Posted on 03/07/2009 9:48:58 PM PST by Lorianne
Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...
We can’t do this anymore.
“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No way. We're not even close to the wall. Since the Industrial Revolution we improved our condition until the 1930s and since then we are stuck there. Look at our society now compared to then and besides things looking sleeker we live on the same technology.
We got stuck there because a combination of three things:
1. Wimpiness. We became wimps who do not want to be killed exploring new technology such as private aircraft, or even hovercraft, etc. When you look at the improvements between 1800 and 1930 we should have continued on that path. Our cities should look more like those Star Wars cities with no traffic jams and parking trees rather than parking lots, etc. I believe the technology is there but who's going to be the first few to use it and die before the bugs are worked out. We lose 40,000 lives per year in traffic accidents. Our society would freak out over losing 1000 on a new technology so we're stuck on the ground indefinitely.
2. Progressive taxation. I don't think it's any coincidence our technology climb ended with FDR and the beginning of progressive taxation. It was always the rich that invested in new things to improve the way we did things. Since the beginning of punishing the rich with FDR's progressive taxation and lawsuits for every little thing, who's going to take a chance to invest a boatload in a new technology that will improve everyday life just to be sued or taxed out of business. Instead we just improve the stuff already invented.
3. Government. It seems like some of the best minds (like Tesla) are always attacked by the government for fear of new technology getting into the wrong hands. Tesla may not have been right about everything but the man who did more than Edison to bring about alternating current, etc, probably should not have been ridiculed like he was.
There's lots of things we could be doing rather than inventing a better windshield wiper. Looking at 1830 to 1900, there should be hotels on one of Saturn's moons by now. That would be a good release for an ever-expanding economy.
That’s all fine but those things are NOT what our economy has been based on these last 20 years or so. It’s been based on consumerism (of goods mostly produced elsewhere) via unsupportable consumer debt.
That is simply not sustainable as we are now seeing.
Living beyond your means, whether for an individual or a government, is not sustainable over the long run.
That roadbump is made of pure liberalsim! And they want to use even more of it to build the entire road beyond that point. We need to stop, back up a few feet, get out and get our hands dirty removing that roadbump, then get back in and continue our journey on the good road ahead.
We are not where we are because of socialism. We are where we are because we bought things we didn't need, made in foreign countries with money we didn't have. Socialism is simply taking advantage of the situation and that socialism is being wielded by communists who know full well what's going on and how to exploit it. Team Obama is nothing more than a tool of the whoever is behind the whole thing.
Liberals are selfish, self-centered people who don't see, or chose to ignore, the true cost of having their way.
Exactly. And sans the environmental mumbo jumbo, Friedman is (now) saying the same thing as Schiff.
Only he doesn’t connect the dots to big goverment as well.
Thanks for bumping this thread!
My point is that without limitations set on us by our government and our own queeziness with new technologies, our economy could expand indefinitely into new areas. We are not even close to the end.
This kind of liberal insanity drives me to the brink of my own insanity. We don’t manage the forests for our exploitation, which is good for both us and the forest, and instead we let all that timber burn. Not that the growth won’t come back, but the liberal insanity is just out of control. They aren’t even subtle anymore that “mother earth” would be better off without humans.
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