Politics

“Reinventing collapse” by Orlov (2008)

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Dmitry Orlov’s “Reinventing collapse” is as actually a real downer, but Orlov’s intelligence, black humor and very Russian naturally cynical attitude – “to a Russian, ‘hard worker’ sounded a lot like ‘fool'” – makes the book a very pleasant reading experience. The book is full of resigned shrugs regarding the possibility of preventing the absolutely-certainly-coming societal collapse. We’re not talking about saving the world here – the best we can hope for is saving our own skins!

The Long and the Short of It: Existential Comfort in the Age of Hopkins and Greer, Part III

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There is in Greer no sense that we are a singular people standing at a singular moment where history has opened up to provide us with breath-taking possibilities: “Human societies, like fence lizards, are organic systems, and they respond to changes in their environments in much the same way” (85); “history is an ecological phenomenon, governed by the same laws as other processes in nature” (241). Thus we aren’t going to be confronted with a fork in the road, the road less travelled made famous according to the predominant misinterpretation of the Frost poem, with a moment to act or not, as the opening lines of The Handbook suggests.

What kind of jobs?

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Jobs, yes, but what kind? While Obama proposes to build highways (with some runways and railbeds thrown in), and the national GOP continues to say “no,” what are local politicians doing? Some crucial economic steps could be taken only by the feds, but is there anything to be accomplished meanwhile on the state or county levels?

A nation in decline part 3: an unhealthy nation

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There used to be a lot of men and women like our friend. Thin, wiry, fit, able to do hard physical labor outdoors, to hike, ski, swim. Every now and then, we see an older man or woman, walking proud and erect, slim and trim. In the west, the man might have on boots, a cowboy hat, denim shirt, and stiff blue jeans. Like our late friend Val from Tucson. Today, such people look strange and out of place. Modern America is the land of the unfit.

Rearranging the deck chairs – Part II

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In yesterday’s post Rearranging The Deck Chairs, I alluded to the surreal quality of the current debate about Obama’s proposed stimulus program to rebuild America’s roads and highways infrastructure. But the debate about letting the Bush tax cuts expire is even more bizarre. The entire discussion is taking place without its proper context—the grotesque wealth and income inequality in the United States. Instead, the arguments center around future deficits, stimulating spending to achieve economic growth, the economic effects of taxes, etc. Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!

Class interests and the future of inflation

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The threat of inflation comes not from any conscious policy on the part of central bankers or even most central governments who have already made their iron-clad allegiance to the wealthy classes abundantly clear. Rather the threat of inflation comes from the eventual exhaustion of government credit in the face of an intractable and unstoppable deflation brought on by continuous deleveraging of companies and households.

ODAC Newsletter – Sep 10

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Wednesday saw the release of BP’s Deepwater Horizon Accident Investigation report – the company’s version of the events that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. BP admits responsibility for some of the list of technical and human failures which it says led to the disaster, but also heaps blame on both the rig owners Transocean and contractors Halliburton…

Shovels and ballots… Getting to work on 10/10/10

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After major disappointments in Copenhagen and Washington D.C., millions of us concerned about the climate crisis have been left wondering "what now?". The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the political and infrastructural challenges so large and complex, that it’s no surprise to see soul-searching and disagreements over the best course of action. Especially when legislative and diplomatic efforts to date have fallen flat. When folks like Dave Roberts — who fiercely advocated for admittedly weak Cap & Trade legislation because he felt that it was our best hope for progress — have given up on the nation’s capitol, it’s clear that a lot of people are being forced to re-evaluate.

Rearranging the deck chairs

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Listening to the “news” and reading the usual sources on the internet has become surreal as the summer winds down. The key word lately is infrastructure. The President and the Democrats launched some initiatives that have no chance of being approved by Congress because they have to run for re-election on something, especially with underemployment the highest it’s been since World War II.

Politics in the Great Transition

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Someday there will be thousands of scholarly books on how political systems coped or failed during the transition from fossil fuel-sustained civilizations to that which is to come. For now, however, there are practically none as only a relative handful of the 6.7 billion on earth today have even a glimmer that the great transition is underway.