decision-making or question the political assumptions they take as positive truths. This is potentially a deeper and more difficult problem than (1).

The problem of finding technocrats willing to administer a moderately left-wing, post-neoliberal state feeds back into the original problem of electability. If the public (quite reasonably) gets the sense that left-wing parties simply lack the expertise to make existing systems work on a day-to-day basis, they’ll choose a seemingly better-administered political outcome, even if it actually represents long-term decline.

I won’t pretend to have immediate solutions to these problems. But I think they aren’t very closely discussed in these sorts of environments.

The Role of Politicians in an Oligarchy…

By

On May 20, 2016

Comments

…is to wrangle voters for oligarchs then enact policies to make the rich, richer.

This is clearly indicated by jobs for the families of politicians and the way that politicians are rewarded post-career.

The Clintons had a 100 million dollars a few years after leaving the White House.

Seven figure lobbying jobs are routine for Senators after their legislative career. Before that, their families are taken care of, and most of them somehow become multi-millionaires.

The same is true for high ranking bureaucrats. Timothy Geithner, who helped bail out Wall Street was giving six figure speeches almost immediately after leaving his post.

If you want to know who someone works for, look for who pays them.

You pay lawmakers far less than the rich.  They do not work for you.

I would estimate that this is true of well over 90 percent of American politicians.

When Russ Feingold was defeated for re-election to the Senate, he took a job as a university Professor. Now this isn’t a terrible fate, and I’m not crying for him, but being the only person to vote against the Patriot Act and not, in general being corrupt, cost him at least a million dollars.

A year.

Americans seem to believe that people act in their self-interest (and should do so) and then, contradictorily, believe their politician should be willing to give up millions to do the right thing.

This is true, by the way, of Obama. His State department effectively immunized bankers for criminal acts by letting them off with fines (fines that did nothing to harm the money they had earned through illegal acts). His number one priority this last year has been the TPP trade deal.

Obama’s presidency oversaw the rich getting even richer, most of the population getting poorer, and there being fewer jobs per capita which pay less. These are his economic results, and they are not accidental.

The good things you can have in an oligarchical government are the good things of which the oligarchs approve. Oligarchs want workers to be interchangeable. Nonsense about gays or transgenders or whatever is bad business.

So are unions. So are good wages.

None of this is to say that you’ll never get thrown a bone, as with Obama’s sponsoring of overtime. But a clear-eyed look at Obama’s record (or Clinton’s, or Bush’s, or that of any Congress in the past 30+ years) indicates that policies were meant primarily for the benefit of the few, not the many.

Politicians wrangle voters for oligarchs, who pay them well for the service. They then pass bills and regulations which help those oligarchs, because it is those oligarchs who give them almost all their money.

If a politician does not do this, and gets into a position of potential power, the attacks are unrelenting.

For an example, please read the media coverage of Corbyn; note also how much he is attacked by Labour party politicians, EVEN as the vast majority of Labour party members support him (and that support has increased since he won the leadership.)

Corbyn didn’t take the money. For decades he didn’t take the money. He didn’t become a Blairite, even though he had every reason to believe that by not doing so, he was condemning himself to a life as a bank bencher, who would never get rich.

Whether you agree with Corbyn’s beliefs or not, THAT is integrity.

The vast, vast majority of politicians in the developed world are not just corrupt, they are your enemies. The actions they take impoverish and kill you in exchange for wealth and favors from the rich.

A man like Obama or Bill Clinton (or, in the future a woman like Hillary Clinton) is far more likely to ruin your life than Osama bin Laden ever was. Bill Clinton pushing through Welfare “Reform” harmed millions of the poorest weakest people in America. The repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed the financial crisis to happen.

Unless you are an oligarch, or a retainer who is on the gravy train, people like Clinton, Obama, Blair, Cameron, and Thatcher are your enemies. They are a direct threat to your well-being, welfare, and even life.

The first thing anyone who wants to be realistic about politics and power needs to realize is this fact. They are enemies.

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

How the Rational Irrationality of Capitalism Is Destroying the World

By

On May 1, 2016

Comments

Capitalism leads to actions only a self-destructive wastrel would want, but does so by pure rationality.

Think of rationality as being of two types: Means-ends and internal-coherence.

Means-ends rationality says: “I want to get to Point A. How do I do that?” Or, “I want to grow a garden so I can eat food. What are the steps involved?”

Internal-coherence is related to a system. Perhaps I want to go to Heaven, and am a Catholic. I examine the Catholic system and decide that works of charity, baptism, and regular confession are the most important things to do.

If you are not a Christian, then these activities appear quite insane–as might the idea of “going to Heaven.”

“What’s ‘heaven,'” you might ask.

On the other hand, while one might quibble about someone’s garden (“Why not just buy the food” or, “You aren’t using enough fertilizer”), we all know that food is needed and that it makes sense to get food.

Meanwhile, the Christians have realized that eternal damnation, meaning eternal (what happens to those without Christ) is the worst thing that can ever happen. They have also discovered that burning someone alive will make sure that person doesn’t suffer eternal torment. So they start burning people alive, because no matter how much that hurts, it’s better than eternal torture.

This is entirely rational within a certain Christian world-view. Anything you do to stop someone from going to Hell is justified, because nothing that you can do to anyone is worse than what they will endure in Hell. War, conquest, forcible conversion—nothing is worse than eternal torture.

This is rational within certain Christian systems. To anyone outside the Christian system, it is insane.

Conquering people to impose democracy follows the essential same logic. It is only internally coherent and logical. Rational.

Let us examine the logic of capitalism.

In a market, if two people or groups agree to a trade, then that trade benefits both groups. If it did not benefit both groups, the agreement would not be made. If someone wants to buy something, (presumably) it has utility for them. Perhaps I like greasy hamburgers and sugary pop. Those things may make me sick, but I know that I get the most utility out of them, and it is not up to anyone else to say that their ill effect on my health outweighs the greasy deliciousness of the burger or the sugar high from the pop. An exchange, mutually agreed upon, is always more beneficial to the parties involved than no exchange; otherwise it would not happen.

Profit is how the capitalist system determines who is doing the most good. If people are willing to pay you more for you for goods than the your cost of production, then they place a value what you are doing. The more they are willing to pay, the more your work (or goods) is valued. The more profit you make, the more you should be doing whatever you are doing, because profit based on voluntary exchanges indicates the mutual benefit of  both parties involved. As long as you can make a profit, it indicates that scarce resources are being used well.

The product may be hamburgers. It may be firearms. In the purest form, it does not matter. Drugs, sex–anything to which both parties voluntarily agree.

So, if I’m involved in a voluntary exchange, and I’m making a profit, I should continue to do what I’m doing, and the more profit I make the more I should do of it. More profit gives me more control of resources, so I am able to do more, and I do.

This is the basic capitalist feedback system (in theory). Do more of whatever is profitable and consensual, and this will perpetuate itself automatically because those who make the most profit are doing the things people value the most compared to the cost of producing those things.

So why have we produced to so much carbon that we’re going to kill a billion people or more?

Because capitalist rationality is internal-coherence. It does not question ends. By definition, anything which makes profits and is consensual is good. (I’m leaving out questions of perfect consensuality, like power and so on, deliberately.)

Take planned obsolescence. Goods are designed so they will wear out and break down; they make them hard to repair when they do break, so people will buy new ones.

This was a big fight in the late 19th and early 20th century, by the way.  Engineers wanted to design goods which would last as long as possible, but managers didn’t: If you can sell a person whatever you make only once in their life, or twice, you make a lot less money than if it breaks down and has to be replaced every few years.

This means, of course, that you have to mine a lot more material. People have to work a lot more to make goods which would not be needed if they were designed to last as long as possible. This generate more carbon and other pollutants.

In every way this is bad: People have less free time, there is more pollution, and we use up more scarce resources. No one sane would create such a system from first principles.

But it makes sense within the Capitalist system. The exchanges are all voluntary, it leads to maximum profit, and profit indicates scarce resources are being turned into utility in the best way possible.

It is rational to destroy the planet’s life-bearing ability by over-using resources and spewing more pollution into it than necessary. It is rational to do more work than is necessary to produce the goods people need (or even want) so you can sell again and again, rather than just selling once.

This is internal-coherence rational, not means-ends rational. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to work less and have everything (or most everything) I need and want, while polluting less and using less resources. I will posit that the vast majority of human beings on Earth would agree.

Internal-coherence rationality is so close to always bad that you might as well just say that it is. Yes, one always has to ask, “Why do we want X?” when dealing with means-end rationality, but means-ends rationality has a tendency to cut out the shit. When we examine it carefully, most of us want enough stuff for the least possible work and want to be healthy, which means we don’t want a lot of pollution.

Capitalism is not means-end rational. The argument was made for a long time, “but it works.” By which it was meant, “it produces a lot of goods and money.” But it produced too many goods we didn’t need and money is only a means, for most people, to get the goods they need.

We will have to find a better way. The easy sneer that “Communism failed” is irrelevant. Capitalism is failing as well, and its failure will lead to a billion deaths or more because of climate change and other foreseeable failures (like over-use of resources.) We knew these were problems, but driven by the internal-coherence rationality of Capitalism, we kept doing what we knew would have unacceptable consequences.

When finding that better way, we must start by asking what the economy is supposed to do. I will suggest it doesn’t exist to make a profit, it exists to make sure people get what they need (and as much as possible what they want) in a fashion that is sustainable, doesn’t make us sick or unhappy, and doesn’t threaten the conditions necessary for sustaining life on Earth.

It is “rational” to destroy the Earth for profit. But only if you’re so wrapped in the logic of Capitalism that you’re no longer rational.

Or particularly sane.

(This is the 4th in a series on Capitalism.  Read “The Death of Capitalism”, “What Capitalism Is”, and “Did the Industrial Revolution Require Land Clearances, Slavery, Genocide, and Empire?”)

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

What Should Wages, Prices, and Taxes Be?

By

On April 15, 2016

Comments

The principle is simple.

Wages and taxes must cover the cost of maintainence and replacement of capital plus any negative externalities.

Maintainence of capital, as horrible as the phrase sounds, includes workers. They must have a wage sufficient to eat well, live in a healthy place, buy entertainment, and have children. That is maintainence of “human capital.”

Taxes must be at a level sufficient to replace society’s capital base. That includes running schools, roads, courts, and all of that.

Businesses which put particular wear on specific portions of capital should be charged extra taxes. Are you degrading “natural capital” by polluting or drawing down water or timber reserves? You need to pay the replacement cost. Are you putting more stress on roads than normal businesses? You pay for that as well.

Prices should run on the same principle. Charging less than the cost of operating plus the replacement cost of capital and the price of any externalities mean the company is underpricing its goods.

“But it’s a free market.”

Free markets work when, and only when, full costs are priced in. If you charge less than the full price, you undercut those business that are charging full cost, driving them out of business. Because they were actually paying the freight for their business and you aren’t, you are free-loading, a parasite.

Competitive markets require more than the above to exist, but these are some of the requirements. One can deliberately choose, as a society, to subsidize an important sector (perhaps renewables, perhaps education), but the actual costs still need to be known and covered by society.

If you see a business or government which isn’t covering the cost of replacing its capital, whether human, natural, or otherwise, you see a business or government which is parasitical on the past, on people, or on the environment.

You will virtually always wind up paying the price anyway. But paying on the back end is far more expensive.

Corporations and people usually get rich by offloading their capital costs…by not paying them. For an example of this, look into the history and practices of Walmart, which did not, and does not, even pay its employees enough to feed themselves, and whose business practices wiped out the downtowns of most of small-town America.

The Waltons are rich precisely because they downloaded their costs onto other people and pocketed the difference.

A good society does not allow this to be done without democratic determination, and makes it as transparent as possible. If something is being subsidized, it should be known, and those who are receiving the subsidy should not be allowed to get rich off it. Want to get rich?  Great, do it in an unsubsidized business. You’re welcome to “do well” in a subsidized one, but not to become a billionaire.

This stuff is fundamental. It was well understood by the New Deal Liberals who ran World War II (no war rich!), and the post-war economy. They didn’t always live up to it, but they did know it. We seem to have forgotten.

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Market Fairy Will Not Solve the Problems of Uber and Lyft

By

On April 14, 2016

Comments

Image by Admit One

Image by Admit One

Here is the thing about Uber and Lyft (and much of the “sharing economy”).

They don’t pay the cost of their capital.

The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human.

These business models are ways of draining capital from the economy and putting them into the hands of a few investors and executives. They prey on desperate people who need money now, even if the money is insufficient to pay their total costs. Drivers are draining their own reserves to get cash now, but, hey, they gotta eat and pay the bills.

This sharing economy shit works in a shitty economy. In a good economy, where people have what they need, it doesn’t work.

The cab company model, with medallions and so on, was exploitative. It wound up charging customers too much, but it did cover its own costs–mostly. Uber and Lyft charge too little and siphon too much of what they charge back to themselves.

The model which made sense was the model of car-sharing, where company-owned cars could be used by those who had bought memberships in the company. This meant that the actual cost of the cars had to be covered. It was far cheaper than cabs, but not as cheap as Uber or Lyft (and you had to drive yourself). Something like that, but with drivers, could have worked.

For that matter, Uber- and Lyft-style apps could work with regulated wages sufficient to pay costs in particular markets.

The market will not miraculously produce a capital-replacing living wage. If it should do so in any particular market, that is happenstance; luck, not social physics.

This is a social action problem; a race to the bottom issue. It makes sense, individually, to race to the bottom.  Company execs and investors get rich, consumers get cheaper rides and drivers get money they need. But this isn’t win, win, win. It’s a long con. And not a very long one, either.

The cheaper wages paid to drivers, and thus the cheaper rides, also drive business with capital structures which make social sense out of business. They can’t compete with, “Drive your car into the ground, make less than minimum wage.”

Because it is a social action problem, what needs to be done is to take a game which leads to some people winning while destroying capital and people and move it to a game where everyone wins and capital and people are not destroyed. This can only be dealt with socially, by government.

“Thou shalt pay at least the capital replacement cost + a living wage for the market and shall take only an additional X percent for providing your app. If thou dost not we shall toss thine ass into prison.”

That is the social solution. It is not “The Market Fairy of supply and demand will make sure that fair, sustainable solutions always occur. All praise the Market Fairy.”

Until we stop pretending the Market Fairy is going to solve social action problems, we won’t actually solve those problems.

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Panama Papers Leak

By

On April 5, 2016

Comments

You’ve probably read about it already. A Panamian law firm had its files leaked, and they reveal how rich people store money offshore to avoid taxes. In some cases legally, in some cases illegally, and, in pretty much all cases, unethically.

This is why we can’t have nice stuff: The rich simply don’t want to pay for a decent society. They just want to be filthy rich.

There are all sorts of additions to that, but that is the essence.

There is no such thing as a good society in which to live that is not relatively egalitarian. Of course, you can all be equal in poverty, but strangely enough, unless it’s desperate poverty, those people tend to be happy. Moving to the cities to get involved with China’s “economic miracle” meant an actual decrease in happiness. When the Chinese government tries to close traditional villages, the villagers often fight, and by that I don’t mean “protest,” I mean crack skulls and even, on occasion, actually fight the army and win.

Rich people caused the financial crisis, got bailed out, then insisted that poor people had to be punished for it.

If you want a good society, you keep the rich poor.

The other rule is that no one gets to opt out of anything which matters. The rich and powerful must use the same schools, airplanes, security, health care, roads, and military service as everyone else.

An absolutely fair draft, a medical system where better care cannot be bought by money or forced by power, where the children of the rich go to the same universities and schools as the poor will be a good society. A society where everyone uses public defenders chosen by lottery is a society with a fair justice system

Why? Because this forces the rich ensure that those schools, hospitals, and so on, work.  And no, your average billionaire is not subjecting his wife to a TSA porno scan and pat down. TSA agents only get to pull aside and molest hotties who aren’t part of the .1 percent.

One of the ways we will know that governments are finally serious about inequality is when they brutally crack down on tax evasion. It isn’t that hard to do, despite what everyone says. I’ve worked in a major financial institution; money going in and out of the country is examined, data is sent to authorities, etc. This stuff can be tracked easily, structuring is easy to detect, and a few criminal sentences (not fines) in high security prisons would make the point nicely.

If you make your money in country X, you pay taxes there. Money is a public utility. If you want to take it out of the country, the government acting for the people has the right to make that difficult, and indeed, tax it again or limit it.

Cyrptocurrencies like blockchain are, in part, a way for ordinary people to move money out of countries just like rich people do. This is a corrupt solution to a real problem: Our elites are corrupt, so we want to have the same right to be as corrupt as them–instead of insisting the corruption end.

There is no war but class war. The rich understand this, they have always understood it.

You keep the rich poor and weak, or they will eat you alive. Then they’ll kill you. The death toll from the 2008 financial collapse is in the millions, by any reasonable modeling of its consequences.

This is about your life, your death, and how well you live.

You should probably make it about the rich’s life, death, and how well they live.

Reasonable accommodations (a la Corbyn or Sanders) will be made. If they are not, unreasonable accommodations will be made. The rich will die or suffer in the same numbers as the poor.

But as a percentage, there just aren’t that many rich.

Too bad.

Update: Clinton supported the Panama free trade deal.

Here’s what Sanders said at the time:

Then, why would we be considering a stand-alone free trade agreement with this country?

Well, it turns out that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in off-shore tax havens.  And, the Panama Free Trade Agreement would make this bad situation much worse.

Each and every year, the wealthy and large corporations evade $100 billion in U.S. taxes through abusive and illegal offshore tax havens in Panama and other countries.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, “A tax haven . . . has one of three characteristics: It has no income tax or a very low-rate income tax; it has bank secrecy laws; and it has a history of non-cooperation with other countries on exchanging information about tax matters.  Panama has all three of those. … They’re probably the worst.”

Mr. President, the trade agreement with Panama would effectively bar the U.S. from cracking down on illegal and abusive offshore tax havens in Panama.  In fact, combating tax haven abuse in Panama would be a violation of this free trade agreement, exposing the U.S. to fines from international authorities.

In 2008, the Government Accountability Office said that 17 of the 100 largest American companies were operating a total of 42 subsidiaries in Panama.  This free trade agreement would make it easier for the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes and it must be defeated.  At a time when we have a record-breaking $14.7 trillion national debt and an unsustainable federal deficit, the last thing that we should be doing is making it easier for the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country to avoid paying their fair share in taxes by setting-up offshore tax havens in Panama.

Vote Clinton! She’ll make sure your job gets sent overseas and that the rich don’t pay tax.

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Will Capitalism Be Replaced By Something Better?

By

On April 2, 2016

Comments

The short answer is: “Who knows?”

The longer answer is “probably not,” simply because we have such a mess coming down the road in terms of climate change, resource exhaustion, imperial collapse, and so on.

But the answer isn’t “No.”

The answer is that it is possible. Not likely, but not so unlikely as to be a write off not worthy of consideration.

Far better systems can be thought up, I believe. I believe it’s even possible those systems would work with human nature well enough to be viable (a.k.a., are not utopian, in the impossible sense).

I also think they are our best alternative.

Wait? What?

Yeah. I think the odds are less than even that we pull it off, but I also think it is our best chance.  Sometimes the best bet you’ve got just isn’t a very good bet. We either fix the way our economic system works (how we turn resources into goods and services) and our political system works (how we make group choices) or we could go extinct. Better case scenarios involve billions of deaths and amazing amounts of suffering.

Of course, dividing the problem in two is wrong. Capitalism isn’t “just” an economic system.  The great mistake of the social sciences was changing from “political economics” to “economics.” Capitalism is a political choice, but it’s also how we make most of our group choices.

The right is right. Ideas matter, and the ideas on the ground during a crisis are important.  We’ve got a lot of crises ahead of us. That is bad, but it is also our hope. Setting up to win those crisis points is what matters. The neoliberals won the last one (the financial crisis), but no one wins them all.

It would be good if we had some radical options on the floor which would also make most of humanity better off, provide for freedom, and so on.

So figure out what you want to replace capitalism (or how it can be radically fixed); and do look seriously at the political system. Democracy is not going to be immune from the fallout (nor is the sort of one-party state China runs.)

We can create a better world, but that doesn’t mean we will. It’s up to us, to humanity, in the largest sense.

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The End of the Age of Oil

By

On March 31, 2016

Comments

Has the last oil boom ended?

Electric cars will be cheaper to own than conventional cars by 2022, according to a new report.

The plummeting cost of batteries is key in leading to the tipping point, which would kickstart a mass market for electric vehicles, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) analysts predict.

This is very good news for the world, and though the technology is certainly not carbon neutral, it is better than oil, the energy used to charge the battery can be kept relatively clean. Once upon a time, that energy was coal and other conventional energy sources, but coal is now more expensive than solar, and the price of solar is continuing to drop.

While this is good for the world, it’s going to be very, very bad for many countries. The oilarchies’ days are numbered. I will state right now that I doubt that Saudi Arabia’s monarchy will survive this.  Countries that are heavily reliant on oil, especially expensive oil, are going to be in trouble. The same is true of natural gas.

All resource booms end. Eventually resources are replaced. Once there was a huge rubber boom in Brazil: Then we learned how to make synthetic rubber.

We might get one more oil boom, but that’s it.

So: Alberta oil sands oil? Done. The Alberta-dominated Conservatives damaged terribly the Canadian manufacturing sector during the last oil boom by refusing to acknowledge that the high Canadian dollar affected manufacturing sales, but the good days won’t be coming back to Alberta.  It’s possible that Alberta has a key resource which will boom in the future of which I’m not aware (entirely possible), but if it doesn’t, Alberta’s high-flying days are done.

Go down your list of major oil exporters and look at the prices they need per barrel to make a profit. A lot of them are going to have to reduce production of the most expensive wells. This process will continue for years. Saudi oil production costs per barrel are under $10, but the price they require to keep their society running is much higher.

Cheap energy is an economically good thing. But the effects of dislocation will be immense.

Unfortunately, while this is great news for the environment, it is all too late to stop runaway climate change. Methane locked into land and ocean will be released now. It is too late, we have passed the point at which the process of global warming became self-reinforcing. It is now a vicious cycle and cannot be stopped by simply reducing carbon emissions.

Whoops!

We knew this would be the case, and we decided not to do anything about it. Let no one tell you otherwise.

A large amount of the world is going to become essentially uninhabitable due to heat. Climate change will change rainfall patterns and many areas will experience a decrease in agricultural productivity. Combined with aquifer depletion, conventional agriculture will take a huge hit.

This is a fixable problem. We can grow ten times as much food as standard agriculture in small, intensely cultivated plots, even indoors. We will have cheap energy. The remaining oil can be used for fertilizer until we have better solutions.

The next problem is water. Large parts of the world will not have enough fresh water. Water reclamation, desalinization, and other technologies around water are key here.

Geopolitically, there will be water wars. Watch nations where major rivers cross borders, and the up-river nations will want to take “more.” Canada, which has most of the world’s lakes, is in great danger from America, who will want that water in amounts and at prices for which we should not settle. Meanwhile, the US may drain the Great Lakes faster than they are replenished.

The mass migrations of this period will make the current “immigration crisis” look tame. It will be worse even than it is for the countries taking the biggest groups now (none of which are European).

Sea stocks are collapsed already, and will collapse past commercial fishing viability. Essentially, all the fish you eat will be “farmed.” Ocean acidification has killed the Great Barrier Reef, but the greater risk is that the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon may effectively end.

Combined with our continued deforestation, the lack of carbon fixing capacity, along with these various vicious cycles, could lead to a runaway climate change worse than virtually all the models I’ve seen are predicting.

If we had sense, we would be transitioning from conventional to intensive agriculture NOW (well, ok, 15 years ago minimum). We have spare workers–we do not have a spare Amazon. If we had sense, we would pay Brazilians and other mass deforestors more to stop what they’re doing than they get from continuing. We must mass-reforest, and re-wild land, and do so NOW.

This is also to avoid collapse of the biosphere, an event which is within the realm of possibility. If such a collapse occurs, humanity will go with it.

Our continuing reliance on very non-competitive markets to create what we need in time may wind up dooming our race. Markets are great and useful in this situation, but market support (such as was used for decades to create the computer industry) can jumpstart industries, cutting years to decades off the time it takes for prices and costs to drop sufficiently for mass adoption.

However, in general, the way we do Capitalism is going to have to change. Capitalism may need to be replaced with something better, but even if it continues the vast waste must end. The doctrine of planned obsolesence, for example, must go.

A world where we aren’t constantly producing crap we either never needed in the first place or wouldn’t need if we allowed engineers to design products to last will be a much nicer place to live, anyway. Yes, there’s a lot of work to be done to mitigate the coming disasters, but there is so much work going on which shouldn’t be done at all that we would most likely wind up working less and living better.

Those who survive, anyway.

The Age of Oil is coming to end. Did it last 20 years too long? Is the Age of Humanity also to end?

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Page 42 of 91

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén