Sweet were the times when hyperinflation struck only one country at a time.
Germany, Argentina, Hungary, Zimbabwe, and about 20 more in the course of
the last century. Politicians in the rest of the world would then smirk and
their electorates could feel a glow of Schadenfreude. But that was in the
days when the economic map of the world was like a schoolroom atlas in
which nation-states (and other wannabes) had clear borders, filled in
prettily with one of the four colours that mathematicians tell us is all
that is necessary.
Today it's quite impossible to describe the real world in this way. It's
much more like a Jackson Pollock painting or, for the psychologically
inclined, a Rorschach test, or -- to give mathematicians another
opportunity to contribute -- Chaos Theory. In the real world, full-blown
nation-states, as we understand the term, don't exist any longer in a
strictly economic sense because they are all bankrupt. Moreover, if we are
really really realistic, few of them have any chance of paying off their
government debts without going into hyperinflation (or total collapse, one
can only imagine).
The real economic world is full of all sorts of shapes -- octopuses
(multinational corporations with tentacles everywhere), cobwebs (internet
trading), dumb-bells (pairs of countries with preferential trade
agreements), polygons (free-trade areas -- though only internally, of
course), blobs (about 30-40 super-metropolitan sea ports where the bulk of
the action takes place), star-shapes (royal-family governments such as
North Korea, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates), sprinkles (exceedingly rich
individuals who don't belong to any country in particular). . . . Can't
think of any more for the time being.
The topographical metaphor runs out without mentioning three large pools of
economic actors belonging to the past (the present starving population
overhang of former manual agricultural workers now in permanent refugee
camps or, if lucky, crowding into favela areas of the super-metropolises).
the present (the accumulating numbers of the young in Western countries not
ever being needed because of automation) and the future (the large and
growing numbers of research scientists from whom new economically-viable
ideas may spring).
In truth, the industrial-consumer era is now coming to an end -- even
though many countries are still catching up. Apart from embellishments such
as the iPod or the hybrid car, there are no new consumer products. (If
there were, then America and Western Europe, instead of being in debt,
would be busily making them and selling them to the rest of the world -- as
they used to in the 20th century.) Energy, the very basis of everything we
do, is becoming increasingly expensive. Fresh water, the essential for all
food production, is now limited -- both as caught from the air and mined
from underground.
If we think, for just a moment, how different the world is now from what it
was only 200 years ago -- an agricultural era in which our ancestors'
workplaces and habitations were amazingly different from those of today --
then is it too much to imagine that yet another era -- and different again
-- might dawn? You would have been considered a madman if you'd tried to
describe the world of today to only your own great-great-great-grandfather,
never mind Moses or Aristotle. Well, as someone who keeps a close watch on
the amazing discoveries now emerging from biological research labs with all
sorts of implications for energy, material goods production, and social
order then I'm a madman. A new era may take a century or so while all the
economic dross (and excess population) is shaken out of the present system
and, unfortunately, it's tough luck on our immediate descendants --
including my own grand-daughters -- but I think that a new viable shape
will slowly emerge from the present Rorschach mess.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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