"If we run into a temporary shortage, we'll use something else." This is not about a temporary shortage. It's about creating a disturbance and imbalance so great that it can not be remedied. This is within the realm of possibility, and if some reasonable efforts aren't made to face the situation, rather than going in the opposite direction as we now are, it is inevitable. Jeremy Seabrook says, "The zealots of the market economy believe that the rich will be able to buy themselves a safe passage out of the poisoned earth." They can surround themselves with gated communities, but that will not clean the air over their heads. And, "The most powerful agents of social control...whereby social order is maintained, what makes these divided and strife-prone and unfair societies cohere is the overwhelming, pervasive, sweet and delusive power of fantasy, which is a kind of ideological emanation of the market economy." And, "Whole industries are devoted to persuading us that we need never confront our limitations." So much for reality -- whatever that is. It's one thing to make an argument. It's another thing to know. The best I can do is try to head in the right direction, because the principal thing I learn is how little I know. EE Schumacher says: "The judgement of economics, in other words, is an extremely fragmentary judgment; out of the large number of aspects which in real life have to be seen and judged together before a decision can be taken, economics supplies only one -- whether a thing yields a money profit ** to those who undertake it ** or not."
