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This economy has a
destination for sure, but it's not in the direction where all eyes are
trained in moist hopefulness: that glimmering horizon of longed-for growth.
You will not get that kind of growth -- the kind that increases the overall
wealth of the organism in question. A few people will make more money than
they did before, but overall we are in an epic contraction. More people and
organizations will go broke than will thrive. It will seem very unfair.
The true destination of the US economy is to get smaller and for two reasons
mainly: 1.) Capital ("money") is vanishing out of our system
steadily and rapidly due to a massive collective failure to repay money owed
on loans, mortgages, debts, and assorted obligations. 2.) Access to the
primary resource we depend on for powering the economy (oil) is increasingly
beyond our control -- even worse, under the control of people who would like
us to eat shit and die.
We
really have a choice between two ways of dealing with this. We can downsize
and re-scale consciously and coherently, or we can continue to chase after
the phantom of growth and allow the nation to fall into a shambles of
desperation. So far into this long emergency of an economic fiasco, we seem
to have chosen the pursuit of a phantom. That's what President Obama was
doing last week in Detroit, shilling for a new electric automobile which, he
said, will make us "energy independent." If
Mr. Obama believes this, then it isn't a very good advertisement
for an Ivy League education.
I'd like to know how many Americans believe that electric cars run on
virtually free energy (but I don't have pollsters on my payroll). I'd bet a
lot of them do, including President Obama. Sorry to rain on this uplifting
parade. At best, such a car fleet would run on coal -- that is coal-fired
electric power plants -- but even that is a ridiculous fantasy when you
actually pencil-out the details. Not to mention that a nation full of people
with dwindling or vanishing incomes won't be in a position to fork over
forty-grand for one of those new pseudo "green" vehicles. Also not
to mention -- wait for it -- that due to rapidly vanishing capital there will
be far fewer car loans available. The only thing growing in this part of the
picture is the number of Americans who cannot possibly qualify for a car loan
under normal terms that would require regular repayment of
interest-and-principal. (Plenty of Americans qualify for the new
"innovative" kind of loan -- the kind that you never have to make
payments on, but for the moment, the banks are choking to death on them, so
additional approvals may lag for a time.)
It's instructive that so much current hoopla about economic growth revolves
around the issue of cars. For, if anything, reality is telling us very
clearly that the mass motoring paradigm is near its end. Our determination to
prop it up at all costs, despite the grave impairments of available capital
and energy resources is a symptom of our detachment from reality. It's also a
fine illustration of the psychology of previous investment, which prompts a
desperate society to squander its scarce remaining resources on the very
things that are putting it out of business.
We
don't need need more highways. We're about to find
out that we don't have the money to keep up regular repairs on the highways
we already have. The hundreds of millions of "stimulus" dollars
that President Obama flung into "shovel-ready" highway projects was
among the more tragically dumb mistakes he made early on, and he has
apparently learned nothing along these lines
since then.
Interestingly, NPR ran a local story over the weekend -- an obscure little
item -- saying that Amtrak was determined to raise the average speed of its
passenger trains running north from Connecticut through Vermont from 40
miles-per-hour to 60mph. That would be some triumphant accomplishment!
It would bring us back to about an 1860 level of service. Of course, I
happen to believe that we will be lucky in a few years if we are able to enjoy
an 1860's standard-of-living, so maybe this little side venture in public
transport is perfectly in tune with America's future.
Otherwise, these are just ominous days of drift in a place of stillness where
the uncomplaining robot traders tirelessly work their magic in the server
farms of Wall Street, while their putative "handlers" enjoy the
dainty pleasures of the Hamptons -- which seem to center these days on
pounding back vast draughts of premium vodka in conjunction with Red Bull, cocaine,
hydroponic ganja, Viagra, and Klonopin to round off
all those edges. And let's not forget the catered delicacies circulating on
trays passed by super-models -- the yellowtail tartare
tidbits, the green olive pesto crescents, the firecracker shrimp
canapés. I wonder if the nibblers ever stop to reflect on how many of
the un-privileged "out there" get by lately on dog food and
ketchup.
My
timing is notoriously faulty, they say, but I can't ignore the sensation of
being seasick-on-dry-land that tells me something awful is at hand. President
Obama appears more and more Gorbachev-like to me, a well-intentioned
functionary sailing his ship-of-state steadily into a maelstrom. The course
is set and ain't nobody
going to make a move to change it. Of course, Mr. Obama is no more to blame
than Mr. Gorbachev was -- if anything one can't help but admire Gorby's steering of the creaky old Soviet ghost ship into
drydock with nary a pint of blood spilled in the
process -- but what's really striking in America today is the massive failure
of leadership in the layers below Mr. Obama, and in all the other sectors of
American culture where CEOs, chairpersons-of-the-boards, deans and provosts,
doctors of this and that, generals and attorneys-general, even diverse clergy
in all their arresting head-gear cannot collectively advocate for reality.
This failure of credentialed and elected authorities will surely unleash the
crazies as we skid toward fall. Legitimacy hates a vacuum. The absence of a
reality-based consensus for action will invite a consensus based on other
things such as the lust for vengeance, the labeling of scapegoats, patriotic
gore, and all the alternate trappings of a politics-gone-mad. Enjoy the heat
and the clam rolls wherever you are in the meantime, and when you come home
don't be surprised if you no longer recognize the country you're in.
James Howard Kunstler
www.kunstler.com/
James Howard Kunstler’s
new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is
available at all booksellers.
James Kunstler has worked
as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a
staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write
books on a full-time basis.
His latest nonfiction book, "The Long
Emergency," describes the changes that American society faces in the
21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic
crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive
dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the
American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of
the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller
places and eat locally grown food.
You can purchase your own copy here
: The Long
Emergency .
You can get more from James Howard Kunstler -
including his artwork, information about his other novels, and his blog - at
his Web site : http://www.kunstler.com/
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