Yves Bajard wrote:
>
> My comment: We know that at current rate and in current
> system with current
> players playing by current "rules", this is it. Then, what?
> What do you
> propose to do? How? when? where? with whom? with what
> means? how directly?
> Where do you start?
>
Yves, any scheme you come up with has got to address the fundamental
problem or else it's just utopian, and therefore, part of the problem.
Also, not that the system is not self-regulating any more. It's
completely out of control. Take just the example of oil. When prices
balloon, there is always a recession + moves towards substitution.
This happened in the mid-1980s when world oil production fell by 10%,
prices fell, and Opec output fell by *over 40%*. This was a direct
result of the Iran-Iraq War and the price hike of 1979-80. The death
of Opec was hailed. Oil prices collapsed again after the Asian
Meltdown of 1997-98. The oil price may slump again next year. Each
time the death of Opec is announced; each time the underlying secular
trend reasserts itself with even more commanding force. US production
declines faster. Western dependency on Opec only increases. Each
boom-bust cycle pushes the whole system towards a stepchange. It is
inevitable; nothing can stop it. The stepchange will happen when oil
production falls 10 % but then doesn't recover, just doesn't stop
falling, and doesn't recover even when prices hike to $70/bbl or
$100/bbl or $1000/bbl. That moment is coming and when it does all the
talk about the 'weightless economy' will die overnight. Then we shall
discover that the 'weightless economy' was just a way of closing down
previously self-sufficient subsystems: families, communities,
extra-market forms of social solidarity. All the things which were
commoditised and turned into 'serve inductries' so that big capital
could proclaim that 'industry' no longer matters and is less than 20%
of GNP, as if people don't eat as much, or live in houses, or mover
around as much any more. We shall have forgotten the histories of all
the everyday products we need just to survive, as Wendell Berry says.
We shall have forgotten *how* to survive except as small cogs in the
big machine. All those service industries, the malls, the
entertainment 'industry', will disappear and leave nothing behind
except tens of millions of helpless, unemployed individuals. Their
skills will be useless and will have to be unlearnt.
The self-regulating market will not have found substitutes for fossil
hydrocarbon and the form that self-regulation will take will be
economic and social collapse. The same thing applies to ecosystems.
They absorb huge punishment without showing much sign of stress; then
one day they collapse, there are dieoffs, and nothing can put them
back together again. Lost biodiversity is lost forever. Same thing
with climate change. It is like holding a brick away from your face
with an elastic band. For a long time nothing happens. The oceans
absorb massive amounts of carbon. They become dilute carbonic acid;
the coral reefs die but other changes are slow; water that is
upwelling today has been in the deep ocean for many decades, and so
has been kept cool. But at some point, this water can be expected to
get warmer, diminishing the chilling effect. The deep ocean
circulation which holds the climate together can stall, and when
climate stepchange does come it can be practically overnight. Nothing
can stop it. The global warming denialists, the speculators about
sunspots and increased insolation, will fall silent overnight, but it
will be too late.
Mark
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