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The machine gun of capitalism
Mark Morford, San Francisco Gate (SF Chronicle)
Dead soldiers, peak oil and mind-boggling profits; praise Jesus, the machine’s still working
—
…Here are your most deeply inspiring news stories of the month:
A flurry of pink slips fluttered over the job sector as corporate payrolls were sliced like sour pie. Foreclosures are skyrocketing and new home sales across the nation are plummeting faster than Britney Spears’ serotonin levels. A nasty recession is either creeping or flooding in, depending on your perspective and how recently you purchased your home and/or tried to dump your Google stock.
Meanwhile, the largest corporation in the world, the one which has consistently raked in the largest and most appalling profits of any organization on Earth, a company so powerful and deeply influential to the machinations of our own nation, our government, the globe, so ingrained and unstoppable that no president, no administration, no nuclear warhead to its CEO’s home planet stands a chance of slowing it down or altering its behavior in any significant way because there is simply far, far too much money involved in its nefarious endeavors, has recently posted the largest profit of any company in American history.
Yes, the Exxon Mobil corporation sucked in a staggering $11.7 billion in a single quarter (more than $40 billion for the year, a new record for an American company) thanks largely to record-breaking prices for a barrel of oil, which are of course only record-breaking because, well, the Bush administration has essentially engineered the economy and launched a bogus war and desiccated the American idea exactly so they would be.
… Yes, the system is working just exactly as those in control of the nation right now wish it to be working, with the most dominant, ruthless corporations in the world (Exxon joined by Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhilips et al) still making the most money in the most destabilizing and environmentally devastating manner possible, while poor uneducated kids die like chattel in unwinnable wars trying to secure a tiny bit more of the source of their profit.
And somewhere in between, the nation’s overall health and well-being are sacrificed like dazed lambs to an ignorant god, with our government offering up only the most meager, desultory efforts to keep it functional so as to not induce all-out fire-and-pitchfork revolt.
Is that too simplistic? Too reductive? Not even close. Hell, you can distill it down even further. For if you understand, as most sentient creatures on the planet now do, that this “war” is merely a particularly bloody chunk of a particularly brutal, fraudulent national energy policy spearheaded by Dick Cheney and beloved by Saudi Arabia and Halliburton and most of Texas…
…Here, then, is perhaps the most dominant question surrounding the upcoming big transition, as the nation prepares over the next year to finally rid itself of the cancer of Bush: Are we still capable of reshaping the capitalist demon, injecting it, on a national scale, with something like conscience and compassion and responsibility, sans the need to sell your mother, rape Alaska, or bomb ancient cities and kill pathetic foreign dictators in a pitiable attempt to vindicate your dad? Is such a turnaround even possible anymore?
Because this nasty truth remains: Bush or no, Exxon and its nefarious, insanely powerful ilk are ramming full speed ahead, undertaking more incredibly brutal, land-raping techniques as you read these very words to get at the Earth’s remaining supply of oil, sucking up tar sand and coal and anything else possible to maintain profit and power. They are, and will continue to be, utterly relentless and, at least for a number of years to come, quite unstoppable.
There is no eliminating the dark side of capitalism, the gluttony and the greed and the violent underbelly. There is only minimizing, shifting the emphasis, changing the pitch and angle of approach, trying to take what is, at its very heart, a flawed and self-destructive system, and making it into something proud and interesting and vibrant, something actually worth defending.
(6 February 2008)
Hard to believe this appeared on a U.S. news site. If the economy tanks and the oil wars continue, Morford’s essay will probably appear mild. What many of us fear is that the anger will be undirected and counter-productive, lashing out at whatever scapegoats are convenient.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford has always been a wildman, but usually he is more ironic. -BA
This Time Around, Bush Recommends 40 Percent Cutback In Amtrak Budget
Karin Crompton, The Day (Connecticut)
President Bush’s proposed budget, released Monday, recommends cutting Amtrak’s budget by nearly 40 percent, a move that has become an annual volley between Bush and a Congress that has repeatedly reinstated the money.
The president’s proposal suggests a budget of $800 million for Amtrak – a cut of $525 million that the proposal says is “a significant but necessary cut to the railroad’s federal subsidy.”
The proposal says the bulk of those funds would be used for capital investments to continue making improvements to the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak’s busiest route with more than 9 million passengers in fiscal year 2006.
(5 February 2008)
Serial Bubbles?
James Howard Kunstler, Blog
Eric Janszen of iTuilip.com has made a splash in the mainstream media with his Harper’s Magazine cover story on the “The Next Bubble.” His thesis is that a new tidal wave of investment will shortly roll toward “infrastructure and alternative energy.” By this Janszen means a revived nuclear power push, refurbishing highways, bridges, and tunnels, “high-speed rail,” solar and wind power, and alternative liquid fuels. This coming boom, he says, would be driven by political fear about energy security.
On the face of it, Janszen’s proposition seems more promising and intelligent than the previous engineered boom in suburban houses. But it raises a lot of questions and flags.
For one thing, the term “bubble” suggests something more like a financial Chinese fire drill than actual productive activity. It would be an excellent thing if Americans invested in a restored passenger rail system. But if it were merely a scheme for big banks to issue innovative new securities for gigantic fees without actually getting any trains running — well that would be in the nature of just another old-fashioned swindle, as the bundling of mortgages into securitized debt paper has proven to be.
In other words, does Janszen make a distinction between a boom and a “bubble?” He seems to understand that the previous two bubbles in dot-coms and houses were essentially frauds that generated imaginary wealth, which sooner later evaporated off the balance sheets and out of the financial system. A boom, it seems to me, is not the same as a “bubble.” While perhaps wasteful and messy, booms at least produce something of value beyond the fees paid to bankers for arranging the deployment of capital. A boom that resulted in citizens being able to take a train from Boston to Albany would produce a substantial public good. The creation by Goldman Sachs of a company on paper that never accomplished anything would be something else. This, of course, leads to a deeper question as to whether the USA is actually a serious society or just a nation of hopeless, greedy clowns?
(4 February 2008)
A Look at the Future? One Anthropologist’s View
Graham F. Pringle, Vermont Peak Oil Network
Much of what’s wrong with America today consists of unintended consequences of the U.S. Constitution, with its unalienable rights of the individual. …
This doesn’t mean that America can’t adapt many aspects of its culture to changing conditions. Of sheer necessity, it will. But it will only do slowly, in a protracted battle to preserve the rights of the individual and his family to live as they please, where they please, surrounded by as much private land as they can afford, and travel as, when, however they like. The rights of the individual over those of the collectivity constitute one of our society’s core values. Such things don’t change in a hurry, and they can’t just be replaced by other values that are popular with one or another segment of society even if they’d be better adapted to external reality.
…One should not, however, confuse culture with habits. These are less deeply ingrained, are thus more amenable to change, and need to be the starting point for warding off global disaster. At the bottom of the scale is changing light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescent; a little higher up is trading in SUVs for fuel-efficient cars; then comes the substitution of biofuels for those made from petroleum, and the extensive use of wind, water, solar, and geothermal energy. None of these things will require a significant change in people’s lives. Changes in agricultural methods, eating habits, and the shifting of financial resources at the family level from consumer goods to food, will be harder to achieve; and changing our transportation system from a primary reliance on roads to the building of a modern, efficient rail system will require major political and economic upheavals. But it can be done. Japan has done it with its monorails, and France with its ever-expanding high-speed TGV rail network.
With a greater or lesser degree of difficulty, I think all these changes will occur, but only incrementally and when all else fails. But weaning Americans from their love of open space, which they consider their natural heritage, to become a nation of city-lovers would be a much tougher proposition, and I doubt it will happen. Here one comes up head-on against one of America’s core cultural beliefs, and every drop of fuel and every possible use of technology will be rallied to save the suburbs. I remember the film, The End of Suburbia, a look at a supposedly imminent suburban collapse, and I think that it got it wrong. Instead, I think the suburbs will evolve from being mere dormitories from which workers commute each day to largely self-sufficient commercial-industrial-residential communities with their own infrastructures, thereby continuing and accelerating a trend that had started at least by the mid 1960s as companies, out of sheer convenience, began to relocate their offices to the suburbs where a white-collar work force already existed without need for undue travel. And I think that these communities, as healthier places to live and work than in dense urban centers, will ultimately be linked to each other, as well as to the cities they once served, by an efficient rail system linked to frequent intra-suburban shuttle bus services, thus minimizing the need for automobile travel. Perhaps this could become the New American Dream, individual-friendly but community oriented.
Graham Pringle, anthropologist and neuroscientist by training, has taught anthropology, psychology and neural science at the college level, and has worked as a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. His main area of anthropological interest involves cultural continuity versus culture change in Western societies, especially in rural regions, when faced with the outside pressures of modernization, commercialization, and globalization. Graham lives in Addison Count
(1 February 2008)
Hat tip to Annie Dunn Watson of Vermont Peak Oil Network.
No question that individualism is hyper-developed in the USA. Yet there are countertrends, especially if one gets away the more modern and commercial spheres. Volunteer and community groups have flourished here, for example. If one looks back in history, there have been strong political movements for social justice, such as labor and civil rights. At the moment, individualism is at a peak, but that is true for most other countries as well. -BA
