No way out

Still in the hole

The world is going to hell in a hand basket, still, time to get back to this blog and chronicle some of this stuff....

As I look over the thoughts expressed back then, I note that my observations were generally correct. What is fascinating is that our capitalist society has shifted the incentive from money to the work itself, which is becoming a rare commodity. This is the sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's head and it is causing immense stress to families. But instead of the New Working Class joining together in solidarity (as the old working class did), it is falling apart, because over the past decades it has been thoroughly propagandized by an Incredible Bullshit Machine (IBM) of quasi-philosophy that says, for no apparent reason, that "You are the master of your life and whatever bad things happen to you, it's because of you." This is the reverse side of the me-me-me coin.

Bangladesh, a symbol of a crushing market system

Do "they" care? The leaders of our degenerating society? No they don't: I even interviewed the CEO of a company (a big, international company), who told me without any sense of shame, that the Recession was an opportunity to chuck people out and increase revenues by streamlining business and rehiring some on a freelance basis.

 

I know about freelancing: the money they pay is the only barrier to calling it a form of slavery. There is no loyalty, no sense of commitment, nothing. You might as well be a piece of software, replaceable and to be ignited when you need it regardless of your own needs.

Some sketched points

1) The rich have more than survived the recession, and unlike most people, they have thrived. Thrive and survive, and drive everyone else under. Now that real estate prices in the USA and in parts of Europe are nice and low again, they can use all that wealth to pick up the booty, not much different from those who despoiled the dead.... But the dead on the battlefields are at least protected, minimally, by the Hague convention (Article 16, I believe) .... The families and individuals who lost their homes, their jobs, their hope, on the other hand, are being ask to do the Christian thing and shut up, so the banks can keep moving the money up the food chain. Wouldn't want a Mr Adelson or Blankfein to have trouble finding a few million to buy up some cheap waterfront properties for a private beach...

2) Barack Obama has been president for over four years and after showing some genuinely bad judgment (see point 1) by hiring the very people who tanked the economy to clean up the mess, managed to win the election a second time more by default than by his qualities. The Romney/Ryan ticket was a strange one, especially with the GOP swamped in beyond-paranoid posturing, driven by a crowd that can only be described as tinfoilist. Limbaugh ranting and being coarse and vulgar (real family values guy), Beck meandering in and out of paranoid hallucinations while selling gold for some company, Coulter wandering around with her little box of earth, just in case dawn breaks, Palin making an ever greater fool of herself, Bachmann, Santorum, Hannity, the whole troop of odd fellows.... just unbelievable and only possible thanks to the Internet.
 

The the lunatic fringe hits its stride

.... What has ever happened to Reason? How can a nation purporting to be the most powerful on Earth produce such huge amounts of bilge? Where is Hume when you need him? Not Brit Hume, of course, the other one, the intelligent one, who was further ahead of the game 250 year ago.

The rich, too, showed surprising bad judgment and worse yet, bad taste. But then again, to make billions does not necessarily require brains. It requires unscrupulousness, and that's it. Every billionaire or millionaire has essentially put aside any thought of sustainability, of generosity, kindness, and made money. It's Chapter One, Line One of every road to riches. And they are no longer interested in creating jobs, they are interested in sucking more and more money out of the economy so that when the People finally rise up (that is, when they finally get their noses out of their iPhones, Smartphones, computers and all the other pornography we are being fed with), they will at least have a few islands to take refuge on.

3) Much to the delight of the Ur-capitalists, Europe seems to be dissembling. For a while, Moody's and Standard and Poor, companies that no one other than the glorified accountants making up the business class even knew about, were grading anything that moved on the Old Continent, turning the neoliberally oriented ministers and prime ministers and presidents and other pols white with fear. They ran about in panic trying to shore up finances by, once again, grabbing from the less fortunate or the middle class, and passing the money upward. Today, no one knows about all that stuff anymore. It was the circus side of the bread and circuses...

Bottomfeeding, the free market game

 

And then came Greece and Spain and Italy -- which happily shed its billionaire clown Berlusconi, or jack-in-the-box --, and Portugal. Even France has advanced into the spolight, though it finally dropped Sarkozy (Sàrközy), a man very comfy in billionaire company, for the less flamboyant and almost equally ineffective Hollande. Hollande is only ineffective because he cannot tell the truth, the people would hit the ceiling (assuming they still have the energy to do that).
In fact, no one can tell the truth in the west or east. The truth is: Our world has become a giant money machine. Dig crap out of the crust, process it, sell it to people who have been made dependent on it. Or appropriate natural needs and start selling them. You need it? You buy it. Mr Brabeck of Nestlé, and other wheels in the industry, would like this system applied to water…. It already is, basically, but that is a complicated discussion. Cities are growing, because of the fake hope of earnings there, they are cramped and dirty places, huge bedrooms for the paid slaves of our labor system, and yet absolutely necessary. We are becoming more and more dependent.
A chatty note to young readers: Do you realize, that texting was free of charge at the start?
These are interesting times, very interesting. Today, industries and businesses are apparently just around to make money for the fat cats and throw people out... So maybe we'll see a new revolution at some time in the next 5-10 years.... Mind you, having cashed in our freedom and privacy with the internet, the chances of a successful reform of the current system has worn thin. I must congratulate Jaron Lanier for coming around and seeing in the past five years or so what many had seen before. I am definitely going out to buy his book even though

Just imagine, Google knows who I am, and that is really spooky.

The sound of an economy crumpling

Oh, what a lovely recession

January passed with its drumfire of gloomy figures processed into dreary statistics – mostly records in unemployment rates and factory closings – by the same “protocolistas of the obvious” who used to whoop up the system of total deregulation. From Panasonic to Toyota, from GM to Microsoft, all major industries have lost jobs, thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. It's called downsizing, but don't let that fool you, it's good old pinkslipping. And I, for one, have the nasty idea that the multinationals and other feudal lords of our economic system are using the recession as a smokescreen to dump a few extra workers and whup the others into shape using "optimization processes." By the same token, the downturn in demand is real and it is gradually rippling through economies like some vigorous tsunami not yet rising to full size in shallow waters to form a horrid and lethal wave... Even the high-rpm engines in China and India have suddenly slowed down as well, brave little Switzerland, with its heavy reliance on exports and generally robust economy is feeling the cold. Still, the Swiss government doesn’t dare take a stick to UBS and other banks that squandered billions in high-risk financial adventures and have been paying out bonuses to bankers, presumably to shut them up. The whole system has become so infantile, one wonders whether these men and some women ever grew up.

Meanwhile, President Obama tried to move money into the American system in a somewhat sustainable manner, i.e. putting it into enterprises like weatherizing homes, improving schools, bridges, roads, or simply dumping it into states. Spreading it, in other words. Real stuff for a real economy. And it is desperately needed, has been for decades, but the ultimately-liberated market gurus wanted to drown government in a bathtub, n'est-ce-pas Mr. Nofziger? We remember that the investment economy tried to make money out of money with all sorts of schemes some of which were not more or less bogus than Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This makes France's Third Republic in the last decades of the 19th century look like a paragon of rectitude.
Naturally, Obama is experiencing static from the Republicans, who are still feeling their collective bile rising at having lost to the pipsqueak Senator from Illinois. They still repeat the mantra of tax cuts for the rich like some hideous Baptist tchotchke that keeps repeating "What would Jesus do?" They have obviously run out of any constructive ideas and in the vacuum has stepped the grand gasbag Rush Limbaugh. This should sink what’s left of the old GOP in a few months, unless some more reasonable politicians like Olympia Snowe from Maine show up on the podium to give Boehner and Co. a whack on the fanny. But astoundingly, they managed to nitpick it to the point where it might not, in fact, be terribly effective.... As a friend who suffered testicular cancer once told me: "The pump still works, but the well's run dry." That, at any rate, is Paul Krugman's view in the NY Times today.

As for Limbaugh (and his colleagues like Beck, Savage, Boortz, Coulter, etc.) he is an overpaid, ignorant, narcissistic and somewhat obscene attention-seeker, a kind of fat, old and male version of Britney Spears. She, at least, managed to put two kids into the world and still has a chance to change her ways. Limbaugh, on the other hand, actually seems to believe his own bilge and is sclerotically repeating it in the hopes that the "base," meaning the lunatic fringe, will keep on supporting him. And it is, it is. In the US, frauds still make money. In fact, if you want to even sell a good idea, package it in fraudian garb (a topic I shall return to, no doubt).

But let us not focus on the symptoms too much. After all, what more could the GOP do but attract attention in one of the venerated American ways, by being vulgar, ugly and aggressively imbecilic.

This still leaves Obama having to use a fair amount of force to push through a bill over some resistance. And the bill’s popularity has been dwindling according to a Rasmussen poll. This may have to do indirectly with Tom Daschle’s tax woes, or rather, the fact that he forgot to pay taxes on some limousine he was using. The Great Unwashed does tend to cross-pollinate data, I am afraid. (Chatty footnote: Back in the mid 80s, when the Reaganauts were ranting against both miniature, allegedly Communist Nicaragua and Moslem Lybia, about 60% of people in a poll in Florida believed that the dominant religion in Nicaragua was Islam...) The other problem may well be a failure to learn a fundamental lesson from the financial fiasco. Let us put the "ownership society" back on the slab for a moment. But this time, let us not forget its cohorts: personal debt and the notion of instant gratification. The latter is another concept that used to be widely discussed, but seems to have gone the way of Vance Packard and the social critics of a generation ago.

Gimmee

There's a reason why it's called piggybank

Owning a house, a car, perhaps having some creature comforts in life is fine. But just because your neighbor has it is not reason enough.

People were even warned by the very gurus of the fast buck: There is no free lunch. And fast food is not healthy. Brokers only managed to sell cheap mortgages to low- or no-income people because of the pervasive notion that anyone can strike it rich easily, because that is the American way. It's not. The American way is to make the rich richer, and the less well-off be damned. This plain fact has been documented over and over again for decades. It can be read in Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962), for example. This myth is still swallowed as gospel by millions of Americans every day, and at times it even crosses the Atlantic and infects people's brains in Europe.

Take it easy

It took at least 30 years at least to get into this phenomenal mess. The way out is going to take some time, and it will require not only intelligent and firm navigating on the part of the Obama administration, but also a new paradigm for Americans in general. Patience is one solution. The other is: coming down to earth and being satisfied with less, otherwise you will become the prey of slick-mouthed salesmen. And the first step is recognizing the problems of addiction…. To be continued…

Re-booty

More thoughts on oil and cars. It may be time to restore the system to an earlier date. And why is it that we always have to feel the pain of mega-industries?

Barack Obama rode to power on a car running on green fuel and with gasoline becoming more expensive than milk. And so his message of energy savings and independence did find receptive ears, obviously. By November 4, the shock of $145 plus per barrel of oil was still reverberating in the bones of the car-addicted, even while the sinking economy was beginning to drag down energy prices as well. Within a week of launching his presidency, Obama already put the issue on the table as an early priority. And it makes sense, given that the Big Three failed miserably to devise sustainable strategies in the past and now their gradual demise may well squeeze the entire supplier industry. So what did President Obama have to say?

"We will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America
that is freed from our energy dependence, and empowered by a new energy economy
that puts millions of our citizens to work. … Now is the time to meet the
challenge of this crossroads of history, by choosing a future safer for our
country, prosperous for our planet, and sustainable."

Turn up the volume
The reaction from the auto industry was predictable. As David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) told the New York Times: “It would have a devastating effect on everybody, and not just the domestics.” The auto industry has always, consistently and vociferously resisted changing its polluting and gas-guzzling ways for decades and decades. And they have done so by spending vast amounts of money on lobbyists (such as the CAR) that would have been better spent developing new technology. But the bucks were rolling in, and a vast nation of sheep was out there purchasing those ridiculous SUVs blithely ignoring the plain fact that the stuff running their car was coming from foreign soil and was not doing the atmosphere any good. In fact, a whole lobby was created to explain that pollution doesn't exist nor has it an effect on people and the environment. Well, that will sell to people who are willing to believe that dinosaurs stalked the earth with humans 6000 years ago.

The issue of energy dependence or independence is hardly a new one. But in a world in which anyone over 50 is considered a rusting hulk at the bottom of the ocean, and most young people clamp their brains between ear buds that blast them full of commercial thumping, a certain transfer of data has gone missing. Thirty-one years ago, then President Carter had this to say at his State of the Union Address:

“Never again should we neglect a growing crisis like the shortage of energy,
where further delay will only lead to more harsh and painful solutions…. Now we
know what we must do, increase production. We must cut down on waste. And we
must use more of those fuels which are plentiful and more permanent. We must be
fair to people, and we must not disrupt our Nation's economy and our budget.”

The path of least resistance
Then came Whitewash Reagan and suddenly Carter’s good intentions went out the window, alas. In the Happy Days mode, Americans felt it was OK to "move on" and live for the day, buying any car they liked, any car that Detroit wanted to foist upon them. Thus, every Tom, Dick and Jane with an inferiority complex could buy some huge device made for chasing terrorists in the desert and ride from home to the general store, shop and never witch off their engine. Anyone suggesting that this was absurd, that pollution was a real danger, that such vehicles were unnecessary or, heaven forbid, more money should be invested in public transportation, was laughed off the map or even called a Commie or Socialist. The latter two buzzwords, by the way, are always pulled out of the hat when someone feels humungous profits threatened, or some redneck is trying to sound smart. Most would not even recognize Communism if it came out of the corn syrup dispenser at House of Pancakes. Let's face it.

The price of oil was so cheap that innovation could no longer be marketed properly. That was the message from the scientific community, at any rate. At the Research Institutes in Garching, some scientists had found a very effective method to recycle heat using heat pumps and a silicate. But with oil at $12 or so a barrel, no way to get the system into the market where it belonged.

1+1=3
Indeed, in the 30 years between the oil shocks of the 70s and now, the entire world has changed. There can be no doubt that given the right leadership, human endeavor would have easily found a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine (the research was being done, there is no doubt, but it was kept away from the public, since the old system was working so well). But for that, it would have taken real leaders in power, not industry shills and professional deskmen with deep pockets like the class of pol that has risen to the top. Because the problem is not just in the USA. The German and French auto industries also jumped on the gas-guzzle bandwagon and hollered foul each time it was asked to mend its ways. The ADAC, Germany’s automobile club, has consistently lobbied against any regulation, for example. And the CAR equivalent in Germany, the VDA, has done nothing but put on the brakes. In the 70s, attempts were made to limit speeds on German highways, which are to this day the last bastion of official motoring hooliganism in Europe (barring country roads in places like Croatia, Hungary and Serbia, where the momma’s boys are also plentiful and need to counteract their inherent anger by driving big cars and stepping on the gas). These attempts were reversed by the groundswell of conservatism that swept the nation as of 1983. What a shame. By now, we would be used to going slower.

So we have to reboot to a different time, to an era in which we had a chance, like the 1970s. And the industry will squeak. It is doing so already. At an environmental forum in July in Magedeburg, Germany, hosted by Daimler, among others, all the lobbyists were present, sweating away for their masters, pleading to let the free market do its magic. The time may have come to let them grovel and plead. The last time we gave in to them, they ran off with the cash register and trashed the place.

(More to come on this topic, of course… so stay posted)