The economic collapse is inevitable, yes. It is a crisis of global and historic proportions, yes. Let us not forget, however, that every crisis is an opportunity. That is, if we allow ourselves to perceive the opportunity in the danger, and then act.
Forgive me if I do not wax sympathetic here about the plight of Americans. Look, I don’t want a global financial meltdown, but what do you expect to get when you have an economy that is run on virtually nothing that comes from your own damn country, and insist that you be the center of economic attention? What can you expect your economy to do when you outsource jobs to cut financial corners and import cheaply-made goods marketed by cheap big-box corporate stores with no accountability? What do you really expect is going to happen to a country run on entitlement; run with an arrogant attitude that, to paraphrase Roseanne Barr in Michael Moore’s new free movie Slacker Uprising, constantly repeats, “the world is my bitch and if she don’t give me what I want, I will bust a cap in her ass?” Some of these questions have moral implications, and I’d argue that morality is embedded in good economic sense–”right livelihood” and all that. But even from a purely economic standpoint, this crisis has been waiting to happen for some time, exacerbated by an irresponsible and just plain greedy cultural ethos of rugged individualism against the world.
I could rail on like this for a little longer, but that’s not what I want to do right now. This is a time for Americans and our elected representatives to ACT in a way that corrects the culture of greed and irresponsibility and brings a genuinely renewed sense of economics into the sphere of public life.
I strongly believe in local communities and their economies. The current pyramid scheme of wealth and power squelches communities and small-scale economies in favor of massively concentrated wealth for the elite and the privileged few. Whether anyone believes this is as it should be or not has suddenly become irrelevant because the system is not working. President Bush said it himself last night, “The market is not functioning properly.” Well, that’s obvious.
Or maybe it is functioning properly, but it’s just reached its limit. At any rate, the crisis is a clear indication that now would be a good time to think about alternative ways to structure economies–plural economies, with a focus on local and regional levels, not on corporate CEOs and their global fantasies.
People are talking about this, proposing alternative visions and plans for an economics that doesn’t continue to follow the same failed patterns of robbing from the poor to prop up the economic wet dreams of the conscienceless elite. Dennis Kucinich has criticized the proposed bailouts: “Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt ‘de-leverages.’” He’s got more to say, and it should surprise none that I think people should read this stuff:
kucinich.us – Protecting the public interest in any economic “bailout”
kucinich.us – Kucinich’s Main Street Recovery Plan
Others have come forward with their own ideas, and as long as Congress doesn’t bend over for Paulson, Bernanke, CheneyBush, and Company, I feel we’ll have a right proper slow-paced discussion of what to do and how to proceed. I like the ideas proposed by Chuck Collins and Dedrick Muhammed:
Funding the Bailout: Basic Principles
- Wall Street and speculators should pay now for the mess they created.
- Instead of borrowing from the super-wealthy beneficiaries of the casino economy, we should tax them.
- Any bailout should stimulate the real economy with investments in Main Street, not just Wall Street.
Pagan activist Starhawk has also written an excellent essay on the economic collapse and presented a vision for government aid now as a short-term solution to empowering local communities and economies. It should be up on her website within the next few days.
Rather than feel cynical and disempowered, as some are apt to do in a time of widely vanishing investments, why not step up and agitate for changes that will benefit not only Americans, not only the global economy, but the entire actual living Earth? This could be a historic opportunity for a reconceptualization of economic life, or we can stay the course, painfully grinding our way to an economic bottom that is far, far, far down from where we are floating in the haze of a corrupted American Dream.
Choices.
