There has to be a better way

After a few months of ignoring it in the hope it would go away, I have started taking an interest in the financial markets again. Every day I overhear people on the radio talking about bailouts, pensions, mortgage defaults, and a crippled economy. It sounds like the end of civilization out there, and you know how much I like TEOTWAWKI.

Even Warren Buffett, formerly the world’s richest man, is reeling as his investments tank. No one knows when or if it will end or when we will hit rock bottom. We keep telling ourselves that stability will be restored if we keep plugging away, but perhaps the post-Bretton Woods model is simply unsustainable. Look at Chris Martenson’s Crash Course for a clear presentation of how money is created via a pyramid of debt and how that can spiral out of control when money is printed without reference to gold.

On the Guardian today was a terrifying list of people’s redundancy stories. All of the commenters seemed to be shell-shocked white-collar workers looking for any available job. The spiral of recession means that if they default then banks will lose more money, lending will be further curtailed, house prices will continue to decline, spending will decrease, more firms will go out of business, more jobs are lost and so on. The only way to stop the spiral is to let people keep their homes while they search for jobs, keep bailing out the banks so that they lend, and encourage people to start consuming again. The trouble with that solution is that we are on the brink of environmental collapse caused by over-consumption of natural resources. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Don’t think that I am advocating a return to medieval style existence — alas, that is impossible with the industrial levels of population — but clearly our so-called ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’ aren’t getting us anywhere. Pollution, antibiotic-resistant viruses, urban ugliness, useless PhDs, talentless celebrities, timewasting computer games — Western civilization has clearly lost its way. There has to be a better way.

03 Mar 2009