Regardless of Who Wins
As I write it looks like Obama will get a second term and a second chance to do the right things.
But the reality (as I see it) for this race is the tragicomedy that neither candidate is promising to do anything that would actually work. For one thing, given the political divisions that exist in the legislature it won't really matter much even if they try to do anything. But more cogently, what either candidate claims to want to do is simply not physically feasible. Both say they want to get the economy growing again. They want to increase jobs. Obama, to his political credit, even lays out some specific actions he would like to undertake to implement his desires. Romney only says he has a plan. As far as I know no one has actually found anything in the Romney campaign rhetoric that resembles an actual plan.
Obama has had four years of experience now. He probably has a better idea of what a president can and cannot do. His proposals for economic fixes are pretty tepid, actually, but that is likely because he realizes that anything bolder is simply infeasible. Romney, on the other hand, has no real idea what to expect. Nor does he have advisers that have any real inkling of what a president can do. This is so typical of American election campaigns and despite the fact that most Americans recognize this fallacy, they still act like the election is important. They still cling to an old ideal that probably never was true but still holds appeal. The president is something like a king — the head of state. S/he ought to be able to get things done.
And exactly what does anybody think can be done even if the president were like a king? Liberal economic pundits like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich are demanding Keynesian heroics claiming it worked once before so it should work again. I understand their sentiments. They care deeply that there are people hurting by not having jobs and the income distributions have become unfairly slanted to the wealthy. They are liberals after all. But we should not confuse their desires with intellectual prowess. Believing that, “all other things being equal”, what worked before should work again is not the same as a careful, intelligent analysis of the whole systemic situation now that would reveal just how all things are not equal. We are in an entirely new physical regimen when it comes to the fuel for economies.
Conservatives still push on the same tired agendas, lower taxes and regulations and reduce the deficit by decreasing the size (and functions) of government. They conveniently forget that it was a few of their champions (like Ronald Reagan) that did pretty much the opposite when they had the chance. Republicans (the kind running the party today) never let facts get in the way of a good ideological story.
The liberals cling to the notion that a growing economy will benefit all as long as government sees to it that tax laws are fair and regulations of commerce and over the environment are handled properly. So they cling to growth as a fix all. Conservatives, likewise, hold the same position with respect to the goodness of growth, but only since a growing economy will reward those stalwarts who risked their capital to produce that wealth more than the interchangeable part of the economic machine we call workers.
This is a true tragicomedy. The foibles of either party will result in efforts to go against the laws of nature, wasting who knows what little wealth we might still have. Either one will make us all hugely poorer even while they are trying to make us (or some of us) richer. You have to laugh at their bungling but you have to cry at the outcomes.
What we might do is compare possible scenarios for each of the candidates regarding what they would actually try to do. A lot depends on the ideological mix in the House and the Senate, of course.
If Romney Wins
Romney's position has been that if government gets out of the way of business then the businesses will invest and start growing, thus hiring more workers. So he would presumably try to reduce taxes on business and reduce regulations that burden business. Suppose for a moment that the Senate swings to the Republican side, and, in fact, gets a large enough majority to bust a filibuster move by the Democrats to block any Romney-sponsored legislation (tit-for-tat guys). Would moves to reduce taxes and regulations while simultaneously decreasing the deficit (and debt) actually work?
Lets consider the idea that by improving (in his mind) the climate for business that those businesses would invest in new plant and equipment (or offices in the US) and start hiring people. Where will the businesses get the capital to invest. Currently the meme floating around is that businesses are sitting on heaps of cash because they are uncertain where things are going. They are not using that cash to invest but if government gets off their backs they will do so. For this we need to ask ourselves if this is really true. Are businesses sitting on cash because of government-generated uncertainty? While there is evidence that this idea holds some merit for small businesses, particularly with respect to the complexities of tax code (not the tax rates per se) the majority of uncertainty in the minds of business managers is with regard to not understanding where their customers are going to come from and, for that matter, where the kind of skilled workers they need will come from. You don't build product on hopes that there will be customers with money to spend and you don't invest in automation unless you know you have the kinds of skilled workers to run it and maintain it (see: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3038-small-business-capital.html). There is a great deal of uncertainty about the future of sales because the global economy is in the dumps. China, the great hope for growth, is slowing down (and may actually be slower than they self-report). And as I have argued consistently the global downturn is due to declining net energy available for economic activity. This decline is seen in the increasing costs in fossil fuels, especially oil[1]. Since oil is the basis for the vast majority of our transportation systems the increased costs will show up in inflation in all sorts of goods and services. Those costs will propagate throughout the economy and are seen especially easily in food and transportation fuel costs.
Romney's thesis is flawed. He doesn't really understand that it isn't government per se that is in the way of business, it is costs to do business that is the problem. And those costs have been consistently rising. Back in the day it was possible in the short run to compensate for inflation by borrowing short-term capital and rolling the interest forward. Companies did this under the belief that they could eventually catch up and pay back the debt with excess profits in the future. The problem is, and we are all starting to grasp this, is that the future they imagined never came. Today they are reticent to borrow and banks have become reticent to loan because the real uncertainty is in the likelihood that some grand day when we resume producing vast amounts of real (not financial instrument) wealth will come is the only thing growing.
But, if Romney wins and was able to get some of his proposals through (he could by fiat reduce the effectiveness of the EPA, for example) would that do more harm than good? In my opinion the rate at which things are going downhill would probably overcome the economic system before he or Congress could actually get anything through. In fact I can easily imagine that by the end of a Romney administration's first term there will be massive revolts and mayhem from people fed up with any form of government. He would be either voted out or find himself in a worst case scenario having to declare martial law. Physically determined events, not a Romney presidency will determine just how bad things might get.
If Obama Wins
I really think Obama believes the economists and bankers who convinced him to hire Geithner and Summers, et al. He buys into neoclassical economics and probably does believe the Keynesian's version. Therefore he may try to implement some kind of stimulus beyond the quantitative easing the Fed has put in place. Rather than print money (that is the Fed's job now) he will try to take the country deeper into debt to invest in infrastructure repair. He'll want to repair the roads and bridges used by transportation vehicles that will eventually be parked permanently for the cost of fuels. What a waste.
He will probably try to do something about wage disparities. He may try to increase the taxes on the rich and reduce them on the middle class and poor. Good luck with that. He may try to invest more in alternative energies and clean coal. But that is because he hasn't, apparently, ever taken a physics class and his main science and energy advisers are too chicken or too self-possessed to explain to him what the real problem is.
He just might have the courage to speak to the American public about the kinds of sacrifices they will have to make (as he alluded to in his inaugural address less than four years ago). But his notion of sacrifices is modeled on those made by American citizens during WWII. Yes Americans were will to sacrifice their creature comforts in support of the war. But they also assumed the war would one day end and they would get back to business at home. They had just come off of a Great Depression so the acceptance of some sacrifice probably wasn't foreign to their minds. Modern day Americans are incredibly spoiled. But even if they were to accept that message it would be in the same vein as accepting sacrifices during the war — they would be temporary inconveniences while we built back our massive economic engine and revved it up. One day, all will believe, we'll get back on track consuming the s**t out of stuff and living merrily ever after. Our kids will have a better life than did we.
But, of course, it is merely a sad hope. There are fundamental physical reasons why humanity is now in permanent contraction. That will go not only for economic activity (the kind that actually produces assets of use) but for the population itself. Modern food production and health care require substantial levels of energy flow, which, until very recently, was coming in increasing amounts from fossil fuel extraction. That is no longer the case. Food prices and medical costs will continue to rise until the average person can simply no longer afford them. Already the movement toward home gardening is showing a sensitivity to the trend. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible for the average suburban (and definitely the urban) home to produce enough food for year-round consumption, let alone supplying all needed nutrition during just the summer-fall months.
I now see Obama as an empty suit. He is a smart rhetorician but he is ignorant, perhaps as much as Romney is, of basic physical laws and the facts that tell us where things are really going. I'm not even sure he is particularly intellectual and a critical thinker. You would think that after so many failed attempts to buoy the economy by financial manipulations he would be asking fundamental questions. Instead he claims that it would have been so much worse if his programs (bailing out the auto industry and banks, for example) hadn't been implemented. Of course he has absolutely no way to verify such a claim, but hey, this is about getting reelected not scientific verification of hypotheses.
Everyone Looses
The fact of the matter is that all a president can or should do at this point is to tell the truth about our physical reality. He (or, if ever she) has a moral duty to inform the citizenry as to their actual options. Right now, however, we seem to have two candidates for the office who either do not know the truth or are willing to pose the big lie just so they can get elected. Not knowing the truth means that person is ignorant. We are talking about real science, but it isn't rocket science. Understanding the simple relationship between net energy and economic activity (and growth) does not require a PhD in physics. But it does require dropping ideological biases that blind one to the reality.
As I look at either candidate's positions on the economy and energy it seems clear enough that Romney is completely and profoundly ignorant. It is an ignorance imposed on him by his ideology (or more likely his adopted ideology of the right wing, as I suspect he is a hollow man). He is ignorant both of the problems that come from unbridled economic growth and the role of energy in providing economic activity. He and his ilk live in la-la land. Obama, on the other hand has access to a greater amount of factual information about net energy and its relation to the economy, though he is ignorant of the reality of alternative energy as a scalable source of power. Where he is more deeply ignorant, apparently, is his persistent belief that a growth economy is the only viable way for humans to live in the world.
The two also differ in their notions of how economic wealth should be distributed among the citizens. This may be the most important difference as the economic pie continues to shrink in the future. As the shrinkage began in the early 70s we began to see an earnest application of old principles of rewards going to the already wealthy and the burden of declining total wealth going to those already low in the economic strata. As the total wealth declined, the pressure for those in power to open more pathways for the already rich to get richer increased resulting in abandoning many forms of commerce and financial regulations as well as turning to off-shoring jobs to lower priced labor markets to protect profits. Today we have a global house of cards in which the money supply is no longer representing the real physical wealth it ought to be able to purchase. It is just created out of thin air to make it seem that things are almost OK. They are not OK in any sense, but the average person doesn't understand this. Apparently, however, neither does the average candidate for president.
By not telling the people of the world the truth about the end of growth and the onset of decline, and explaining to them why this is happening, the leaders of the governments of the world are essentially saying that people do not have the right to know. They do not have the right to consider how they should plan their own futures in light of decline. The big problem with this position is that there will be a point in time when the truth of decline becomes clear to all even though they will not know why (i.e., that it is everyone's fault for demanding a consumer lifestyle, so no one group or person should be blamed solely) and they will react very badly. The damage from not telling the whole story as soon as possible will be far worse, I think, then continuing to pretend (or believe) that things will get better one day and we can all be happy again. Those who are now maintaining the façade will quickly be seen as the perpetrators and the masses, to the extent they have the energy to do so, will turn on them mercilessly. And since those who are in the so-called 1% category have only wealth on paper, and since that paper will become worthless in the blink of an eye, they will not be able to hire armies to protect them. They will discover that their smoke and mirror tricks for creating that supposed wealth will backfire on them.
Everyone in the world will be increasingly poor as the years go by. The rate of decline is still in debate, but there are really no more deeply thoughtful people who don't understand that we are in decline. There are many bright people who remain hopeful, and even optimistic. But I think they are driven by personality traits rather than intellectual reasoning to maintain that position (though some are extremely good at using their intellects to rationalize their optimism!). Over the past five years I have seen one after another hopeful optimist realize that all of their optimism hinged on the notion that somehow the leaders would see the truth and we would all get on board with programs to save society. But the rates of decline are catching up. Weather anomalies from global warming/climate change becoming the norm and economic decay spreading and accelerating are overwhelming that optimism.
No leader of any country or under any kind of governance philosophy can do anything to change physical reality. So long as net energy is trending downward economic activity will follow. Nothing short of a technological miracle could alter this. And that would require a scientific breakthrough of an incredibly serendipitous kind; one that could be followed by rapid exploitation and adoption. And it would pretty much have to ‘fund’ itself. That is it would have to bootstrap up to scale in a very short period of time (decades), Contrast that with the situation with, say, solar energy, which requires an existing fossil fuel energy infrastructure to underwrite its manufacture, distribution, and maintenance. No. The leaders of nations today are powerless to do anything that will make it better. The only thing they can do, honestly, is tell people the truth. And what are the odds of that happening?
[1] Natural gas price is currently depressed due to a glut owing to the well performance of non-conventional (fracked) wells in shale formations. It is now becoming clear that while these wells tend to produce an initially higher production rate than conventional wells, that the nature of the shale gas is such that production falls off more rapidly and the total production per more expensive well drilled is lower. That is, these wells have a significantly lower EROI and in addition, not all wells are going to perform all that well. This means we are likely to see a rapid decline in gas stocks as there will be fewer and fewer wells performing at economic flows.
Great post George and good incite into the whole sham election.
Mankind went down the self-serving, unsustainabale, procreate-til-we-overrun-the-place road, and the end of that road is fast approaching.
The debate now seems to be about how quickly or slowly the collapse will be, and whether or not it will be total.
Our politics are as bankrupt as our banks, municipalities and worldviews at this point.
Climate change will last for thousands of years and get to the point where any life on the planet will be miraculous (maybe the little creatures that live off the sulfur vents at the bottom of the sea will wonder what all the fuss was about).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us George. You're a beacon of much needed light in a dark world. Shine on!
Posted by: Tom | September 29, 2012 at 06:40 PM
From the previous post:
Also I found an apt title for the shadow rulers:
"Despotic Oligarchy"
So from now on when you feel the urge to write the word "elite" referring to the greedy psychopaths that run the show just substitute my new title or you can use plutocracy just as well in place of oligarchy.
The reason the people aren't being informed about the end coming is to prevent panic as long as possible and control the culling as they see fit.
Here is my comment from the last entry but it applies just as well to this post.
George,
First I hate the term "elite" because it implies a superiority by virtue which is definitely not the case. I prefer a group of despots (I wish I could find a plural form)
As to Panem et circeses no argument there.
It has been a game of give the masses what they clamor for and now it is running out.
The despots didn't "intuit" anything. This is all by design to impoverish as many as fast as possible and make them totally dependent on the "system".
That makes it very easy to control and prevent any violent blow back and also to cull as needed. They can simply stop the supply chains food, water.
They are evil and mentally ill and unfortunately our system is structured such that the bad guy always wins. So over time the most ruthless psychopaths will concentrate at the top of the hierarchy. All that concerns them is playing games against each other at the highest levels of society and the "people" are merely livestock... pawns on the chessboard.
Sorry to rant and sound like Alex Jones but the more I watch this mess the more I think that most of what I wrote above is correct.
Posted by: porge | September 30, 2012 at 07:38 PM
"In fact I can easily imagine that by the end of a Romney administration's first term there will be massive revolts and mayhem from people fed up with any form of government. He would be either voted out or find himself in a worst case scenario having to declare martial law."-GM
Martial Law is an inevitability whether it's Robama or Obamney that wins. Once the Oil supply lines fall below the leel necessary to keep standard JIT running on the economic model, the Military will have to take this over.
Obama-sama recently signed another Executive Order that allows him to commandeer private Logistics such as the Walmart Distribution apparatus and trucking firms like JB Hunt and Schneider National.
The quetion remains one of timing, and another 4 year term of BAU seems like an outside maximum for this here in the FSoA. A lot depends on how fast the Euro Collapses. More on that in the "For Whom the Bell Tolls" article on the Doomstead Diner.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/09/21/for-whom-the-bell-tolls/
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | September 30, 2012 at 07:40 PM
"Obama-sama recently signed another Executive Order that allows him to commandeer private Logistics such as the Walmart Distribution apparatus and trucking firms like JB Hunt and Schneider National." Reverse Engineer.
Reverse Engineer,
Read my above comment about stopping supply chains to decide who gets to live and who gets to die.
I think you are spot on (but of course I would because your analysis jives with mine);)
Yes, there is a master plan in place and the puppet politicians are nothing but front men putting on a show for the average dumb American.
The media is the creator of the memes and false narratives that comprise what joe and jane average think is reality....even if it is willful ignorance It is still false and in the end this is going to turn ugly....very ugly.
Posted by: porge | October 01, 2012 at 05:47 AM
George's article is crossposted on the Doomstead Diner titled "Obamney vs. Robama"
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/10/01/obamney-vs-robama/
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | October 01, 2012 at 04:49 PM
Clear as a bell George, as always. Thanks for describing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so succinctly.
The coming crunch will of course most affect (financially and emotionally) those who managed to enjoy our species' brief flirtation with 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'opportunity'. For a brief moment in the human timeline, and most notably in the US, a relatively large number of people were able to live very well off cheaply acquired energy resources sucked in from elsewhere in the world. The standard of living in the US was such that millions could drive cars with ridiculously low mileages per gallon, keep lights burning and air-conditioning/central heating chugging away around the clock, buy and consume but also throw away mountains of perfectly edible foods, and live in relative palaces stocked with endless labour-saving as well as frivolous gadgets. The mantra was: Yes we can (have everything we vaguely desire).
In truth, The American Dream was actually Most of the Rest of the World's Nightmare, just as was the case with every imperial adventure in human history. In most locations worldwide, most of the inhabitants have since time immemorial lived in the absolute poverty that is now rather rapidly returning to the majority of Americans. The fall from grace that is now accelerating in the Western World was already planted among the seeds of the rise of US-style winner-takes-all capitalism. In that sense, what we are witnessing is a self-correcting mechanism. However, the return to "normal" poverty is extremely painful to the previously well-off. So there is growing hysteria among spectators finally learning about the bottleneck scenario that is being coolly discussed among the sapient.
Because of the laws of thermodynamics, knowledge of which as you say has accidentally or deliberately eluded the ruling class, it is very possible that the US Empire will be the last of any scale. However, tell that to a peasant farmer in the Chinese hinterland scratching barely enough food for his family, or a Congolese villager wondering if she will survive a tenth pregnancy, or a destitute Sri Lankan crammed on a sinking boat somewhere off Australia. We so-called humans have a long experience of harsh reality – excluding the pampered ones profiting for a few decades from the Western model of greed is godly.
Talking about growth, the only growth market I see is in education – classes for Westerners in how to go back to living on meagre provisions, including hypnotic counselling for the terminally avaricious. There are plenty of teachers and role models out there in the rest of the world.
Best wishes, Oliver
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | October 02, 2012 at 04:19 AM
Oliver, while I find myself sharing your general view, I disagree with your assertion: "In most locations worldwide, most of the inhabitants have since time immemorial lived in the absolute poverty that is now rather rapidly returning to the majority of Americans."
This simply isn't the case for the vast majority of human existence. Generally people have subsisted quite comfortably, while interspersed with periods of famine, this has been true whether the culture was predominantly agricultural or hunter gatherer. The modern poverty experienced in the slums of the mega-cities of the last few centuries is an anomaly (and an interesting topic in itself); which while it won't be sustained, offers a small foretaste of what is likely coming to us all.
Our overall situation is far worse than that of our ancestors, our world no longer has the ability to provide the abundant surplus that once enabled us to declare our supremacy over nature; our cultural memory and experiences of the past, along with modern analogues leads us to believe in a world that can no longer be. There is no longer the carrying capacity for even a fraction of our current population to live as our ancestors once did, there really is no going back.
Posted by: Steven Newbury | October 02, 2012 at 07:34 AM
Does it even matter whether or not there is an election?
Posted by: Robin Datta | October 02, 2012 at 10:49 AM
So George, in recognizing that we have a political system comprised of people who wantonly ignore the long-term, inevitable outcomes associated with economic growth, I am wondering if you could posit a bit of a proactive agenda here.
If we assume that Obama will win and adopt further Keynesian policies, are there projects he could be funding that would make the transition to a low-energy society more graceful? Are there projects that you think could actually be funded in Congress given the pro-growth mentality that seems to be the predominant ideology of those in power? I don't know how much overlap there is between the interests of the sapient and those leading the charge for growth, but perhaps projects that are billed as improving the economic capability of local communities could at least be a starting point for doing some of the work that needs to be done in order to make the transition to a low-energy society. Community-based agriculture (or permaculture--one can dream!) or restoration projects that clean up degraded lands and soils to make them more suitable for growing food and for living might be activities that fit a pro-growth mentality and a sapient one. Are there other kinds of activities you might add?
Even though I agree with your pessimism about the future, we do have some control now over how bad the transition could be. There is no inherent reason why the government has to be a hindrance to these efforts, and could be helpful in getting projects started if funds are used judiciously.
Posted by: Sam | October 02, 2012 at 12:09 PM
Steven N - interesting comments, thank you. I'm far too polite to contradict you in return, but I obviously have a different take on the definition of poverty.
To me, poverty isn't a recent creation of urban slum-dwelling - an anomaly as you describe it. In my reasoning, ever since our species got organised in large groups (i.e. over recorded history), life has been based on a pecking order dictated by physical strength (the Alpha Males get the spoils). I therefore wouldn't describe the vast majority as subsisting comfortably. Comfort is always the fiefdom of the few who possess the surplus. The rest are kept in yokes to create the surplus, in return for meagre rations. This is poverty, in my book.
As for the idea of the Noble Savage, we can choose to believe that hunter gatherers and early farmers had a comfortable life, but this is pure speculation, not evidence based.
Regards, Oliver
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | October 02, 2012 at 04:59 PM
The battle between big government Democrats and military-industrial Republicans over scarce sovereign borrowing rights to fund their mutually exclusive "guns or butter" approach to Federalism is at the root of everything evil about America and her empire -- what we need instead are fresh ideas that only Libertarians can deliver at this point -- additionally, the continuing practice of holding Main Street (construction) hostage to big government and military-industrial spending initiatives championed by Democrats and Republicans respectively assures that Main Street will remain mired in economic depression, as evidenced by the long-term declines in real working wages, home values, and the employment-to-population ratio -- the big government Democrats and military-industrial Republicans are on the ropes, despite their best efforts to form a fascist empire in the American heartland -- the future of America will be Libertarian -- more at: http://www.lp.org
Posted by: William J McKibbin | October 03, 2012 at 04:55 AM
Oliver, thanks for the reply. I certainly didn't intend to invoke the fallacy of the "Noble Savage", but I can see how what I wrote could be interpreted that way though. Please don't worry about contradicting me, I'm quite used to it, and it's quite likely any contradiction arises through deficiencies in my argument! :)
Let me try to clarify a few points:
Without having an shared definition of poverty it is virtually impossible to reach any sort of agreement on whether it's something that's been (largely) escaped by the surplus enabled through (industrial?) civilisation, or created by the distribution of wealth within it. If poverty is living at the bottom of the pecking order within a large group under a hierarchical patriarchal authority, then it is necessarily a creation of "civilization" or at least organised society, yet I never intended to limit the scope in that way.
For the sake of argument, I would like to posit that human "poverty" is best described though the limits in availability of scarce resources, without the recourse of migration to areas of surplus; that's to say at its extreme, it's trap on the margin of subsistence.
By this definition, there have certainly been many periods through both recorded history and pre-history where conditions of large proportions of a population could be described as being impoverished, yet migration was an near universally available release valve. Perhaps history is best described through this dynamic of impoverishment; resource availability is depleted and the migration in search of resource surplus results, along with intra-society "class-struggle" and and inter-society conflicts as groups vie for supremacy over the "spoils".
By this definition large scale poverty isn't a stable or sustainable state. When living on the margin of subsistence, it's only a matter of time until either "Liebig's Law of the Minimum" downsizes the population, the local resource conditions return to surplus, or there is sufficient migration to bring the population back within the local carrying capacity.
Where things get more complex, we humans have attempted to take control of, and manipulate this this process. Creating artificial scarcity to re-enforce class divisions, and maintain privilege of the "elite" and abstracting the distribution and allocation of resources though Economics.
We appear to have run out of surplus available resources, particularly available energy, we no longer have any virgin or marginally unexploited land of surplus to migrate to, and further we've reached the limits of our ability to impose control to maintain our societal structure.
Posted by: Steven Newbury | October 03, 2012 at 09:12 AM
Thanks Steven - excellent clarification and I can only agree with your well-made points.
On this topic, especially regarding our current precarious predicament at the End of Surplus, I have been through all the stages of grief - and have now arrived at calm acceptance. I no longer waste venom on the robber barons and banksters (psychopathic phenotypes) who control the real levers of power, because there is no reason or sport in trying to dissuade the blind from acting blindly. Clearly, there is certainly no need to trouble ourselves over the presidential election, which is a puppeteer's sideshow.
I am in acceptance but what still causes heartache is human suffering, hence my pitch on the subject of poverty. Death is a far better option than living in continuous oppressive destitution, to say nothing of the daily brutality visited on the 'weak' by the 'strong' in every country in this peculiar world. For all our so-called progress these few hundred years, little has changed in this formula, apparently a necessary function of the survival-of-the-fittest component of evolution.
I do help others when I can, but it always comes back to the King Canute analogy...
So what remains for me personally is a watching brief on the downward slope, and having the odd interesting debate on sites such as these, the last bastion of sapience.
Thanks again for your thoughtful contributions.
Regards, Oliver
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | October 03, 2012 at 04:16 PM
" survival-of-the-fittest component of evolution." Anywhere but here is better
It is suppose to be reproduction of the best adapted.
Agriculture ended natural selection a long time ago.......
Posted by: porge | October 03, 2012 at 08:53 PM
All. Thanks for the comments.
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Sam,
Your question re: projects we could do...
Sometime back I wrote a proposal to restart the CCC accepting both men and women who would be working to restore our soils to permaculture standards. They would simultaneously be going to night classes to learn the principles of permaculture so as to eventually engage in local food production.
Could we solve two problems at once?
Since that time a number of writers, like Robert Reich, have called for a reorganization of the CCC but geared toward repairing and building infrastructure (roads and bridges) since they do not understand that this would represent a huge waste of capital and effort.
That was back in 2010 when I held hope that there would be some political will and some capital to invest. Since then we've learned just how bankrupt we are (resorting to quantitative easing to make it seem like we are not!) so there probably really isn't any capital to invest on a national scale. I am promoting permaculture locally (regionally or even state wide) still in hopes that it will be easier to grasp at a local level. But the dream of unbounded energy still haunts the conversations.
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William,
I'm guessing you haven't read much of my work or you would realize that I have even greater dislike for libertarian ideology than for either of the main parties! The main themes in this blog have to do with physical reality not beliefs and definitely not political/economic beliefs based on erroneous interpretations of how the world works.
The future of America may well be anarchy but not libertarianism.
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Porge,
My own preference for thinking about evolution of humans is that agriculture didn't exactly (and for all time) end natural selection, but it did change the direction of the pressures from the vagaries of the environment to broader social conditions (e.g. larger aggregations than 150 fellow tribesmen). In my mind evolution never ceases simply because genes and control net DNA never cease mutating. The environment never ceases exerting forces on creatures, even us. Culture (which itself evolves) just puts new kinds of forces into play.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | October 06, 2012 at 02:50 PM
Thanks. Insightful post, as per usual. Have to add that friends keep forwarding to my old man the right-wing emails of nonsence that appear in their in-boxes, and he amuses himself by....now get this....using research to find the facts that disprove these bizarre writings, which he then sends back, both to his friends AND to the original poster of the nonsense. SO many times he gets emails from the original poster telling him to NOT contact them any more with his "facts," i.e. don't confuse them with reality! It's really mind-boggling how many times he's been told to NOT confuse them with facts! Had I not been a high school teacher for 30 years, I would not have believed that such widespread, willful ignorance was possible. But, alas, to too many folks, science is only of use when a triple by-pass is needed....or a cure for cancer. And questioning the capitalist belief in infinite growth in a finite system is akin to the WORST kind of religious heresy! That homo so-called sapiens can harbor and CHERISH such profound ignorance is disheartening indeed. Yes, politicians should BOTH be aware of, and speak the truth about, objective reality, as nearly as we can discern it, but even should they do so, too many would reply that they simply do NOT wish to be confused by facts!
Posted by: Molly | October 07, 2012 at 10:04 AM
George,
No doubt mutations have and will continue.
But, you need to explain to me how the "better adapted" gene suites that result in more effective phenotypes actually reproduce more than the less viable types.
Institutions of marrige and of course the social structure itself play a far greater role in limiting the reproductive abilities of"superior" traits.
The social station you are born into is the huge determining factor as to how complete your potential will be developed and deployed and no one outside of arab sheiks has 80 kids and I am certain they are not the "best adapted".
It is basically a social structure crap shoot and if you really look at who is reproducing at the greatest rates you could even say it is inverted. Might be getting into touchy territory with my last statement but I just don't see any clear direction as to "selection of best genotype".
Mutations yes.
Biggest determinant on which genes populate next generations pool is poverty( more prolific) if they survive and social mores Monogamy verse polygamy.
Otherwise I don't agree with you.
Posted by: porge | October 07, 2012 at 02:55 PM
Molly - Nicely stated. You have found proof that Science (the pursuit of reality and truth) has almost completely been supplanted by Technology (the development of systems that make money for the research grant allocators).
This is why facts are not required by the blinkered. All they seek is technological superiority and control over their imagined enemies.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | October 08, 2012 at 03:27 AM
What can the next President do?
Answer: NOTHING
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-08/guest-post-decline-decay-denial-delusion-and-despair
Posted by: porge | October 09, 2012 at 07:42 AM
If you look at what happened with the Bush tax cuts, Romney's policies won't make any difference. The already rich made billions more and then promptly invested this money in China and in India. They closed down perfectly good factories who were profitable, laid off all American workers and rehired all new foreign workers for pennies per hour. The 1% made trillions of dollars in profits. With their political powers they bought off the Supreme Court (Citizens United). With this they can use all of their ill gotten gains to influence elections from overseas. Now they want to move back this money to the US at reduced tax rates. No matter how this plays out, America is screwed once again. If Romney gets elected, and somehow gets the tax rates changed, it is not going to improve the situation. The 1% will simply do what they did before and move their money overseas.
Posted by: AmericaIsScrewed | October 09, 2012 at 09:01 PM