Local, state and national governments should respect and protect our human rights. According to the Declaration of Independence, "... to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men ..."
Human rights are inseparable from democracy. That is, only a democratic government thrives with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the like. Only a democratic government will encourage and support the individual's exercise of those rights. All men and women are equal only in a society that is democratic from top to bottom.
The preamble to the Constitution says, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That's also a pretty clear definition of the purposes of government.
As I read it, the Blessings of Liberty referred to in the Preamble are about the same as inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The term that covers both today is human rights.
Speaking of the general welfare: In part this means providing essential services: police, fire, courts, roads, public schools, social security, access to health care, protection of the commons from pollution and misuse, and so on. What services are legitimately on this list, in a democratic society, must be determined democratically. So far, all the above mentioned services are on our society's list.
At least since James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid," Democratic and Republican politicians have acted as though guaranteeing growth in the private economy is a principal purpose of government. Sometimes they act as though it is the main function of government. How strange that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution forgot to mention it.
Economic growth is not the same thing as the general welfare, and it is certainly not the same as human rights. Too often, advocates of growth are willing and eager to trample human rights if exercise of those rights gets in their way.
All the essential functions of government need to carry on whether the private economy is expanding or contracting. It's certainly easier to provide for the general welfare if the private economy is prospering. Facilitating prosperity is generally a good thing, but ensuring growth for the private economy is not the primary function of government.
Our history includes long and short episodes of panic, crisis, depression and recession. During these periods, we the people need services like public schools, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. During those times, we may well need them more than during periods of prosperity.
That brings us to today (summer 2012), with its issues of jobless "recovery" (AKA supposed "job creators" who have been unable to create jobs over decades of tax breaks), declining real wages, imminent financial defaults throughout the Eurozone and the threat of austerity programs everywhere. There are issues of environmental degradation, both acute and long-term. There are also long-term issues of resource depletion. Together these make it clear we cannot forever use more and more resources, so we cannot always have a growing economy.
It's far from clear where the natural limits to a growing economy are. Unfortunately, we are finding out about some of those limits by overshooting them, with results similar to a car running over a cliff.
Chernobyl and Fukushima are examples of one type of overshoot. There are many others: the Dead Zone that was the worst feature of the Gulf of Mexico until BP's Macondo oil platform disaster; droughts and fires that can't be denied although their connection to global warming can be denied; and a depressingly long list of smaller and larger disasters.
From the peculiar viewpoint of economists, these disasters can be seen as adding to GDP. For the real economy, they are a dead loss. Corporations may shed workers to improve their profits and their stock prices, while in the real economy, workplaces are closed and jobs disappear. Keep doing this for decades, as the United States has done, and we'll get an economic crisis - which we have had since at least 2008.
Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. Today's Greater Depression will not be fixed by the same policies that fixed the first Great Depression.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
There are certainly similarities to the two eras, but there are huge differences as well. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of a Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades. Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, the recovery has not brought back prosperity. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis that promises a continued recession.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and an equally frantic search for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both flooding and drought, with more of each to come. Many ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth has already overshot natural limits.
The short story is, resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy. The industrial economy which always wants more is too stupid to work with declining resources. We can expect a declining economy for the foreseeable future.
What we do not want is a government that devalues human rights and disregards democracy in a series of desperate and possibly futile attempts to revive failed and failing economic institutions. Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have now. It is exactly what we are going to get, regardless of whether Obama or Romney is our next president, unless a strong mass movement of opposition can develop.
How can we resist disregard for our rights and dismantling of democracy? Any ideas, Occupiers? Comments are invited.
Art Myatt
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
The Future for Progressives
yes! magazine published an article by James Gustave Speth entitled "Building the New Economy: Ten Steps We Can Take Now." (No, that's not a typo. The magazine title comes in all lower-case, so in the interests of accuracy, it appears here in lower case.) You can read the article at http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/building-the-new-economy-ten-steps-we-can-take-now
With Speth's step 1, I have no argument. Our current political economy is indeed failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. Speth's step 2 (progressive fusion) does not follow from step 1. There's an assumption that a set of progressive policies would correct the failure. If these policies would correct the failure, then progressive fusion makes a great deal of sense. If they would not, then progressive fusion is irrelevant, and so are steps 3-10.
What is lacking between step 1 and step 2 is an analysis of why the system is failing. Step 1 says only that the system of political economy needs to change. If we are all "progressives," then saying it needs to change in the direction of becoming more progressive is an idea we might like to believe. That does not make it right, or even close to right.
Let's step back and be explicit about what it means to be a progressive. The movement originated about a century ago. The Center for American Progress (CAP) says it "is known primarily for two major developments in American politics:
"One, political reforms crafted to break up the power of privileged interests, such as expanded suffrage, direct primaries, direct election of senators, and the initiative and referendum process
"Two, economic reforms structured to counterbalance the excessive power of business and to fight inequality measures such as the graduated income and inheritance taxes, the right to organize and other labor protections, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age and disability provisions, food and drug safety laws, and conservation measures"
[end quote from CAP]
These reforms were largely implemented by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In combination with the outcome of WW II, they were successful in ending the Great Depression and initiating a period of prosperity that lasted for a number of decades.
One could argue that the oil shocks of the 1970s marked the beginnings of the failure of progressive policies. We might believe the financial crisis that interrupted the 2008 Presidential campaigns was the decisive turning point. We might look at the "free trade" mania of the 1990 that resulted in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and other implementation of "globalization" as critical mistakes.
Regardless of when we identify the beginnings of American economic and political decline, the first impulse of today's progressives is to think, "This is just like the Great Depression. We should fix it the same way we fixed the Great Depression."
That's just wrong. It's a natural thought, but it is wrong. Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. This is the Greater Depression. This will last longer and be more severe than the last Great Depression, and it cannot be solved in the same way.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
The similarities are overwhelmed by huge differences. In the 1930s, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of the Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades.
Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, prosperity has not returned. Median real wages have continued declining. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis. European countries are the first to admit contracting economies, but they won't be the last.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Even if natural resources were not themselves depleted, this means that we now would have 1/3 of the resources per capita. In fact, we have much less than 1/3 of the resources per capita.
Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both more flooding and more drought, with even more to come. Most ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth since the Great Depression has overshot natural limits.
The short story is, the resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment then was not threatened by the accumulation of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere driving both global warming and ocean acidification. It was not threatened by fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima and all the potential meltdowns we still might experience. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy.
Progressive solutions have been tried. They worked, to allow an expanding global economy to benefit both ordinary people as well as corporations. They won't work again, because the real economy is not capable of continued growth. For the foreseeable future, we are going to have a contracting global economy and, with the winding down of the American Empire, an American economy that contracts more rapidly than others.
It should be clear that corporations are now mostly opposed to the welfare of the general population. Wal-Mart has displaced local businesses (both retail and manufacturing) by promoting cheap labor in manufacturing overseas and less than living wages for the ordinary workers in its outlets. So many corporations have restored profits by laying off workers and closing plants that it is an accepted management strategy, and has been for decades in the former industrial heartland of America. It's commonplace to note that banks got bailed out while the rest of us did not, and the rest of us are supposed to pay for the bailout.
If we want to have a society that operates on principles of democracy, social justice and protecting the natural environment, we're going to have to figure out how we can do this in a contracting economy, and without making the false promise that our policies can restore the old kind of economic growth, or any economic growth at all.
We need to use democratic means to advance our values under conditions of economic contraction. To do that, we either have to break the corporate control of politics or hope for the self-destruction of that corporate control; or both. We need to overcome the military response to protest and dissent. We need to create an economy that works within boundaries set by the natural environment. That does not mean unlimited energy for everyone, or even comfort for everyone, but we need the large majority of the population to support long-term sustainability.
If and when we have worked all that out, I'm pretty sure we'll be so different from the progressives of 1890-1920 that we will no more be progressives than we will be abolitionists or suffragists or environmentalists. Whatever we will call ourselves, we will be living in a much warmer world with limited resources, diminished population and much less per capita energy consumption than we are now used to. I doubt we'll want to call it progress, though I hope it will be better than the numerous dystopias imagined in "Mad Max," "The Hunger Games" and so on.
Progressive fusion is a dead end. The progressive approach of the last century is no match for the issues of this century. We need realistic ways of responding to the issues of today. To repeat the main point: These issues will not be solved by a resumption of economic growth, because the global economy has already grown past its natural limits.
Art Myatt
With Speth's step 1, I have no argument. Our current political economy is indeed failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. Speth's step 2 (progressive fusion) does not follow from step 1. There's an assumption that a set of progressive policies would correct the failure. If these policies would correct the failure, then progressive fusion makes a great deal of sense. If they would not, then progressive fusion is irrelevant, and so are steps 3-10.
What is lacking between step 1 and step 2 is an analysis of why the system is failing. Step 1 says only that the system of political economy needs to change. If we are all "progressives," then saying it needs to change in the direction of becoming more progressive is an idea we might like to believe. That does not make it right, or even close to right.
Let's step back and be explicit about what it means to be a progressive. The movement originated about a century ago. The Center for American Progress (CAP) says it "is known primarily for two major developments in American politics:
"One, political reforms crafted to break up the power of privileged interests, such as expanded suffrage, direct primaries, direct election of senators, and the initiative and referendum process
"Two, economic reforms structured to counterbalance the excessive power of business and to fight inequality measures such as the graduated income and inheritance taxes, the right to organize and other labor protections, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, old age and disability provisions, food and drug safety laws, and conservation measures"
[end quote from CAP]
These reforms were largely implemented by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In combination with the outcome of WW II, they were successful in ending the Great Depression and initiating a period of prosperity that lasted for a number of decades.
One could argue that the oil shocks of the 1970s marked the beginnings of the failure of progressive policies. We might believe the financial crisis that interrupted the 2008 Presidential campaigns was the decisive turning point. We might look at the "free trade" mania of the 1990 that resulted in the North American Free Trade Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and other implementation of "globalization" as critical mistakes.
Regardless of when we identify the beginnings of American economic and political decline, the first impulse of today's progressives is to think, "This is just like the Great Depression. We should fix it the same way we fixed the Great Depression."
That's just wrong. It's a natural thought, but it is wrong. Today's economic crisis is not the same as the Great Depression of the 1930's. This is the Greater Depression. This will last longer and be more severe than the last Great Depression, and it cannot be solved in the same way.
There are similarities, to be sure. To start the Great Depression, a big financial bubble originating in the stock markets was popped. To start our 21st Century version, a big financial bubble originating in mortgage financing was popped. In both cases, the crisis was used as an excuse to extend corporate control of government and society by those parties - Democrats and Republicans in the United States today; Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany then - who were in favor of corporate control in any case.
The similarities are overwhelmed by huge differences. In the 1930s, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment, in spite of the Dust Bowl caused by a combination of unsustainable farming and drought, was not nearly as degraded as it is today.
Then, the crisis was primarily financial and political. Once the economy of the 1930s was sufficiently stimulated, prosperity returned and lasted for many decades.
Now, in spite of a huge stimulus program, prosperity has not returned. Median real wages have continued declining. The mortgage crisis, instead of being resolved by letting bankrupt institutions go bankrupt, has been turned into a sovereign debt crisis. European countries are the first to admit contracting economies, but they won't be the last.
In terms of resources, the world has changed a lot since 1930. Now, the world has roughly three times the population it did at the onset of the Great Depression. Even if natural resources were not themselves depleted, this means that we now would have 1/3 of the resources per capita. In fact, we have much less than 1/3 of the resources per capita.
Peak oil is driving a frantic search for alternative fuels and for oil in absurdly inaccessible and difficult regions of the earth. Global warming is bringing both more flooding and more drought, with even more to come. Most ocean fish stocks have already collapsed and the ocean is becoming more acidic, meaning recovery is at best unlikely. There are lots of ways in which economic growth since the Great Depression has overshot natural limits.
The short story is, the resources needed to grow the economy have largely been used up and are now in short supply. Then, resources needed to grow the economy - energy sources, iron and copper ores, food, farmland, and so on - were abundant and cheap. The environment then was not threatened by the accumulation of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere driving both global warming and ocean acidification. It was not threatened by fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima and all the potential meltdowns we still might experience. If and when the financial part of today's economic failures is fixed, we still cannot expect a peacefully growing economy.
Progressive solutions have been tried. They worked, to allow an expanding global economy to benefit both ordinary people as well as corporations. They won't work again, because the real economy is not capable of continued growth. For the foreseeable future, we are going to have a contracting global economy and, with the winding down of the American Empire, an American economy that contracts more rapidly than others.
It should be clear that corporations are now mostly opposed to the welfare of the general population. Wal-Mart has displaced local businesses (both retail and manufacturing) by promoting cheap labor in manufacturing overseas and less than living wages for the ordinary workers in its outlets. So many corporations have restored profits by laying off workers and closing plants that it is an accepted management strategy, and has been for decades in the former industrial heartland of America. It's commonplace to note that banks got bailed out while the rest of us did not, and the rest of us are supposed to pay for the bailout.
If we want to have a society that operates on principles of democracy, social justice and protecting the natural environment, we're going to have to figure out how we can do this in a contracting economy, and without making the false promise that our policies can restore the old kind of economic growth, or any economic growth at all.
We need to use democratic means to advance our values under conditions of economic contraction. To do that, we either have to break the corporate control of politics or hope for the self-destruction of that corporate control; or both. We need to overcome the military response to protest and dissent. We need to create an economy that works within boundaries set by the natural environment. That does not mean unlimited energy for everyone, or even comfort for everyone, but we need the large majority of the population to support long-term sustainability.
If and when we have worked all that out, I'm pretty sure we'll be so different from the progressives of 1890-1920 that we will no more be progressives than we will be abolitionists or suffragists or environmentalists. Whatever we will call ourselves, we will be living in a much warmer world with limited resources, diminished population and much less per capita energy consumption than we are now used to. I doubt we'll want to call it progress, though I hope it will be better than the numerous dystopias imagined in "Mad Max," "The Hunger Games" and so on.
Progressive fusion is a dead end. The progressive approach of the last century is no match for the issues of this century. We need realistic ways of responding to the issues of today. To repeat the main point: These issues will not be solved by a resumption of economic growth, because the global economy has already grown past its natural limits.
Art Myatt
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Occupy the Midwest
August 23rd to 26th, 2012
The Occupy the Midwest Conference will be taking place in Detroit, Michigan, hosted by Occupy Detroit. Occupiers from around the Midwest will be meeting in Detroit for organizational meetings aimed at connecting Occupy movements for collaboration, networking, skill sharing, workshops, fellowship and entertainment. The majority of the gathering will be held in the 5900 Activist Center at 5900 Michigan Ave, with camping available on its adjacent open field on the lot next door. If you are interested in volunteering or hosting a workshop, call Hans at 313-333-7104 or visit www.occupythemidwest.org to submit a workshop/volunteer form.
The Occupy the Midwest Conference will be taking place in Detroit, Michigan, hosted by Occupy Detroit. Occupiers from around the Midwest will be meeting in Detroit for organizational meetings aimed at connecting Occupy movements for collaboration, networking, skill sharing, workshops, fellowship and entertainment. The majority of the gathering will be held in the 5900 Activist Center at 5900 Michigan Ave, with camping available on its adjacent open field on the lot next door. If you are interested in volunteering or hosting a workshop, call Hans at 313-333-7104 or visit www.occupythemidwest.org to submit a workshop/volunteer form.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
LET'S BAN FRACKING IN MICHIGAN!
I hope everyone in Occupy Royal Oak will at least sign the petition to ban fracking in Michigan. Better yet, circulate the petition and get dozens or hundreds of signatures. The intent of this petition is to make banning fracking a ballot issue for the November general election. You can find details at http://www.letsbanfracking.org/. You can also find a coordinator for other regions of the state on the "volunteer" page of the website.
I believe getting the 300,000+ signatures required to put it on the ballot by July 9 is a long shot, but I think the effort will be worthwhile even if the numbers fall short. Gathering signatures is at a minimum a great way to talk to people about the issue and possibly get them more involved. And who knows - we may manage to put the issue on the ballot. If we do, I believe we can ban fracking here, just like they did in Vermont.
I'm a local coordinator for the petition drive. If you are willing to circulate the petition and live anywhere near Royal Oak, I'll be happy to get petitions to you. E-mail me (almyatt@yahoo.com), or call my cell (248-224-0623) or land line (248-548-6175). If you live closer to another coordinator, contact them.
Thanks,
Art Myatt
I believe getting the 300,000+ signatures required to put it on the ballot by July 9 is a long shot, but I think the effort will be worthwhile even if the numbers fall short. Gathering signatures is at a minimum a great way to talk to people about the issue and possibly get them more involved. And who knows - we may manage to put the issue on the ballot. If we do, I believe we can ban fracking here, just like they did in Vermont.
I'm a local coordinator for the petition drive. If you are willing to circulate the petition and live anywhere near Royal Oak, I'll be happy to get petitions to you. E-mail me (almyatt@yahoo.com), or call my cell (248-224-0623) or land line (248-548-6175). If you live closer to another coordinator, contact them.
Thanks,
Art Myatt
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Take a Nap, or Have an Energy Bar
My apologies in advance for the length of this post. Articles that are short and to the point are preferable. Unfortunately, I'm just not a good enough writer to do this in a few hundred words. The subject is both complicated and important. I hope you'll find it worth reading through to the end.
Tom Weisskopf recently gave a presentation to Occupy Detroit on the subject of "THE SOURCES OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE." You can read the outline at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/tomweisskopf/files/detroit_talk.final.pdf. His comparison of today's Great Recession to the Great Depression of the 1930's is good, but he ignores the ways in which this economic crisis is fundamentally different. This is not the Great Depression 2.0.
There's nothing wrong with the policies that Weisskopf recommends. That is, they are not bad policies. However, while they brought prosperity after the Great Depression, they are not adequate for the purpose now. The resources to support another such conventional expansion of the economy no longer exist. Many of those resources have been burnt up, paved over, fished out, mined out, made extinct or turned into either literal desert or subdivisions, which some see as another type of desert.
In a very short term, these policies can produce growth and jobs. They will not again produce decades of prosperity. The foundations for that sort of prosperity are gone. Our industrial economy is dangerously dependent on sources of energy which are not reliable. Reviving or even simply continuing this energy-intensive economy increases problems of environmental degradation which are already making wilderness extinct and otherwise setting us up for crisis after crisis - floods, drought, famine and ultimately collapse. We will have to work out our own path through today's conditions, even if those conditions dictate abandoning the path of restoring economic growth.
The difference between then and now is in the environment in which the economy operates. At the time of the Great Depression, there were a little over 2 billion people on earth. The economy had plenty of room to grow in a conventional sense - simply, making and consuming more of everything. Today, there are a little over 7 billion people living on food from the same amount of arable land - or less once we subtract the acreage that has been paved over, flooded, or turned into desert.
Food that feeds the 7 billion now depends on fertilizers made from fossil fuel, processing and distribution powered by fossil fuel, and frequently irrigation driven by fossil fuel. The approximate result is that we burn 10 calories worth of fossil fuel to produce every calorie of food. That's wildly different from the food system in place during the Great Depression.
To see how different it is, look at these figures, taken from http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm:
1930
Total population: 122,775,046; farm population: 30,455,350; farmers 21% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,295,000; average acres: 157; irrigated acres: 14,633,252
Today, from the World Factbook:
Total population: 313,847,465 (July 2012 est.); labor force by occupation: farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7%;
and from the Department of Agriculture:
There are ~ 2.1 million farms in the U.S. In 1997, the largest 46,000 accounted for 50% of sales of agricultural products. In 1997 there were about 55 million irrigated crop acres in the U.S.
In 1972, "The Limits to Growth" (LTG) showed that depletion of resources would cause the global economy to grow more slowly, then to stop growing altogether, and thereafter to decline. Most conventional economists imagine that the ideas of LTG have been refuted. Forty years later, the real world economy is tracking fairly closely with the LTG "business as usual" scenario, and we are forty years closer to the predicted decline. Perhaps reality is refuting the conventional idea that economic growth is always possible.
With the advent of peak oil, reality certainly is refuting the cornucopians of conventional economics. While economists were arguing that peak oil could not possibly be true, global production of conventional oil peaked in 2006, and has been declining since.
Peak oil is not about running out of oil. It never was about that. Peak oil is not about whether expensive substitutes can be produced from bitumen (tar sands), biomass (mostly corn ethanol) or kerogen (oil shale). Of course, substitutes can be produced. But why would we need substitutes, except that conventional oil wells are depleting? Peak oil is about the peak production of conventional oil, and that peak happened in 2006 - which has a lot to do with the stubbornly high price for oil in the last decade.
Peak oil does not mean permanently rising oil prices, nor even permanently high oil prices. Prices are set by a dynamic between supply and demand. There is some price so high it will destroy the fossil fuel economy entirely. As that price is approached, instead of demand continuing regardless, some demand is destroyed, and the price of oil drops. In 2007 and 2008, neither the breaking bubble in real estate not the high price of oil was entirely responsible for the onset of the Great Recession. The oil and real estate markets are linked, and they worked together to cause the crisis.
There is also some price for oil so low that producers can't make money pumping oil out of the ground. That low price has not been reached yet, but with a further economic collapse of great severity, it could be.
Increasing depletion of resources - oil and many other resources as well - explains a declining global economy much better than purely economic observations such as increasing inequality and concentration of power. It is an explanation that conventional economists just do not see. If they could see it, then they could see a situation that can't be changed by adjusting taxes, interest rates and income distributions.
In short, conventional economists - Greenspan, Bernanke and the like in America and Europe - led us straight into today's economic crisis, denying every step of the way that such a crisis was to be expected. They, along with conventional politicians who rely on them for advice, have evidenced no ability to lead us out of the crisis. Neither major political party has a coherent reason for why the crisis occurred, or why it has not been fixed. They do have a mass of contradictory ideas, amounting to shifting the blame away from themselves even when they were the people in charge at the time.
Our ideas on the subject have to be better than those of conventional economists and partisan politicians, or we also will fail to understand the crisis. We will fail to see how the policies that led to it cannot fix it.
Herman Daily has published an excellent introduction to fundamental reasons for the failure of economists and political leaders. In http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-05-07/what-limiting-factor, Daly begins:
[end excerpt from 'What is the limiting factor?']
Now, it may be that Daly's model of a "steady-state economy" is no more realistic than the conventional economists' model of a perfect "free-market economy." The economy of the real world is both dynamic and imperfect, neither steady nor free. It is subject to history, politics and the inadequate knowledge of managers. None the less, Daly's identification of the basic flaws in how conventional economists think the world should work is clear and accurate. It is the sort of thing we all should know, in order to inoculate ourselves against catching these seriously mistaken ideas, especially during another campaign season.
Daly's article is worth reading seriously, and the subject is one we all should discuss and study. Our political and economic leadership, Democratic and Republican, has been leading us from one failure to another. We need to replace them with people who have a better comprehension of the world and a better ability to provide for the general welfare in order to get a different result.
In today's conditions, a goal of reviving the economy which has already done so much to deplete the earth's resources and to degrade the environment makes no sense. We need instead a goal of creating a sustainable economy.
In the course of creating a sustainable economy, the fossil fuel economy will have to shrink - and fossil fuels supply about 85% of the energy our industrial economy produces and consumes. It follows that 85% of our economy will have to shrink instead of grow.
The financing system of creating debt owned by banks both central and private will have to give way to a more cooperative way of allocating resources both natural and human. The wars for oil and empire which waste so much of our capital and which lay waste to so much of the earth will need to be abandoned in favor of simple defense. Attacking preemptively any person or institution suspected of planning resistance needs to be abandoned on both moral and practical grounds.
Bringing back prosperity through economic growth is not a long-term possibility. It can appear to work in the short term, but that's all it can do. Stimulating economic growth, when economic growth has already done so much to destroy the environment, is the wrong thing to do. It's like prescribing a nap or an energy bar for a kid who is tired, when he needs to be diagnosed with leukemia. He may feel better in an hour or two, but the real problem will not be fixed.
Obama wants us to have an energy bar. Romney would prefer if we just took a nap. Both are treating us like children, and failing to understand or address the real issues. The two-party system does not provide political leadership. It provides an imitation of democracy that is supposed to make us unable to see the systematic failure of our elected leaders to provide for the general welfare.
Conserving resources and learning how to lead simpler and more local lives is possible. Reworking our sprawling cities into walkable neighborhoods where cars are not needed is possible. Reclaiming agricultural land nearly wrecked by continuous applications of fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide is possible. Building a society that values labor and provides work for all is possible.
We can't even begin to work on these possibilities while our efforts are directed toward reviving the old energy-intensive economy. Depletion of resources makes that a path straight toward a cliff. We have to stop heading for the cliff before we can hope to find a way around it.
Art Myatt
Tom Weisskopf recently gave a presentation to Occupy Detroit on the subject of "THE SOURCES OF THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE." You can read the outline at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/tomweisskopf/files/detroit_talk.final.pdf. His comparison of today's Great Recession to the Great Depression of the 1930's is good, but he ignores the ways in which this economic crisis is fundamentally different. This is not the Great Depression 2.0.
There's nothing wrong with the policies that Weisskopf recommends. That is, they are not bad policies. However, while they brought prosperity after the Great Depression, they are not adequate for the purpose now. The resources to support another such conventional expansion of the economy no longer exist. Many of those resources have been burnt up, paved over, fished out, mined out, made extinct or turned into either literal desert or subdivisions, which some see as another type of desert.
In a very short term, these policies can produce growth and jobs. They will not again produce decades of prosperity. The foundations for that sort of prosperity are gone. Our industrial economy is dangerously dependent on sources of energy which are not reliable. Reviving or even simply continuing this energy-intensive economy increases problems of environmental degradation which are already making wilderness extinct and otherwise setting us up for crisis after crisis - floods, drought, famine and ultimately collapse. We will have to work out our own path through today's conditions, even if those conditions dictate abandoning the path of restoring economic growth.
The difference between then and now is in the environment in which the economy operates. At the time of the Great Depression, there were a little over 2 billion people on earth. The economy had plenty of room to grow in a conventional sense - simply, making and consuming more of everything. Today, there are a little over 7 billion people living on food from the same amount of arable land - or less once we subtract the acreage that has been paved over, flooded, or turned into desert.
Food that feeds the 7 billion now depends on fertilizers made from fossil fuel, processing and distribution powered by fossil fuel, and frequently irrigation driven by fossil fuel. The approximate result is that we burn 10 calories worth of fossil fuel to produce every calorie of food. That's wildly different from the food system in place during the Great Depression.
To see how different it is, look at these figures, taken from http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm:
1930
Total population: 122,775,046; farm population: 30,455,350; farmers 21% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,295,000; average acres: 157; irrigated acres: 14,633,252
Today, from the World Factbook:
Total population: 313,847,465 (July 2012 est.); labor force by occupation: farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7%;
and from the Department of Agriculture:
There are ~ 2.1 million farms in the U.S. In 1997, the largest 46,000 accounted for 50% of sales of agricultural products. In 1997 there were about 55 million irrigated crop acres in the U.S.
In 1972, "The Limits to Growth" (LTG) showed that depletion of resources would cause the global economy to grow more slowly, then to stop growing altogether, and thereafter to decline. Most conventional economists imagine that the ideas of LTG have been refuted. Forty years later, the real world economy is tracking fairly closely with the LTG "business as usual" scenario, and we are forty years closer to the predicted decline. Perhaps reality is refuting the conventional idea that economic growth is always possible.
With the advent of peak oil, reality certainly is refuting the cornucopians of conventional economics. While economists were arguing that peak oil could not possibly be true, global production of conventional oil peaked in 2006, and has been declining since.
Peak oil is not about running out of oil. It never was about that. Peak oil is not about whether expensive substitutes can be produced from bitumen (tar sands), biomass (mostly corn ethanol) or kerogen (oil shale). Of course, substitutes can be produced. But why would we need substitutes, except that conventional oil wells are depleting? Peak oil is about the peak production of conventional oil, and that peak happened in 2006 - which has a lot to do with the stubbornly high price for oil in the last decade.
Peak oil does not mean permanently rising oil prices, nor even permanently high oil prices. Prices are set by a dynamic between supply and demand. There is some price so high it will destroy the fossil fuel economy entirely. As that price is approached, instead of demand continuing regardless, some demand is destroyed, and the price of oil drops. In 2007 and 2008, neither the breaking bubble in real estate not the high price of oil was entirely responsible for the onset of the Great Recession. The oil and real estate markets are linked, and they worked together to cause the crisis.
There is also some price for oil so low that producers can't make money pumping oil out of the ground. That low price has not been reached yet, but with a further economic collapse of great severity, it could be.
Increasing depletion of resources - oil and many other resources as well - explains a declining global economy much better than purely economic observations such as increasing inequality and concentration of power. It is an explanation that conventional economists just do not see. If they could see it, then they could see a situation that can't be changed by adjusting taxes, interest rates and income distributions.
In short, conventional economists - Greenspan, Bernanke and the like in America and Europe - led us straight into today's economic crisis, denying every step of the way that such a crisis was to be expected. They, along with conventional politicians who rely on them for advice, have evidenced no ability to lead us out of the crisis. Neither major political party has a coherent reason for why the crisis occurred, or why it has not been fixed. They do have a mass of contradictory ideas, amounting to shifting the blame away from themselves even when they were the people in charge at the time.
Our ideas on the subject have to be better than those of conventional economists and partisan politicians, or we also will fail to understand the crisis. We will fail to see how the policies that led to it cannot fix it.
Herman Daily has published an excellent introduction to fundamental reasons for the failure of economists and political leaders. In http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-05-07/what-limiting-factor, Daly begins:
"In yesteryear’s empty world capital was the limiting factor in economic growth. But we now live in a full world.
Consider: What limits the annual fish catch — fishing boats (capital) or remaining fish in the sea (natural resources)? Clearly the latter. What limits barrels of crude oil extracted — drilling rigs and pumps (capital), or remaining accessible deposits of petroleum — or capacity of the atmosphere to absorb the CO2 from burning petroleum (both natural resources)? What limits production of cut timber — number of chain saws and lumber mills, or standing forests and their rate of growth? What limits irrigated agriculture — pumps and sprinklers, or aquifer recharge rates and river flow volumes? That should be enough to at least suggest that we live in a natural resource-constrained world, not a capital-constrained world."
[end excerpt from 'What is the limiting factor?']
Now, it may be that Daly's model of a "steady-state economy" is no more realistic than the conventional economists' model of a perfect "free-market economy." The economy of the real world is both dynamic and imperfect, neither steady nor free. It is subject to history, politics and the inadequate knowledge of managers. None the less, Daly's identification of the basic flaws in how conventional economists think the world should work is clear and accurate. It is the sort of thing we all should know, in order to inoculate ourselves against catching these seriously mistaken ideas, especially during another campaign season.
Daly's article is worth reading seriously, and the subject is one we all should discuss and study. Our political and economic leadership, Democratic and Republican, has been leading us from one failure to another. We need to replace them with people who have a better comprehension of the world and a better ability to provide for the general welfare in order to get a different result.
In today's conditions, a goal of reviving the economy which has already done so much to deplete the earth's resources and to degrade the environment makes no sense. We need instead a goal of creating a sustainable economy.
In the course of creating a sustainable economy, the fossil fuel economy will have to shrink - and fossil fuels supply about 85% of the energy our industrial economy produces and consumes. It follows that 85% of our economy will have to shrink instead of grow.
The financing system of creating debt owned by banks both central and private will have to give way to a more cooperative way of allocating resources both natural and human. The wars for oil and empire which waste so much of our capital and which lay waste to so much of the earth will need to be abandoned in favor of simple defense. Attacking preemptively any person or institution suspected of planning resistance needs to be abandoned on both moral and practical grounds.
Bringing back prosperity through economic growth is not a long-term possibility. It can appear to work in the short term, but that's all it can do. Stimulating economic growth, when economic growth has already done so much to destroy the environment, is the wrong thing to do. It's like prescribing a nap or an energy bar for a kid who is tired, when he needs to be diagnosed with leukemia. He may feel better in an hour or two, but the real problem will not be fixed.
Obama wants us to have an energy bar. Romney would prefer if we just took a nap. Both are treating us like children, and failing to understand or address the real issues. The two-party system does not provide political leadership. It provides an imitation of democracy that is supposed to make us unable to see the systematic failure of our elected leaders to provide for the general welfare.
Conserving resources and learning how to lead simpler and more local lives is possible. Reworking our sprawling cities into walkable neighborhoods where cars are not needed is possible. Reclaiming agricultural land nearly wrecked by continuous applications of fertilizer, insecticide and herbicide is possible. Building a society that values labor and provides work for all is possible.
We can't even begin to work on these possibilities while our efforts are directed toward reviving the old energy-intensive economy. Depletion of resources makes that a path straight toward a cliff. We have to stop heading for the cliff before we can hope to find a way around it.
Art Myatt
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
THE LOOMING OLIGARCHY
It’s not a new idea. It actually goes back to our “democratic” beginnings: When the founding fathers created their basic documents; they didn’t consider indentures, women, Native Americans or persons who didn’t own property as worthy of having a voice in the important decisions which affected their lives. Consequently it took decisions by future legislatures and courts to allow women, former slaves and other disenfranchised people to vote and to get children out of sweat shops.
In the early part of the twentieth century national (and local) governments passed laws and regulations which allowed the industrial and financial barons to control all the important means of production, transportation and distribution. When that didn’t satisfy their greed, the economic rulers began to manipulate the financial markets and commodity exchanges. Does “Black Friday” ring a bell?
When we finally began to recover from that, we ran into World War II. After the pain and sacrifice, for those who didn’t get rich from the “war effort”, pent-up demand, the GI Bill and a growing population created a prosperous middle class. Of course the 1% took credit for creating all these jobs.
The subsequent military conflicts (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq) masked the growing control of our courts and legislatures by the military-industrial complex. But their excesses paled alongside those of the financial wizards (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), who were creating instruments so toxic; they bought insurance because they knew these instruments were bound to fail. Oh yeah, they sort of forgot to mention that to their buyers. And that doesn’t count the many Ponzi schemes that the “regulators” were eventually forced to identify as such.
This weakening of the regulatory oversight began during the Clinton watch. But the two terms of George W. Bush accelerated its demise, in all areas: Financial, environmental and the ability of profit-making institutions to influence our elected officials. This influence extends all levels from local governments to the Supreme Court. You have heard of “Citizens United”. I mean does anyone actually believe that a group of average citizens got together and petitioned the highest court in the land to allow the Koch brothers (and their ilk) to control our governing bodies. In case you don’t understand it, that’s what the decision does. It’s the ultimate expression of the “Golden Rule”: Whoever has the gold, rules.
Collective bargaining? They’ve started at the local level with municipal employees, through legislation restricting their rights, or emergency manager laws that negate agreements. And don’t be surprised when A.L.E.C. gets laws enacted which affect all collective bargaining.
And the “Tea Party” lemmings are complicit. They actually believe that the 1% is going to allow them to partake in their spoils. You may be allowed to mow their lawns, cook their food, or if you’re tough enough, guard their gated communities.
Make no mistake, that’s where it’s headed. When the 1% controls 100% of this country’s wealth, they’ll hire Black water style protection and fly from point to point, while the rest of us drive on crumbling roads and bridges, drink polluted water and eat tainted food (when we can find any).
Sound far-fetched and apocalyptic?
The presumptive GOP presidential candidate is a charter-member of that elite 1%, who would form the new oligarchy. Add a House and Supreme Court controlled by the religious right, a filibuster-paralyzed senate and you have a perfect storm.
Remember, all it takes for tyrants to take over, is for good men to do nothing.
Carmen Sarotte
In the early part of the twentieth century national (and local) governments passed laws and regulations which allowed the industrial and financial barons to control all the important means of production, transportation and distribution. When that didn’t satisfy their greed, the economic rulers began to manipulate the financial markets and commodity exchanges. Does “Black Friday” ring a bell?
When we finally began to recover from that, we ran into World War II. After the pain and sacrifice, for those who didn’t get rich from the “war effort”, pent-up demand, the GI Bill and a growing population created a prosperous middle class. Of course the 1% took credit for creating all these jobs.
The subsequent military conflicts (Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq) masked the growing control of our courts and legislatures by the military-industrial complex. But their excesses paled alongside those of the financial wizards (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain), who were creating instruments so toxic; they bought insurance because they knew these instruments were bound to fail. Oh yeah, they sort of forgot to mention that to their buyers. And that doesn’t count the many Ponzi schemes that the “regulators” were eventually forced to identify as such.
This weakening of the regulatory oversight began during the Clinton watch. But the two terms of George W. Bush accelerated its demise, in all areas: Financial, environmental and the ability of profit-making institutions to influence our elected officials. This influence extends all levels from local governments to the Supreme Court. You have heard of “Citizens United”. I mean does anyone actually believe that a group of average citizens got together and petitioned the highest court in the land to allow the Koch brothers (and their ilk) to control our governing bodies. In case you don’t understand it, that’s what the decision does. It’s the ultimate expression of the “Golden Rule”: Whoever has the gold, rules.
Collective bargaining? They’ve started at the local level with municipal employees, through legislation restricting their rights, or emergency manager laws that negate agreements. And don’t be surprised when A.L.E.C. gets laws enacted which affect all collective bargaining.
And the “Tea Party” lemmings are complicit. They actually believe that the 1% is going to allow them to partake in their spoils. You may be allowed to mow their lawns, cook their food, or if you’re tough enough, guard their gated communities.
Make no mistake, that’s where it’s headed. When the 1% controls 100% of this country’s wealth, they’ll hire Black water style protection and fly from point to point, while the rest of us drive on crumbling roads and bridges, drink polluted water and eat tainted food (when we can find any).
Sound far-fetched and apocalyptic?
The presumptive GOP presidential candidate is a charter-member of that elite 1%, who would form the new oligarchy. Add a House and Supreme Court controlled by the religious right, a filibuster-paralyzed senate and you have a perfect storm.
Remember, all it takes for tyrants to take over, is for good men to do nothing.
Carmen Sarotte
Sunday, May 6, 2012
May Day - International Workers Day 2012 at Detroit
To show support from Occupy Royal Oak, Greg, Susie, Pat, Denise, and Kimmie participated in May Day Event at Grand Circus Park, Detroit downtown, on May 1st, 2012. The actual march was not observed, however, a very festive and peaceful get-together (about 100-150 people) welcomed all of us. There were free food (donation based), live music, poem recitation, speeches, signing, etc. All was based on Free-Microphone based presentation, showing Occupy was all about inclusiveness. Hans was coordinating all sound department work. He was doing an excellent job.
In our background, of course, 10-15 the police officers (on foot or horse) were standing by for any action and watching over us. There was about 5 minute long shout back and forth between the police and part of us because the police did not want Occupy to set a tent on the lawn area in the park. Occupy did not put any tests up. We were also told that the police was planning to arrest people if the participants did not leave the site after the permitted time. We did not stay to the end of the event, but I did not hear any arrests were happening. This event was very peaceful, and after all, it was a celebration for all workers and 99%.
Greg presented his tent display idea to the group. He presented very well (proud moment!), and it was accepted as a great tool for those who lived in suburbs to show support to this important movement. We may not be creative like Greg, but we all can come up with new ideas, and I was sure that many people would have been inspired by him. Thank you so much, Greg!
One thing I would like to mention was a Native American Prayer. I believe his name was Yusif, who was a Palestinian refugee to come to US when he was young. He directed us Five Direction Native American Prayer to bless all of us. It was a spiritually purifying and uplifting moment for me.
The diversity is this country’s strength, and INCLUSIVENESS IS OCCUPY. We need to listen before argue, accept before reject, and feel the pain before close eyes. It may take time, but I believe in our good heart will find our way.
It was a cloudy day, May Day, but I see the faint ray of the light coming through when I left Grand Circus Park. It was a wonderful day.
Kimmie Shuck
In our background, of course, 10-15 the police officers (on foot or horse) were standing by for any action and watching over us. There was about 5 minute long shout back and forth between the police and part of us because the police did not want Occupy to set a tent on the lawn area in the park. Occupy did not put any tests up. We were also told that the police was planning to arrest people if the participants did not leave the site after the permitted time. We did not stay to the end of the event, but I did not hear any arrests were happening. This event was very peaceful, and after all, it was a celebration for all workers and 99%.
Greg presented his tent display idea to the group. He presented very well (proud moment!), and it was accepted as a great tool for those who lived in suburbs to show support to this important movement. We may not be creative like Greg, but we all can come up with new ideas, and I was sure that many people would have been inspired by him. Thank you so much, Greg!
One thing I would like to mention was a Native American Prayer. I believe his name was Yusif, who was a Palestinian refugee to come to US when he was young. He directed us Five Direction Native American Prayer to bless all of us. It was a spiritually purifying and uplifting moment for me.
The diversity is this country’s strength, and INCLUSIVENESS IS OCCUPY. We need to listen before argue, accept before reject, and feel the pain before close eyes. It may take time, but I believe in our good heart will find our way.
It was a cloudy day, May Day, but I see the faint ray of the light coming through when I left Grand Circus Park. It was a wonderful day.
Kimmie Shuck
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