What a discouraging way to start the day. I fear you are right, though. I
wonder if there is a Nobel Non-Peace prize. I would give it to Mr. Clinton
and the other "heads of state" from NATO.
The world seems to have missed a wonderful opportunity to have a general
disarmament. I mean a structural disarmament, one that could have been put
in place over a long time span.
arthur cordell
----------
From: Ed Weick
To: List Futurework
Subject: Black holes
Date: Monday, May 03, 1999 10:40AM
Anyone who has read Foot's and Stoffman's "Boom Bust & Echo" or given the
matter any thought at all knows that a disproportionately large part of the
population, the "baby boomers", is rapidly moving from the productive to the
consumptive sector. Whereas, until now, the large number of boomers have
created much of the income needed to support the relatively small numbers of
retired, the boomers, as the retired, will soon depend on the support of the
relatively small number of workers who follow in their wake.
Another book has recently been written on this issue: "Gray Dawn: How the
Coming Age Wave will Transform America and the World" by Peter G. Peterson.
In reviewing this book for the New York Review, economist Robert M. Solow
finds much of it alarming and at times foolish. Nevertheless, in recognizing
the legitimacy of the problem, Solow himself falls back on solutions which
have taken on some of the character of the obvious. Indeed, if there are
fewer workers, the productivity of those who work will have to rise if the
current standard of living and care is to be maintained. How might
productivity be raised? Why, by moving savings out of unproductive
government deficits and into productive private investment - etc.
All of this is well and good, if it can be made to happen. But there is one
set of factors which neither Solow nor the baby-boomster authors have taken
into account -- the competing alternative uses to which the income produced
by the smaller, more productive labour force will have to be put. Recent
events have suggested that one such use -- the production and use of
military hardware -- will outweigh all other potential uses. As an example,
today's Ottawa Citizen carried a front page story on how outmoded and
depleted Canada's military hardware has become.
We expected a peace divided at the end of the Cold War. It has never quite
arrived. In the words of the Bonn International Center for Conversion, "When
disarmament got seriously under way after the end of the Cold War there was
much hope for a 'peace dividend' of savings from military expenditures that
could be used for other purposes. Since then, none of the competing claims
seem to have been fulfilled and there is a general feeling that there was no
'peace dividend.'" Why? Perhaps because there really wasn't much
disarmament.
But I would speculate that there is also another reason. Because military
preparedness required such large resources during the Cold War, ever so many
other things were left undone. Enormous social holes arose in the form of
decaying cities, poor health, bad schools, environmental degradation, and
growing alienation. These have come to rest as poor housing and homeless
people, growing unemployment, overtaxed health systems, under-educated
children, increasing rates of environmentally related diseases, higher crime
rates (despite official statistics) and dangerous slums. These problems have
become so endemic and complex as to be virtually unfixable. Money that has
not gone into armaments since the end of the Cold War may have quickly
fallen into a series of social black holes.
Now we seem to be coming around full circle. We are resuming the Cold War.
The war against Serbia is giving extreme elements in Russia all of the
evidence they need that the west can not be trusted. For the time being,
Russia will remain friendly to the west because it continues to need IMF
money. But, inevitably, it will rearm and it will prove hostile. China
remains a question mark, but it is certain that it too is gathering evidence
on the reliance it can place on the west. If Russia rearms and China remains
a huge question mark, the only option left to the west is to continue to arm
and remain the biggest bully on the block.
So where does this leave our smaller, if more productive, labour force in
its efforts to provide a decent standard of living to the growing numbers of
grays and to meet the many other demands of society? When the Cold War
resumes full scale, the result will again be an enormous diversion of
resources that might otherwise be used for social good. During the height of
the Cold War, the United States spent some 40% to 60% of its federal budget
on defense. In recent years this has come down to some 20% or less.
Extrapolating current events, we can, with some confidence, expect it to
rise again. Russia is a much poorer country that the US. To again achieve
full Cold War status, it would have to spend a much higher proportion of its
GNP on armaments. But in both Russia and the west, the next round of Cold
War spending will create even larger social black holes than the previous
one. Perhaps, ultimately, the winner will be the country least laid waste by
social rot.
Ed Weick
