imho the predicament the dominant culture has got itself into (the fossil fuel binge, overcapitalisation, liquidation of resources, growth cult and that whole nexus) cannot be solved w/in the terms of the religion of neolib economics that created it. all attempts to work w/in the profiteer, rentier, or finance-capitalist (call it what you will) model will fail because of DeAnander's Law: it is always more profitable to do things wrong. thus all the neg-sum games that are touted as the "fix" for the energy crunch. they are 'profitable' because they are neg-sum. [Hornborg, Prigogine, Georgescu-Roegen...]
you can do things wrong -- i.e. stupidly, inefficiently, twice or thrice over, with diminishing returns, with massive embezzlement, with ratcheting bandaid effects, etc -- for a long time, provided that you have a vast periphery to loot for additional raw inputs to cover up the loss and waste in the process. kind of like this: you can tolerate a massive tapeworm in your gut so long as you have an enormous food supply and can eat like a hog to support both organisms (you and your intestinal buddy). but when the food supply runs short the diversion of resources to the parasite becomes a survival issue and one or both will die: either the host sheds the parasite and the parasite dies, or the host dies and the parasite dies with it (parasites not being notably bright or forward-looking). the periphery is shrinking, and it's picked over and threadbare.
the global climate issue, the peak oil issue, the drawdown of every other resource on the planet, cannot be addressed by the Cult of More because the legerdemain, the glut of raw material that feeds the hopper is running out -- that's the heart of the problem. but high profit margins depend on carelessness, waste, haste, and inefficiency: less profit is made if transactions don't churn over as frequently, so things must be made shoddy and disposable, thus chewing up more and more raw materials to meet the same needs (or appetites). taking more time to do things right "costs money" so corners are cut, indigenes are shot and tortured, forests are clearcut, topsoil is destroyed, toxins are dumped and all the rest.
and all the pols, all the analysts, all the academics, all the bankers, and even the proles in the streets, are firmly indoctrinated members of the Cult of More -- prisoners of the Village of Enterprise (and I'm thinking Patrick McGoohan here, lava lamps, man on the pennyfarthing, "why did you resign", that village).
the old saying is that a paradigm does not change until its believers are dead. this is not, at this juncture in history, a reassuring dictum (and I think I'll go pull the covers over my head again). The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
it looks like romney would be an extension of pax americana as we know and love it, his only mission to be a kinder, gentler giuliani.
unfortunately he looks 'presidential' in that 'squeezed from the tube' comicbook, lantern-jawed way the american media love....
reaches for barfbag...
from a moron to a mormon...dare we call this an improvement?
a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g but rudi, please, that man makes mccain look like a saint, and romney an angel.
my bet is that it's hilary's to lose, unless gore steps in.
edwards strange obsession with unwindblown hair has cost him valcred (valuable credibility!) two campaigns in a row.
while i'm mining the chunks on the surface, does anyone else think that bizarre lump in mccain's jaw is a winning image?
i'm reminded of a photoshop plug-in called 'bulge'.
jerome, your obama diary was spot-on, and brought up some good discussions.
as for romney, another chip off the old authoritarian block.
a name like a baseball glove...dogwhistle rousing..... The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
Hotmail, Napster, Skype and so on spread "virally" at amazing speed, and I believe that napsterised , "partnerised", enterprise is capable of spreading at the same rate.
In a partnership, there is no profit and no loss - merely mutual creation and exchange between members of "value" in all its forms. In this model it is in peoples' interests to cooperate rather than to compete.
In an "asset-based" financial system - which requires no changes to any law to introduce and is already emerging - developing for Quality and energy efficiency is rational, not as now, irrational.
it occurs to me that a shift in scale and communication has something to do with our ills. this is not well thought out, just a wild notion that came to me while reading your riff on 'napsterisation', but I consider that... at the village mercado level, the zocolo, the bazaar, most people are known to each other and gossip and rumour travel like wildfire (i.e., a very rapid and ubiquitous reputation service). knowledge is largely shared and equalised, most people can tell a good canteloupe from a bad 'un and they buy their meat still squawking so they can tell how old it is and whether it's healthy.
when trade becomes long-haul, global, etc. the lines of communication are slower and also expensive, so only the elite have full knowledge of provenance and process and quality, and the proles and customers are working in an information vacuum. the products we buy and consume have had their meanings and histories amputated. what the internet would do, if truly ubiquitised (wifi everywhere, $10 palmtops in every pocket, open source OS, net neutrality -- dream on, but let's go with the thought experiment), is restore the village gossipnet to the global market, so that producer and consumer once again become dynamic, individual, and shifting roles instead of a fixed, cumbersome feudal hierarchy and hierophancy.
if this notion of popular communications lagging elite transport and finance mobility by several centuries, but starting to catch up, has any validity, then it would explain the sudden panic of the elites and their attempts to throttle the internet. I am watching wimax with interest -- the uunet of the future? decentralisation is imho the only way to get out from under the command/control freaks. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Be seeing you ... -----sapere aude
