Credit Card Wishing Well
Now that the credit card wishing well has run dry, we may be in a post consumer age. We may be the end of the debt driven economy. Internationally we have wondered whether the Chinese will continue to believe us when we say will gladly pay them Tuesday for that hamburger we are borrowing money to buy today. Nationally, investors are wondering if that company that has lost 70% of its stock value is ever going to be able to pay off. And sub prime lenders are wondering if the folks who bought houses they could not afford are going to be able to pay the money back in a single life time.
If you think about it a dollar bill used to be based on the promise of the US government to pay gold for script. We went off the gold standard decades ago. Now any bank can manufacture cash out of thin air. We were told this magic money was perfectly safe. We now know it wasn't.
And so the people have spoken and in the judgment of the people what we need is a government that will extend more credit and print more money. We are therefore virtually guaranteed each of the dollars we have in our pockets this year will be worth half as much next year. It is difficult to see how more credit will get out of a jam caused by too much credit. And instead of the oversight that might have forestalled the current economic crisis, we are promised that government will micro-manage if not nationalize the economy.
One of the more amusing economic notions going around is the idea that the government can print money without inflation. Anyone who believes this should ask themselves this: suppose the government printed out a trillion dollars for each American and handed it to us? How much would a loaf of bread cost?
Another amusing notion is that we should find our local billionaire and hold him upside down and shake him until all the money falls out. Then distribute that money to all the people in the world he has made money from. Since the world's population exceeds 5 billion, if you took $50 billion from some billionaire and shared or spread the Alabama Lemon Laws you could do that exactly once and we would each get $10. And all the jobs from all the factories or businesses that billionaire owned would be lost. So we would all be out of work with $10 in our pockets.
What do we do if the debt driven economic model is no longer a viable one? Can we have a post credit economy? Can we have an economy without credit? One can postulate a post consumer economy. Almost as an article of faith, we could go green and sustainable. Not because we necessarily believe in saving the earth or Global warming, But rather because you see that a credit based economy has run its course. If people are not going to keep on buying disposable crap on credit then we need a lifestyle based on something else. For instance, if we could generate enough renewable or sustainable energy, perhaps the surplus energy could be used to support a higher quality of life as well. In the past people that nuclear power would make so much energy that the energy would be too cheap to meter. Imagine what we could do with all that energy if could create such a world. Public transportation have almost not energy cost for instance.
Another grow area should be recycling all our waste products and using that waste to produce fuel, energy and more sustainable products.
Some of the post consumerists that are running around are actually socialists in disguise. At those points in history when capitalism appears to having a hard time, expect the Marxists to come out of the woodwork. The socialists will come running to assure us that some the same economics that worked for the Soviet Union and Zimbabwe and North Korea, will work for us.
No we do not need a Marxist economy. Rather we need a smarter brand of economics than we have today. Unfortunately, our latest political upheaval was fueled by folks who think that other guy over there is doing something detrimental to the body politic. And a strong, centralized government is just what we need to force that other guy to behave in a way that is more suitable. Well, one can only hope we will grow out of this before irreparable harm is done. Centrally planned economies literally create disasters and then pose as saviors. So we have that to look forward to.
One of the more radically things that may come to pass as we head for a greener and more sustainable economy is: getting off the grid. Individuals and cities will be encouraged to get off the centralized energy grid. So we will get more freedom in spite of ourselves.
What about barter? Could we have an entire economy based on the exchange of goods and services with out the intervening medium of money? Well for some jobs such as butcher or grocer barter might be an easy sell. But what about for sewer workers or even computer programmers? Money as a medium exchange is a very convenient way to move the value of labor from a remote end of the economy to the center without inconveniencing anyone. So barter is probably not going to work for most of us.
There are those who say that what a post consumer society should be a simpler and wiser society. They argue that our living spaces should be smaller. With smaller houses we would need less junk to fill those houses. We would spend more public money on public transportation and fewer of us would have cars. As much as possible we could buy and consume farm products locally. We could extend that and try to buy many of things we use locally. Plastic bags would be rare since we would all use cloth shopping bags. There would be almost no phone books produced since many of us get our information about local shops online. There would be fewer libraries since we get much of our reading material online. More jobs would be telecommuting jobs. Some schools would go to an all cyber model.
This utopian view of post consumerism would have us all pursue quality over quantity and consumption of quality experiences over expensive trinkets. So an eco trip that helps save endangered pandas would be favored over a yacht that gets used once per year. We would tell our friends that instead of giving us presents for Christmas or birthdays to instead give to the bald gerbil fund and the endangered mole rat relief fund. We might give or solicit handmade over store bought gifts.
Michael A. Skinner
waitingonthenewmoon.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/angel-sightings/http://waitingonthenewmoon.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/angel-sightings/
posted by datdk @ 7:02 AM
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