Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball (Joe Bageant)

[Tace]

Predator drone firing a hellfire missile

Capitalism is dead, but we still dance with the corpse


Joe Bageant -- World News Trust

July 6, 2010 -- AJIJIC, JALISCO, Mexico -- As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride.

During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you. And so, my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. And to those outside my window here in Mexico this morning, the two guys pruning the retired gringo's hedges with what look like pocket knives, I say, keep up the good work. It's the world's cheap labor guys like you -- the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts -- who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones.

After twelve generations of lavish living at the expense of the rest of the world, it is understandable that citizens of the so-called developed countries have come to consider it quite normal. In fact, Americans expect it to become plusher in the future, increasingly chocked with techno gadgetry, whiz bang processed foodstuffs, automobiles, entertainments, inordinately large living spaces -- forever.

We've had plenty of encouragement, especially in recent times. Before our hyper monetized economy metastasized, things such as housing values went through the sky, and the cost of basics, food, etc., went through the basement floor compared with the rest of the world. The game got so cheap and fast that relative fundamental value went right out the window and hasn't been seen since. For example, it would be very difficult to make Americans understand that a loaf of bread or a dozen eggs have more inherent value than an iPhone. Yet, at ground zero of human species economics, where the only currency is the calorie, that is still true.

Such is the triumph of the money economy that nothing can be valued by any other measure, despite that nobody knows what money is worth at all these days. This is due in part to the international finance jerk-off, in which the world's governments print truckloads of worthless money, so they can loan it out. The idea here is that incoming repayment in some other, more valuable, currency will cover their own bad paper. In turn, the debtor nations print their own bogus money to repay the loans. So you have institutions loaning money they do not have to institutions unable to repay the loans. All this is based on the bullshit theory that tangible wealth is being created by the world's financial institutions, through interest on the debt. Money making money.

As my friend, physicist and political activist George Salzman writes,

"Everyone in these 'professional' institutions dealing in money lives a fundamentally dishonest life. Never mind 'regulating' interest rates," he says. "We must do away with interest, with the very idea of 'money making money'. We must recognize that what is termed 'Western Civilization' is in fact an anti-civilization, a global social structure of death and destruction. However, the charade of ever-increasing debt can be kept up only as long as the public remains ignorant. Once ecological limits have been reached the capitalist political game is up."

You can see why I love this guy.

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=149:all-edited-content&id=8042:waltzing-at-the-doomsday-ball-joe-bageant

[mochajava666]

1. Interesting, thought provoking article. Rec.

[Sinistrous]

2. kandr

[The2ndWheel]

3. The thing is that any economic system requires growth

That growth will increase our physical presence in and on physical reality. All these economic systems need more jobs, higher wages, more benefits, more tax money, more services, more this, more that. Simply more people doing more things. What complex human social and economic system would last long if fewer people did less? That's why the government tried to force us to do stuff with the stimulus. Buy something! Anything! It'll create jobs. That will bring in more tax money. Then we can spend that money...to do more stuff.

It's an economic system, or an ecosystem. We won't get both.

[eridani]

6. Not if the population stays stable n/t

[The2ndWheel]

8. I can't even imagine the growth in energy consumption

and the resulting increase of our physical presence in and on physical reality that would be required to keep the human population stable.

[eridani]

9. Slow reduction is possible though, no? n/t

[SharonAnn]

4. Nails it! As Abe Lincoln said, "Wealth comes from labor"

http://dig.lib.niu.edu/teachers/econ1-lincoln.html

They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior – greatly the superior – of capital. They do not deny that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital. The error, as they hold, is in assuming that the whole labor of the world exists within that relation. A few men own capital; and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them.

[RadicalTexan]

5. This guy just gets better and better

Amazing.

He makes me feel sane.

It's sad that I find these articles comforting.

[paparush]

7. Just spent 18 days in Nicaragua.

Came back (as I do every time I visit the developing world) just sickened that we, the US, 5% of the world's population, take so much, demand so much, that it necessitates so many living so poorly.