In a response to one of my posts my attention was brought to an article entitled "The Decline of the West" although I believe a more relevant title would have been "The End of the Nation-State and the Rise of the Criminal Entrepreneur".
Specifically I was asked to comment on the article, so here goes.*
The article ends with three choices, the last of which is: "Or finally, you can build something new. Resilient communities and independent economic networks based on freedom, prosperity, and a new moral compact".
This is the (only) real choice, and although from a much less social/communal angle than it is perhaps advocating I agree wholeheartedly.
I don't believe that the world of free markets is necessarily a better world, and certainly not for the United States. Somewhere back in the sixties in an era of maximum egoism the USA came to the conclusion that they somehow had a monopoly on intellectual creativity and that we would keep all the high-tech "intellectual" jobs and ship out the "manual" work to cheaper providers.
That might have worked at one point in time, but that train has long left the station. We are now developing technologies and having them manufactured somewhere else thus creating the "eggshell" nation that I encountered in a trip from Boston to Toronto through a swathe of Up-State New York highlighted by the blighted towns of Schenectady, Renssalaer, Albany, Oneonta, Binghamton, Corning, Olean and that beacon of despair Buffalo.
These were the birthplaces of American engineering. Their populations have halved in some instances are down over 65%. There is no work, and there is no real hope for work. This has been repeated across the nation.
I advocate a form of isolationism which is aimed at putting Americans to work. The new and innovative industries that President Obama wants us to build have to be more than a fountain of intellectual capital. We need to develop the ability to take our new industries and recognise that innovation is the start, and that it must lead to manufacturing.
We need to recreate the ability to take prototypes and to scale them into manufacturing companies domiciled in the USA, or more specifically NAFTA.
I would accept being called protectionist to re-create this environment. I would entertain levying taxes on the product of offshore labor and on products whose beneficial pricing is predicated on FX manipulation and working conditions and laws that undercut our own pricing.
We need to recognise that first and foremost our goal has to be to create/maintain the industrial base upon which the society whose adaptability and stability we desire is based.
Yes we need to change our industries and the energy sector upon which our society is so reliant. Not by "drill baby drill", but by innovation and a recognition that the environment is an important aspect of our society, not a natural resource to be exploited and cast aside.
The whole world can't be like we are-we would require six earths. We can't stay as we are-using 25% of the earth's resources. We can and must change our industrial base. Perhaps we must focus on home and for a while let the others take care of themselves.
*http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/05/the-decline-of-the-west.html
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The environment is more than "an important aspect of our society." It is the basis of our lives, the source of food and all the comforts of home. It can't be cast aside: it is the aside ("there is no away"). Someone asked me yesterday if I thought we were headed to a point beyond which we would make the planet inhospitable for human life; I thought of the people who live on garbage heaps and said I thought we were there already, in some ways. Something is wrong when there is so much to be done in the way of repairing the planet and helping others and yet people can't find work.
ReplyDeleteagreed. i was trying to get away from the argument about the "science" and to avoid what i think is a pitfall of talking about the environment as if we aren't part of it. you are right. it can't be cast aside. i would like to think neither can humankind. we need to establish a way a working within our environment in a symbiotic way. my fear is that there are many pinheads out there who can't grasp that and so have a kneejerk reaction to essentially any discussion about the environment.
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