Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler

Author:James Howard Kunstler [Kunstler, James Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Six

RUNNING ON FUMES:

The Hallucinated Economy

The most significant characteristic of modem civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present, and all the power of science has been prostituted to this purpose.

—William James

The entropic mess that our economy has become is the final blowoff of late oil-based industrialism. The destructive practices known as "free-market globalism" were engendered by our run-up to and arrival at the world oil production peak. It was the logical climax of the oil "story." It required the breakdown of all previous constraints—logistical, political, moral, cultural—to maximize the present at the expense of the future, and to do so for the benefit of a very few at the expense of the many. In America, free-market globalism became the reigning orthodoxy of both political parties, challenged only by cranks wearing nose-rings at the very margins of society. The moment that the world recognizes the passing of the oil production peak as a reality, globalism will be dead both in theory and practice.

During the years of its brief reign, free-market globalism was regarded as a permanent institution by a broad consensus of leaders from the most august Harvard economists to the most vulgar corporate buccaneers. The news media and their left-right punditry all bought it, too. The idea was that humanity had arrived at an advanced level of sociopolitical evolution, a new economy that would eventually deliver heaven on earth, where everyone everywhere would be rich. The key word was "eventually."

Globalism pretended to promise the same nirvana as communism had failed to deliver in its time, and came into full flower just as communism lost its legitimacy. Globalism also had the same tendency to impoverish and enslave huge populations while enriching the elite who managed its operations. The American people were sold on it, even while it destroyed their towns, their landscapes, and their vocations. What a shock, then, to find out that the so-called global economy was just a set of transient economic relations made possible by two historically peculiar circumstances: twenty-odd years of relative international peace and reliable supplies of cheap oil.

Who Needs the Future?

Globalism was primarily a way of privatizing the profits of business activity while socializing the costs. This was achieved by discreetly discounting the future for the sake of short-term benefits. The process also depended on the substitution of corporate monocultures and virtualities for complex social ecosystems wherever possible, for instance, Wal-Marts and theme parks for towns. Globalism was operated by oligarchical corporations on the gigantic scale, made possible by cheap oil. By "oligarchical" I mean that power was vested in small numbers of people running large organizations who were not accountable for their actions to many of the people who were subject to those actions. By "corporation," I mean a group enterprise given the legal status of a "person," with "rights," but in fact devoid of any human qualities of ethics, humility, mercy, duty, or loyalty that would constrain those rights. As Wendell Berry put it, "a corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.

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