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I
could not have expressed it better myself!
Only
yesterday I read article by a NZ-based liberal journalist opining
that the government's budget did not go far enough so what they need
to do is borrow yet more money because the interest rates are “low”.
Never mind the inability to pay off the increasing national credit
card debt.
This
is the sort of delusion Kunstler is talking about
Kunstler:
America's Not
Going Socialist, It's Going
Medieval
Going Where, Exactly?
7
June, 2019
In
response to what has become a nation of shameless racketeering, vivid
wealth disparity, and shocking destitution on display in city
streets, the party of the common man seeks remedies in the
redistribution of capital. Seems more than fair to many. It’s not
for nothing that they style it “social justice,” the cutting edge
of an economic system called socialism — with overtones, of course,
of settling racial and gender scores for good measure.
Socialism
might seem to be the answer to all this unfairness and indignity. And
naturally it focuses on the two activities that have turned into the
worst rackets in America: higher education and health care, a.k.a.
“Eds and Meds.” Both are now cruel bloated parodies of what they
used to be, turning their customers into debt serfs and bankrupts,
apart from their dismal failures of basic mission: to prepare
developing minds for reality and to “first do no harm.”
The
proposed remedy is for the national government to take responsibility
for running them and to make their services free to all. That would
do nothing, of course, to reform the patent idiocies of the gender
studies departments; or rescue the sorry victims of obesity and
diabetes from their toxic consumption of whoppers, pizza, and
slurpees. Those dynamics operate on feedback wheels of futility for
which there is no happy ending outside of drastic changes in thought
and behavior.
The
Left now promises redemption from these great quandaries with the
tag-team of Robin Hood and Santa Claus ushering in a new golden era
of free stuff. It’s understandable perhaps, considering how
desperate so many citizens of this land are, and how desperation
feeds rescue fantasies. And the Left may even get a chance to try
this wizardry after the next election. But it’s really not where
history is taking us. America is not going to go socialist, it’s
going medieval. Why is that?
To
put it simply, the money is not there. But the “money” is only an
abstract representation of material wealth of one kind or another —
energy, goods, resources, and delivery systems — and all that is
becoming more of a fugitive presence in reality-based civilization.
We don’t have the mojo anymore to nationalize and centralize these
sprawling activities. It must be obvious that government is not only
fatally beyond bankruptcy, but that it has also reached the stage of
diminishing returns from over-investment in complexity that
translates into generalized incompetency. It’s hardly just Mr.
Trump alone that is responsible for the chaotic paralysis all around
us.
Societies
are self-organizing, emergent phenomena. They respond to the
circumstances that reality presents, and they take us in unexpected
directions. The general expectation in the USA since the Second World
War has been for ever-increasing material comfort provided by an
inexhaustible techno-industrial cornucopia, kind of a cosmic goodie
machine. Well, we’d better adjust our thinking to the fact that the
horn-of-plenty is shockingly out of goodies, and that no amount of
financial hocus-pocus is going to refill it. Valiant attempts to
redistribute the already-existing wealth are liable to prove
disappointing, especially when the paper and digital representations
of that wealth in “money” turn out to be figments — promises to
pay that will never be kept because they can’t be kept.
So,
instead of fantasizing about free PhD programs for everybody, and
free insulin for the multitudes, consider instead the vista of a
reduced population working in the fields and pastures to bring enough
food out of the long-abused land to live through the next winter.
Consider a world in which, if we are lucky, the electricity runs for
a few hours a day, but possibly not at all. Imagine a world in which
men and women actually function in different divisions of labor and
different social spaces because they must, to keep the human project
going. Imagine a world in which the ideas in your head about that
world actually have to comport with the way the way that world really
works — and the severe penalty for failing to recognize that.
That’s the more likely world we’re heading into. It won’t put
an end to dreams of utopias and cosmic rewards, but it will be a
sobering moment in history.
P.S. If the Left is deluded so too is the Right!
Sad you been so duped, Robin. The rich, via their unearned income (money made off of money), have been living off the efforts of working people for ages. Reagan and trickle down economics escalated the situation to where many working people don't earn enough to live decently.
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