The radical resistance of self extinction

 The statistics are easy to find showing that a handful of billionaires control more wealth than the bottom half of the population in the United States. Extreme wealth generates its own gravity, sucking more and more resources toward itself.

The United States owes much of its prosperity to the stolen labor of slaves. When official slavery was ended, powerful men in the former Confederacy made sure that the Black population would remain subjugated. By the end of the 19th Century, powerful business interests built immense fortunes by suppressing labor -- creating a virtual slave economy -- until reformers in the government heeded the uprisings and broke the power of corporate consolidation and collusion.

Big business kept trying, and had flourished again by the 1920s, setting up economic collapse. A few rich tumbled, but the solid fortunes survived. Let the common folk bear the brunt of the decisions and follies of the powerful. It has been that way throughout history. Power accretes, life is cheap, and you're a slacker and a coward if you don't play along.

While humanity plays out its endless power struggles, we trash the environment. We keep discovering that we removed some key piece that we thought was not important in our haste.

At the moment, we are developing technology that allows the wealthy to keep tabs on us and suppress us better than ever. Any government that we instituted to keep them in check would use the same technology to protect itself. It might be okay as long as the government was staffed by people who would not abuse that power. What are the odds?

The future seems to hold a couple of unpalatable probabilities: the majority of us end up grubbing for sustenance in a global economy run by a few for the benefit of a few, and we end up in constant losing battles with the armed forces and law enforcement of the regime in perpetuity.

We can "vote with our wallets" all we want, boycotting this or that visible head of the multi-headed mega-corporations, but we're just an inconvenience for a single division or two. The major money machine thrives. We can elect progressive champions who will vote for the things that would truly improve our lot in all respects, but they will have to deal politically with the well-funded representatives of the corporatocracy.

Thinking about a real shootin' revolution? Your odds are terrible, given the global reach and vested interest of the wealthy. Forget whether you would win. The war itself would reduce the planet to a smoldering rock. This is not hyperbole based on the power of nuclear weapons. It's a mere fact about war: it pollutes and destroys without restraint. Lots of things will get blown up. Both sides are fighting for their lives with nothing to lose.

I hate to be a downer, but any future generations you produce now will be slave labor or doomed cannon fodder. But it doesn't have to be grim and sad. You've just freed up a lot of disposable income as well as relieving yourself of a moral burden. You don't have to leave, just because you have refused to give the wealthy your children as hostages. Have fun! Eat tasty food. Listen to music. Travel.

See, here's the thing: The rich will keep breeding. They'll go on for years before they even notice that we've stopped providing cheap labor. They will produce more of their privileged offspring than the top tier can accommodate. Those kids will filter down into the lower roles. Laws will have to be rewritten to disinherit them, so that they can't rebel and take over the system that their families have maintained for generations.

The wealthy themselves, mostly not expert at anything except keeping a boot on the necks of the people who work for them, will have to develop expertise pretty quickly to keep up the automated systems they paid others to invent so that they could lay off a bunch of workers. Their utopia depends on having just the right number of underlings to keep things humming. If we all refuse to help them meet their staffing needs, they lose their comfy bubble.

Lest you think we could bring about paradise on Earth just by starving out the wealthy and collapsing civilization, remember that violent coercion was one of humanity's first innovations. It isn't going away. The only way to end it is to end us.

Naturally, this is not going to be a popular point of view. I resisted it for decades. Lots of people will continue to feed the voracious appetite of the culture of power. I decided early on not to have children, but I held out the hope that a better future was truly -- though remotely -- possible. However, as years have passed and technology has evolved, life has gotten simultaneously more comfortable for the privileged and more tenuous for the vast majority of us. Many of us down here in the disposable masses enjoy comforts and conveniences that did not exist 20, 30, 50 years ago. My view of a nice world to live in was shaped by childhood observations in the 1960s and '70s. In many ways it has not changed. But generations that followed have completely different baselines and perceptions, and they far outnumber me. I was already outvoted by my own generation in making the first steps toward that better world.

The permaculture crowd seems to have a rough idea of what I had in mind and had no name or platform for, but they're locked in battle with elements in their own age group who want to put medieval religion in charge of government and make racism great again, while driving petroleum fueled vehicles in defiance of repressive science. So what progress have we made? The former "greatest country on Earth" (USA! USA! USA!) is now lurching toward a polluting dictatorship that considers war crimes to be expressions of national might and virtue. Will those forces win? I join with those who say that they will not. But the struggle to stop them delays all other progress as we ally with disillusioned former followers of the regime who are willing to defend democracy at long last, but only so that we can go back to the same stupid arguments that were dooming us before and paved the way for the authoritarian takeover in the first place.

We will beat them. We will unseat them. But they will still be around, seeking another route to power. The struggle doesn't end. A multitude will labor in obscurity so that a minority might feel like they've made a substantial difference. We need warriors, champions, heroes to sacrifice themselves in defense of all that is great and good, but we mock their sacrifice by refusing to learn how to keep it from happening over and over.

We all do better when we all do better. But starting right now, getting the resources to help the lowermost do better means taking a big chunk out of the uppermost. Thus we aren't "all doing better." The great rebalancing may be beyond the will of the sizable percentage who will see their fortunes diminish. "What's in it for me?" will take over as the guiding principle. Take over? It never left. 

A growth mindset has driven humans for at least thousands of years. Why pay for what you can take by force? Why settle for your own little valley when you've produced more sons than your farms can feed, and they're getting restless? 

I have lived my whole life under the threat of World War III. We have avoided it so far, but the threat remains. Fans of the Star Trek universe remind us that the peaceful future of the Federation lies beyond World War III. Like human beings need to teach themselves that dumb lesson one more time, using even more modern and horrific weapons than in the second volume of the trilogy.

With so many people designing their lives around fantasy fiction, whether it's the Bible, Star Trek, DC Comics, or what have you, it's such an ingrained tradition that we have groups of believers trying to bring about specific events described in their texts as stepping stones to the good part. Ironic when it's science fiction blinding people to the open eyed, unprejudiced observations of the actual scientific method, which could show us how to get to the good part now without the firestorms and bloodbath. But no: let's use cautionary tales as an instruction manual instead. Let's get so caught up in fantasy and cosplay that we dance right into the fiery crash that no one in their right mind really wants to go through.

We have yet to produce a complete generation of offspring that say en masse, "Hey! You people are crazy! We're not doing it!" We keep breeding rival teams to fight on in perpetuity while the whole ecosystem crumbles.

Vote with your wallets. Vote with your sperm and eggs. Tell the power-mad bastards no.

It's the economy, stupid. But fixing things is expensive.

 Bill Clinton sailed into office in 1992 on a well-timed wave of hope that his administration would pull us out of the Reagan-Bush recession. It was the first Baby Boomer presidency, and we were the generation that could have whatever it wanted. Our parents had told us so, and the economy of the 1960s and much of the 1970s had revolved around indulging us.

Clinton's campaign promised us, among other things, universal healthcare. Still waiting on that, Billy. And I know it isn't Bill's fault per se, but the Clinton administration's party bus ran into a serious roadblock with the corporate elements that had bought into his campaign based on...I'm not sure what. Maybe they just sensed that the electorate was ready to kick the old fogies out, so they rolled with the change, confident that they could tighten the screws financially the way they always had. And they were right.

Meanwhile, I've long had my own theories about why the economy improved when it did, none of which hinge on the Clinton administration's vast economic acumen. I think it was going to happen anyway: Consumers like to consume, and they'd finally freed up their credit enough after the 1980s binge to start doing it again. So Bill: right place, right time, right message, happy accident. It was the economy. And it was stupid. But it was fun for a while.

If Al Gore had prevailed in 2000, he would probably have presided over the economic belly flop, because that was a product of consumer exuberance and technological hubris uncontrollable by the Fed or any business regulation. Also, the Republican Congress under Gingrich was energetically undermining stability and social cohesion.

Social cohesion is important for a sustainable economy and environment, but it is not profitable in the short term. Certain ideologies object to it as well, because of principles of philosophical purity. They can't let us all get along, because not all of us deserve to get what they claim for themselves.

We will never address the fundamental problems facing humanity if we keep going from election to election looking just at grocery, fuel, childcare, and rent/mortgage prices. But you can't neglect those if you want to get elected. Sure, the Republicans in particular have exploited fear issues, mostly related to race mixing and crime by furriners. But we're seeing now how the economic stuff is getting ready to gnaw on their posteriors, even as they're thrilling their xenophobic base with immigrant roundups, concentration camps, and deportations.

The big trick after getting elected is staying elected. Any administration that tries to start working on essential issues like climate change and environmental protection in general will take heat from the right wing media, and some on the left as well. A subset of people are not driven by simple economics, but the majority feel better when things seem to be improving. Nearly everyone succumbs to normalcy bias when things are going outright well. So there's an ideal level of diminishing discomfort that promotes a willingness to embrace change. Unfortunately, the benefits of some of what needs to be done will not fit neatly into a two-year election cycle.

The House of Representatives and the President are more closely linked than the Senate is to either one. Because there will be a midterm election in each presidential term as well as the ones in which the presidency is up for grabs itself, it destabilizes the power of the executive. And a shaky president can loosen the grip of representatives who get bounced by disgruntled voters who want to whack somebody for how they're feeling.

Try enacting higher taxes on the wealthy, or pushing through real health care reform that sidelines the insurance companies and centers patient care and doctors' integrity within less than a two-year window, because the campaigning starts within months after the last election. You not only have to get it in place, it needs to show clear benefits, while corporate media and right wing influencers are telling everyone that it won't work and will destroy their entire way of life.

After trying to breathe in the deluge of conflicting information dumped on them, voters wind up settling for the promise of cheaper gas and groceries. Life may be long or short, but it's always one day at a time. But we're running out of days for the thornier issues.

A Long-Term Plan for Debt Elimination

 In the USA, we've been hearing about "the deficit" for decades. Any nation has to figure out its cash flow to finance all of its domestic and international activities. The not-yet United States came out of its war of separation from Great Britain with a mountain of debt. The amount has gone up and down, but never gone completely away.

For those of us in the lower tiers of the economy, the economics are clear: you need a definite amount of money to service a definite amount of debt. I don't mean people on public assistance or evading social safety nets. I mean the working and lower middle classes. As you go up from there, the lines become blurrier. The more money you have or can make people think you have, the less you have to make every equation balance all the time with solid cash or collateral. Once you reach the status of a billionaire or a nation, it gets very mumbly. 

Large financial entities with whole departments of lawyers and accountants can play off perceived assets against negotiable debts for decades or, in the case of nations, centuries. Somewhere in the US deficit is probably a line item for cannonballs bought with French funds in 1779. Allied nations have been helping each other out in various conflicts throughout history, with the ledgers balanced by returned favors as well as money. As with any friend to whom you owe money, it only becomes a problem if you have friction. These times come and go. The international community bumps along.

Bankruptcy ceased to be the kind of shame that would drive a tycoon to suicide by the mid 20th Century. Now it's just another device in the corporate toolkit to avoid paying back the full amount that you owe. Sometimes it means liquidation and the corporate equivalent of death. Other times it just means a restart with the pesky loans and losses recalculated.

For individuals, the process is a bit more dire. Individuals can declare bankruptcy, as can small businesses, but the consequences weigh on them more heavily and for longer than would be the case for a massive corporation whose collapse sends shock waves through the global economy and plunges thousands of people into unemployment, poverty, and fear. We must be stern with our erring children, and force them to learn from their mistakes. Keep the little people in line.

Starting in 1980, Republicans instituted policies that favored reducing government income. This has had the predictable effect of raising government debt. The other half of the Republican equation was their drive to make government smaller, releasing the controls on businesses, especially large and powerful corporations, while slashing and burning the social safety nets that they asserted were just making hammocks for born losers, and tangling the feet of an agile economy just waiting to sprint to nationwide wealth. In order to get into office at all during these dark times, the Democratic Party has been forced to play along. The players have been more or less reluctant depending on how susceptible they are to the lure of investment income.

Step one was to vilify government. Step two was to elect officials who would make government ineffective. The GOP called for unity above all else. There were plenty of disaffected constituencies that could be pulled together with promises to address their particular grievances. Most people have a jaundiced view of the government because, right or left, we've all been let down in one way or another. Find the right framing and you can create party loyalists for life.

At first, the proponents of trickle-down economics may actually have believed their silly theory that increased economic activity would follow when taxes on the top brackets got smaller, and that this would generate the needed revenue. If they really did think that, it wasn't for long. The real long-term goal was to consolidate private wealth and make it the dominant force in government policy. The rich wanted to get richer. It's only natural. Give them the freedom due to all people created equal. Let them use that freedom to become emperors. Equality under the law is a fairy tale you use to get poor people to fight your wars for you.

Modern media made it increasingly difficult to operate the government to the advantage of concentrated wealth without any scrutiny at all. Occasionally, idealistic principles won a round. Overall, however, the trend has been toward feeding money upward and hardship downward, flogging the tired myth of upward mobility to a more and more jaded audience.

Part of the audience has been dragging student debt for years, because a college education was supposed to be a necessary rung on that upward climb, as well as just a nice thing to have for your own intellectual expansion. The encumbrance became a drag on the economy as those workers were less and less able to participate fully in the consumerist gorge that sustains the modern world. While the gorge is itself a major threat to our survival as a species, it remains necessary to the individuals of each generation as they try to extract sustenance from the world they're thrust into. So the current administration in the US decided to extend to the student debt bloc as a whole -- or at least in large part -- the same courtesy extended to major corporations and allied nations, of just writing it off. Let the liberated wallets frolic among the retailers, the real estate market, and the service sector.

The opposition refused to see the student debt population as a large blockage in the national cash flow, and instead continued to see them as little people who needed to live with their mistake of seeking higher education that didn't pay off adequately. Hey, we've all made bad investments! Suck it up! They haven't noticed yet that student debt forgiveness is the perfect metaphor for their plan to shrink the government and drown it in a bathtub. I will explain:

Cutting taxes was supposed to make voters automatically favor politicians who cut government expenses. They've tried, but certain expenses are very hard to reduce, and other categories attract the support of lobbyists to keep the money flowing. Penurious voters keep sending angry representatives to Congress, hoping for the glorious day when the IRS finally falls like a statue of Saddam Hussein, and everyone gets to take home every dollar they earn. But it keeps not happening! Meanwhile, economists look over their glasses at us and tell us that this deficit thing is going to keep two, three, twenty, a hundred generations enslaved just to the interest payments!! We have reached the point now where a functional percentage of voters might be convinced that the best way out of the mess is just to collapse the government and walk away from the wreckage. It's a young adult fantasy novel come to life. John Galt and his rich buddies hang out in their luxurious compounds waiting to stride out over their newly conquered world after convincing the majority of underlings that democratic government is just too complicated and difficult for them. Y'all couldn't handle the expenses. And yet those expenses miraculously disappear once the nanny state is replaced by the boss state.

I'm not sure where the super rich think their wealth will come from once they have all the money. Huge dollar figures will become even more meaningless than they are already. The key becomes an economy based on job satisfaction rather than money. Tyrants need jobs done. Individuals need intellectual and emotional gratification. And because gratification is itself an emotion, it's all about emotion. Feelings, nothing more than feelings. Put sadistic bastards in charge of security. You don't have to pay them anything. Just make sure that they have the equipment they want, and whatever food, shelter, and company they require to keep them happily on task. Find workaholic drudges for your necessary tasks. Find sycophantic suckups to be your property caretakers and household retainers. There are endless ways to create a barter economy from tendencies already easy to see among people now handled through the cumbersome intermediary of pay rates. Still, the super rich will have to measure themselves against each other somehow. Oh well, I guess that's their problem to solve. We too dumb down here.

Freedom of $peech?

If I tossed 5 or 10 bucks at every worthy cause that sent me a "fundraising alert" I could easily blow through close to $100 a day. If this is to gain political leverage over the tiny faction of the population who can afford to throw millions of dollars at Congress on a regular basis, how long can we be expected to try to beat them at their own game?

Members of congress willing to rock the gravy boat seem few in number, so I don't know how we can really get big money out of politics. Meanwhile, expecting nickel-and-dime grassroots fundraising to continue to finance political positions that go against the interests of the wealthy is like expecting your health insurance premiums not to keep surging upward. I don't know about you, but I can easily be outspent. Is that how we want to decide whose ideas get to be heard?

When stockholders vote in corporate elections, those with the most shares get to make the decisions. Any small holders have to live with that. In our government we are supposed to have equal voices, so that the points of view of all citizens are taken into account. Instead we have another shareholder meeting in which the big players tell the little people what to do.

Revolution IS called for, since we can't get enough elected officials into office to make the change using what's left of our political system. But a shooting war is a stupid gambit. Just refuse to cooperate. Ride a bike. Walk. Live on less. Detach as much as possible from the corporate-controlled economy. That may mean a pretty primitive lifestyle for quite a while -- maybe a couple of generations. But think how much more primitive and brutal life would be in a country torn by civil war.

Corporatocracy will not give up easily. Their forces may lash out. Put the moral burden on them by living inoffensively.

Do you deserve to live?

The capitalist system places a dollar value on everything and everyone. More dollars mean greater value. Greater value means greater virtue, because success is money, and success is good. The rich really are better than the rest of us, simply because they are rich.

When ambition is satisfied with modest returns, a money-based system can perk along fairly sustainably. But ambition is a virtue in the pursuit of money, and the power that money represents. A money-seeking system stimulates ambition.

When someone's pursuit of money succeeds enough to surpass a certain threshold, the money itself attracts more money. But social forces will also be trying to strip away that money, as other seekers try to get their own pile. A big enough pile of money creates its own community, feeding off of it and supporting it, which is why immensely wealthy people are not bled dry and left as stripped carcasses. The ownership of the fortune is irrelevant to the industry that forms to exploit it. The symbionts know better than to kill the host.

Sometimes the symbionts turn into parasites and do kill the host. Or the pile of money is too small to breed its own protective colony of workers and soldiers, so rival colonies raid it. Picture the poor schmoe whose investment portfolio tanks, leaving him without a retirement income just when he needs it. Sorry, loser! Please see the Assisted Suicide Department for your new retirement plan.

Unfortunately, fortunes are often made in destructive endeavors. The supporting community that feeds off of the wealth at the center of it must therefore serve the destructive enterprise faithfully in order to maintain position. The destructive enterprises tear down society as a whole, but this only makes the island built around wealth look like a more vital refuge against personal failure, poverty, and misery.

All the while, humans have been getting better and better at staying alive. Even during the mass slaughter of World War II, the human population went up, as we fought back against the diseases and famines that had always been more deadly to us than our own aggressive tendencies. All those people want to live. They look for the necessities first and luxuries soon afterward.

Clearly, a lot of the world's population still seeks to secure the necessities, while a privileged minority seeks more and more luxury. That privileged core shrinks steadily as it attracts more and more resources to itself. This places an ever growing number of people at risk of calamity.

A major part of the problem is the ever growing number itself. Instinct drives us to replicate. Hardship encourages us to replicate more energetically, so that someone might survive to carry on. Instinct never notices how successful this imperative has already been. And instinct gets awfully whiny when intellect tries to take a different path.

In a world already carrying more people than the ecosystem can support, people from many different belief systems can see the value of eliminating some of them. The ranks of the disposable will vary depending on the belief system. Even that is based in instinct, as our centuries of warfare over territory and resources will attest.

The United States is currently under the control of a faction that believes with religious fervor in the notion that your monetary worth defines your actual worth. They'll pay lip service to charity, but their actions betray the sink or swim mentality that motivates their policies. It's pay to play here in the land of the free.

Pay to play sounds okay as a way to eliminate the dead wood, as long as you believe that a person's ability to attract money is the primary filter by which we should select. Get a job, slacker! Pull your weight! No work, no eat! Of course a sufficiently disciplined communist or socialist society could say the same things, without the slippery pricing structure. Truly inert people are a drain on any form of society. But in capitalism as currently practiced in the United States, every person is an independent contractor, trying to negotiate prices in a hostile marketplace where everything is priced for the vendors' maximum profit.

I'll bet insurance actuaries have already figured out the optimum lifespan that will provide the most profit. This information will be more tightly guarded than the nuclear launch codes, and is potentially more explosive. But it is also a moving target, as the people's earning power changes. For vast numbers of us, that change is downward.

Is downward bad? A massive die-off, particularly among industrialized nations, would take a lot of pressure off of the environment. First you become poor. Then the industrialist system makes sure you die of it. The industrialist system subsequently dies because no one is left to buy its products, but it's a good run of quarterly reports leading up to that. Think of mass death among the poor as the ultimate layoff.

I try to be a useful citizen, but I set myself against the destructive economy decades ago. Thus, I have been worthless to society my entire adult life. Promoting tolerance and a gentle, largely non-motorized lifestyle is an attack on what the monetarians believe makes this country great. If a younger generation decides I was on the right track, norms may shift, but I fear it will be too late for me. Even if the social climate embraces sustainable and kindly practices, it may discover that longevity is itself unsustainable. A person needs to be contributing to the general welfare. Anyone who does not is just an expensive pet. That includes Grandmom and Granddad. Who cares if you're still enjoying yourself? If we have to chip in for expensive medical interventions, you need to go out into the wilderness and quit burdening the tribe.

It's easy to play with such thought experiments until the pangs of age start to chip away at you. Life is a habit. Even in my darkest depression (so far) I don't want to give it up. But logic inclines me more frequently to run a balance sheet on myself to see if it might be time to get out of the way. I dread the day when I can't make the equation work in my favor. I also find myself running the calculation every morning.

Having failed to provide myself with the protective cocoon of money I would need to pay for the various medical services that an aging person requires, I don't deserve to live, as far as capitalism is concerned. I can spin the game out a bit longer by selling my home and most of my possessions. Poor people don't deserve homes and possessions. And in nature, any creature that can no longer furnish a nest and dodge predators will shortly become food. So by any measure, the vast majority of humans do no good, even if they do no harm. The bottom line is suffering. Ask not what the money supply can do for you. Ask what you can do for the money supply.

Growing up in the land of dreams

The wealth and income gap in the United States is a real and damaging thing. The top bracket blames the lower echelons for being greedy and lazy. Many of the members of the sinking middle class blame a variety of villains projected for their benefit by the propaganda wing of the top bracket. Self-styled progressive thinkers point the finger at greed among the wealthy and ruthless business leaders.

My life began when the middle class was supposedly at its height. America was a prosperous and busy nation. But that middle class work force was mostly white, mostly male. Bloody battles were being fought, mostly in the South, to advance civil rights for African Americans. Women were struggling to be able to pursue their potential, unfettered by gender prejudice. The definition of a good life was expanding rapidly beyond just a white guy with a good job, a nice wife and a couple of kids, in a nice neighborhood.

During that same time span, a generation was born and raised with access to vividly depicted fantasies on film and television. These children of the fantasy era emerged into the work force in waves, each one more thoroughly indoctrinated than the one preceding it. One should hardly be surprised if a smaller and smaller percentage of each of them dreamed of some repetitive job in a factory when much grander adventures seemed so easily entered.

One day in about 1990, a scruffy man came into the bike shop where I worked. He said he worked for one of the traditional American bicycle companies like Columbia, Huffy, or Murray. He regaled us with tales of drunks, druggies and derelicts working the production line. Maybe this was just the end of a long decline or the last precipitous drop as the company struggled with a changing retail landscape. But it reminded me of stories I was told by a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in 1980, about sabotaging a Coast Guard cutter to which he was assigned, so that he and his buddies wouldn't have to leave the harbor and all its pleasures ashore. They liked the paycheck, they just didn't care for the actual work. They imagined a more pleasurable life for themselves and placed no value on the mission of the Coast Guard or their role supporting it.

These are snapshots, widely separated in time. But in college in the 1970s the sense was very strong that we were preparing ourselves to go get an income. Students chose fields they thought they would be good at or perhaps enjoy, but many favored traditionally lucrative areas like business or law. There was a little carry over from the mostly synthetic moral underpinnings of the counterculture, and some sense that environmentalism might be important -- if only it paid better -- but mostly it was about making your pile.

The 1980s were only too happy to bolster those fantasies. Smart, sharp people deserved to be winners. The dignity of labor had already lost its luster. Work meant long hours in an office, not a reasonable span in a production facility with time to breathe built into the schedule. You want to work a menial job? Work it, pal. I want to see shovels and mops moving. You want more money? Find the time and energy to get another menial job, loser.

The United States has two main contenders to be the national religion: money and work. We worship the trappings of wealth and the no-nonsense human sacrifice of toil. A person can work admirably without gaining wealth or be enviably wealthy without working. But anyone in the mid range, particularly the lower mid range, who does not labor to exhaustion is a contemptible slacker.

It's a pretty lousy set of standards. But did it evolve naturally from the failed experiment of widespread education and more even distribution of the rewards? Did the middle collapse simply from wanting the wrong things? Sure, we're misled by fictional portrayals of all sorts of things. Yes, the imbalance of wealth and power needs to be corrected. But that won't last if the majority of people don't know what to do with themselves once they've got it.

Developing nations have the advantage of a visible slope to climb. A lot of obstacles stand in their way in the form of environmental degradation and government corruption. No one knows if they'll make it. But say they do. Then what? Aside from an aggressive space program so we can export our craziness across the galaxy, what's worth getting out of bed for, every day? We could reach the maximum sustainable lifestyle long before we figure out efficient interstellar travel.

I feel that the future should be built on tolerance of diversity coupled with diversity that works to be tolerable.

It's hard to write a rule or two, because they're vague and subject to flexible interpretation. Then you write another and another for clarification, until you end up with thousands of lines of code just to cover all the potential variations. Laws are a programming language for the unruly computer made up of billions of human brains. Unlike a machine, we cannot be compelled to receive a fraction of it, let alone take it all in and abide by it. It goes against our nature. Some people might like to be programmed, but then who is in charge?

If we restored manufacturing in this country, who would work there and how well would they work? Was erosion of wages a result of more people vying for them? As reality and the dream move farther apart, what could sustain morale in a work force? These are the questions that will immediately follow any reform of the distribution of compensation.

Slave owners shape our history

The yet-to-be United States declared its independence from Great Britain only after southern plantation owners were assured that all this freedom and equality would not apply to the brown people they owned or the lifestyle and economy based on slavery.

The fledgling United States needed a constitution. Southern plantation owners signed on only when assured that the slavery question would at least be pushed way down on the calendar.

In 1861 the slavery issue's heated tensions came to actual warfare. As a result of that war, slavery was abolished. Segregation and suppression continued, aided by laws and beliefs based on principles of racial inequality.

By the end of the 19th Century, a few people had amassed vast fortunes that depended largely on cheap labor and favorable legislation. While the workers were technically free and compensated for their efforts, institutions like the company store and payment in scrip were just a couple of factors contributing to income inequality, insecurity and poverty among workers. The wealthy enjoyed a very close relationship with the elected government.

During the 20th Century, American society showed some signs of improvement in the treatment of workers and minorities. By the end of the century, however, those trends were beginning to reverse. It has only become more obvious as the 21st Century has advanced. A few people control most of the money. The world is their plantation. Their purchased legislators and judges solidify their gains. Restive populations are turned on each other, told that the threat comes not from the concentration of wealth but from the differences of the people around them.

Wealth is measured in dollars. Dollars are measured in numbers. Numbers have no empathy.

Humans have emotions. They measure in feelings, and can be steered by them. In fact, they can be steered by little else. Even supposedly rational people are only rational because they like how it makes them feel.

When wealth is the ultimate good, decisions are made by the numbers to increase wealth. If a bunch of poor people have to take a hit for it, they're a necessary loss, the same as the killed or broken heroes we sent to war to defend our way of doing business. We praise you, valiant warriors. Now get lost.

The wealthy feel better when they're getting more wealth. The impersonal numbers click higher, incapable of feeling the euphoria they inspire in the humans who get to claim them. The owners control society, while the vast majority who make up that society get shoved around by forces they don't have time to understand.

If you have a fantasy of dropping out and setting up a homestead where you can live off the grid and let the whole mess of civilization fall apart, think again. You will go down fighting to defend your little chunk of arable land and potable water from the thousands of desperate people who would want a piece of it for themselves. If that sounds glorious to you, or even doable, you're an idiot.

Like all the ills of human society, the problems of economy could be solved by cooperative effort. So, like all the problems of human society, they will remain unsolved while we argue and let evolution decide for us. It's worked for millions of years. Why stop now?

Civilization was the result of evolution. The collapse of civilization can certainly be the result of further evolution. Here's the thing about evolution: it doesn't care if you live or die. It doesn't care if anything lives or dies. So if we choose to let ourselves slump into a mucky pit of industrial waste, blood and feces, evolution will log that decision and reflect those changes as impersonally as a corporate ledger shows an uptick in profits when thousands of workers are laid off.

Strange Day

This is a strange day, and not just because it started at 3 a.m.

The cellist rolled out of the driveway at 0330 this morning on her way to Maryland to take an orchestra teaching position there. Her 15-year struggle in the cultural wasteland of northern New England had worn her down to the point where she did as crusty locals tell incomers to do, and went back where she came from.

The decision was not made lightly. It doesn't not reflect on the happiness of our marriage or her ability to deal with the climate and isolation of northern rural life. We're not as far north or as rural as the state has to offer, but we're well clear of anything that would be mistaken for urban or suburban. Such a place has many attractions. High-quality arts education is emphatically not one of them.

Northern New England seems actively hostile to her profession. When it comes to serious music education they only like half-assed shit that makes everybody look bad, but does not single out individuals as particularly bad. It is a pact of mediocrity. The few sites where music is pursued at a somewhat higher level are like small, low islands facing the waves in a cold, empty sea. Those islands are already populated with other castaways, eating everything that grows or washes up. They're as likely to push another person's raft back out to sea as they are to try to accommodate one more on the island. To be fair, there's only so much food and shelter.

A parting like this creates a strange new reality for both people. The one going forth has to undergo the displacement, homelessness and a new job. The one left behind has to live with the sudden absence of the partner. I have to relearn how to live alone, but not really completely alone, because I have to maintain the place we had in such a way that she can return when her time permits. But when she's not here, she's not here. I have to do everything in a larger and more complicated facility than I would have if I lived truly alone. While she is occupied by all the new things in a new job -- regardless of the familiarity of the profession -- I have to get used to being here, missing only the most important person in my life.

In 1996 when we started into our relationship, I could have lived with a seasonal cohabitation. We had that for a couple of years, but never really questioned that we would merge our living arrangements. She liked New England. Maryland was clearly sagging under the weight of surplus population. So she came here, full of hope. Once she'd given it more than a couple of years we could never go back to the way it had been when she was a plucky single woman living in Baltimore and I was a mountain hermit living in New Hampshire.

We both gave up much for what we gained. So this reconfiguration to something like that earlier phase is not and does not try to be a return. It's a new game. For one thing, I can no longer afford to be in this house by myself. If I suddenly had to make do without the financial contribution of my spouse I would virtually disappear as I cut off things like cable, phone and Internet to reduce expenses. The nice cushion I had in the mid 1990s has been whittled away by necessary expenditures as we tried to stay afloat while she pursued her career in this cultural desert. What a couple of idiots, right?

We did not know she was terminally ill when we got together. I don't even think we knew it by the time we married. So that casts a shadow over any vision of the future. How soon will her kidneys fail? How much will she be able to work once she goes on dialysis? It's not a matter of months, but no one knows for sure how many years it might be, while research creeps along in search of treatments that might extend kidney function, let alone cure the disease. So there's that.

Obviously no one knows how long they have. Her brother dropped dead in an instant from a heart condition no one knew he had. We all know someone like that, perhaps even several people. And there's cancer, blood clots, ALS, MS, car accidents, bathtub falls,... But having a specific ticking clock adds to the sense of urgency when the person you wanted to spend your life with needs to spend significant amounts of time pursuing her adult professional goals a considerable distance away.

Today I stacked the last of the firewood. I usually solo that chore, so the lack of another person did not stand out. But the task made me think of winter, and preparing for winter, and all that needs to be done before then. Subtracting my wife made the prospect look more intimidating than normal. Winter, even in the age of global warming, is a primal force around here. You need to be ready and you need to stay ready for as long as it lasts. It is the season around which everything else revolves, the season of darkness and cold indifference to life. We are grateful for all that is not winter, even if we love the opportunities winter brings. If you're not using winter's advantages, its disadvantages loom monstrously.

I consider returning to Maryland, but only to a place outside the sprawl. Even then I don't know if I could afford it. One thing about hardscrabble places like rural New Hampshire, the cost of living is pretty low. Income is low, too, and the physical demands are greater than in southerly climes, but somehow a balance is possible that I never found in Maryland with my patchwork of credentials and experience.

Once the tourist economy fails along with the middle class, New Hampshire will have nothing. There's a bit of industry in the southern part of the state, but the job creators will have no incentive to put a facility in a place with so little transportation and communication infrastructure unless they're attracted by sufficient numbers of desperate people willing to work for cheap money. We're probably a couple of years from that, but nothing indicates that the political and economic trends will change course to prevent it. But in my new strange world I can't let myself look too far ahead in any case.

Money is a virus

Money is a virus. It cannot replicate itself without a host. Because corporations receive the political status of people, the host does not actually have to breathe and eat and all that jazz. But the virus depends on susceptibility. The people in the corporation act merely as the regenerated cells of an organism in which genetic coding is activated. One cell sloughed or killed is replaced by another.

Every person is affected to some degree. Some get it much worse than others. While it suffers nothing at all from the death of an individual or even a multitude, someone must remain to desire it.

Through inheritance, money infects generation after generation. The inherited form can cause all kinds of symptoms mimicking the earned form, but actually more debilitating to the patient. A person who has inherited a severe case may feel special in their delirium, and exhibit paranoid and defensive behavior.

Because the virus has both desirable and undesirable effects, highly susceptible individuals will justify their unwillingness to treat their condition by spinning myths that accentuate only the perceived advantages to themselves and others as a result of infection. In this way it mimics a drug. The virus affects the brain as well as the body.

As with the bacteria in our intestines, we need some money to maintain a healthy condition. But exactly like the bacteria in our intestines, too much of the virus throws us far out of balance. The illness of one can have damaging consequences for many people, even those who have not been directly exposed to the sufferer.

When we die out, will our money remain like dormant viruses, until another species of hosts develops susceptibility and takes up the dropped tokens of our social disease?

Deployment

The cellist has found a job in her specialty, teaching orchestra. It's back in Maryland. In mid-August we become a long distance couple.

Couples have been pulled apart by economics throughout history. There are no good old days to which we might return. Her career here has been a constant struggle. Because her specialty is teaching orchestra her life will be somewhat of a struggle even where conditions are the best for someone with her skills. She left a full time position in Maryland 15 years ago and is returning only to a part time job. So-called non essential subjects like music and art get carved away by budget cutters, their faculty disregarded as hobbyists and dilettantes compared to "real" teachers.

Here in the harsh and rocky wilds of northern New England the grim people who pride themselves on facing grim reality set their grim mouths in a tight line and ask, "what did you expect? We told you it was no good here."

You should have learned to do something useful. But even useful people are struggling. There always seem to be more people than jobs. You take what you can get where you can get it.

Economic whoas

How can economics be a science when everyone lies about money?

I had this thought this morning over my eggs and toast, and not for the first time. But economics was in the news, with Thomas Piketty's new book and all.

If I did not have to work for a living I would spend all my time reading. But since I can't spend all my time reading I spend hardly any time reading, because there's no point to stimulating my mind when I have to spend so many hours of my life focusing on the tedious intricacies and annoying interruptions of my trade. You also need to take time simply to breathe and observe the life around you. Without the need for gainful employment that's how I would spend the time I wasn't reading. Or writing. Or drawing.

Piketty's work is being glorified and machine gunned because it addresses economic inequality. Economic inequality is also glorified and machine gunned. I tend to side with the machine gunners on that one. Or perhaps those wielding brutal pruning saws, since a little inequality acts like differential atmospheric pressure in fostering healthy circulation rather than stagnation in our financial climate. But massive inequality has an equal if not worse tendency to grind the economy to a crawl. And as we can no longer deny that the economy is as global as the environment, what crawls here drags everything down.

As I searched the web on the topic "economic science" I discovered that many people question its right to remain among the sciences. It has -- as you no doubt expected -- its detractors and supporters. The first page of search results contained thought-provoking snippets enough to keep me occupied for several unproductive days.

This piece by Alan Wang in the Harvard Crimson addresses some of the challenges faced by economists in their pursuit of solid principles and successful predictions. "Economics is not, and will never be, at the stage where models can precisely predict the day on which a financial crisis will start before it happens,..." writes Mr. Wang. The statement accepts without question that the crisis will occur. And Wang tangentially addresses why this is so: "...what is the building block of economics? People. Economics does not study any unit smaller than a collection of people. And human behavior can never be absolutely predicted or explained—not if we wish to believe in free will, at any rate."

People: sneaky and noble, sleazy and altruistic, and all motivated to falsify or conceal for reasons both lofty and lowly. There will be a crisis, and another crisis, and so on, because people will try to get away with shit. They'll slip this one past and it will work, so they'll try another and another. Next thing you know you've got a bubble on your hands or all your working class jobs have gone across an ocean.

As economists try to predict the future by laboriously getting further behind the present by studying all they can find of records from the past, people are producing, consuming, trading and transporting as best they can. The principles that guide them are basic: get more than you give, if possible. Try to get a lot more than you give without anyone noticing until you're so big no one can take you down. Then feel free to be as arrogant as you like about it. If there's action, get a piece of it.

What's so complicated? Wealth can't be created without a basis. The basis is finite. Therefore, wealth is finite. How it is distributed depends on human agreement to social conventions. Do you accept that a bold and ruthless person deserves title to all he can seize, or do you favor more general compensation for every contributor to the economy? These aren't economic questions. Economics are the result of these factors, not the origin.

If you want to be the robber baron you will never agree that you should pay workers more or give more in taxes, because that comes out of your own bottom line. If you want to see all contributors enjoy as high a standard of living as the total amount of wealth will allow, you will never agree to let "the free market" decide anything. You'll need to work out some rules, which will lead to arguments, tricky language, lawyers, loopholes and the natural advantages of more money over less money. Inequality is like a controlled burn. The right amount of fire in the right place at the right time renews the vegetation. Too much, too seldom, results in catastrophic conflagrations. Maintaining a fair economy takes a combination of intelligence and empathy that may simply be impossible. We may be doomed to live from one conflagration to the next. And the economists will be sitting in a blackened landscape saying, "we should probably get some fire hoses pretty soon."

We're all in this together -- except for you

As the economy lurches further into an unacknowledged recession, desperate people are starting to consider superstitious solutions like human sacrifice. If someone is known to be different and occasionally a little too blunt, they become a valid candidate for human sacrifice to appease whatever evil entity stalks the country right now, keeping good, virtuous small business people from prospering.

My employers have started picking fights with their employees, finding reasons that employee inadequacy is diminishing an already minuscule bottom line.  My weird sense of humor and my poor bedside manner are driving customers away. The rest of the blame lies with President Barack Obama.

According to my employers, Wolfeboro, a town owned and operated by staunch Republicans, is in the financial swamp because a Democrat in the White House has ruined the economy. Forget the fact that he's cleaning up after a Republican and inheriting a pile of debris that started with increased political activism by big corporations in the 1970s and got a huge push off the cliff from the policies of Ronald Reagan. More correctly the decline and fall was set in motion by the forces behind Reagan and behind the conservative movement ever since, with increasing virulence.

The fundamentals of our economic prosperity have not been sound since -- since maybe forever. All the famous fortunes of the Gilded Age were based on environmental rape and exploitation of labor. Every boom time has been followed by a bust as the principles that underlay it were revealed to be weak. Every attempt to design something with stronger -- if shorter -- legs has been met with abuse, derision and outright hostility since the 1960s when a large enough segment of the population started to notice that something really ought to be done. Unfortunately, a lot of people awoke to portions of a realization at that time, creating a confusing babble of competing priorities.

We still suffer from a Congress with many members who want to direct blame at the president and his party more than they want to see the situation improve. The worse things stay, the more simple minds will insist that the problem lies with one man. Or they will condemn politicians in general, which may have some merit, but who else are we going to sucker into taking those jobs? Do YOU want to go to Congress and listen to all the bitching, whining and accusations while you try to balance your responsibility to the average voter and your obligation to huge corporate donors? For that matter, do you like the nickel-and-diming emails from political candidates and their PACs as they try to get financial support from the general population instead of corporations and the super wealthy? If I gave $3 to $12 every time they asked for it I would have given a few thousand dollars by now. If I HAD that money it would indicate that the system wasn't so badly broken that I needed to GIVE that money to someone to fix it.

My coworker and I get the feeling that our employers are trying to get us angry enough to quit so they can stop writing our checks and won't be legally obligated to pay us unemployment compensation. How this will help them if business does pick up I have no idea. I haven't looked at the bankruptcy laws yet to see if it helps them in the event that they go under completely. And frankly I believe they're just desperately blurting out whatever pops into their heads because they're terrified of the chasm yawning before us.

Forget the Fiscal Cliff. We've been on a crumbling precipice for years because we sell unpopular items like bicycles and cross-country skis. Drivers want us off the roads. Mountain biking depends on trail access. Cross-country skiing needs lots of natural snow and expensive grooming on plenty of land either in public hands or generously opened by private owners. On public land, other user groups who trample grooming lay claim to the trails to walk their dogs, go snowshoeing or even operate snow machines and ATVs. Just about everyone would be happier if we went away. We've tried to sell the benefits of our healthy, active lifestyle to no avail. People would rather drive through congested streets and pay for parking at a place where they can exercise in a building before driving somewhere else for the next event in their busy schedule -- if they want to exercise at all. They would rather walk on a so-called multi-use path to nowhere than use a bicycle to run errands and go to work. An active population of thieves and vandals conspires with the weather and hostile motorists to keep the bicycle an option only for a tiny, determined minority. Many of those riders are simply financially disadvantaged and will get a car as soon as they can afford it.

How much longer will most people be able to afford it? Not only does a motor vehicle cost thousands of dollars to buy and maintain, the environmental costs and a dwindling fuel supply mean that the replacement motorized alternatives are even more expensive in all phases of operation. Sure, electric vehicles and hybrids use less or no petroleum, but they need some or they need to be recharged from an outside power supply.

Forget logic. We're in panic mode. The conservatives love panic mode. It proves that they were right to be afraid all along. Fear the enemy, who could be anywhere. You! I think you are in league with them! Stone this man!

Excuse me, I have to run now.

Your Chilling Thought for the Day

When George H.W. Bush chose Dan Quayle as his vice president, many of us joked that it was Bush's life insurance policy. Who would take out the president if that would simply put the photogenic but mentally void Quayle in the Oval Office?

Now it is 2012. Mitt Romney has chosen ultra-conservative poster boy Paul Ryan as his vice president. Since the far right would love to have a zealot like Ryan in full command, doesn't that give a faction already known for gun-toting, threat-spouting and blowing up federal buildings a huge incentive to remove Romney from office as soon after the inauguration as possible, in a way that automatically places Ryan in charge?

In an article yesterday, Bill Moyers pointed out all the ways in which Paul Ryan meets the far right's strongest expectations. He did not venture that this choice presents a physical risk to Romney. I came up with that myself. But if I, a tree-hugging peacenik, can think of it, so can people more inclined to act on the impulse.

A more patient approach for conservatives would simply let Ryan call the shots from the copilot's seat and then run him for the presidency of whatever is left of the country after two Romney terms. He's young enough and in much better health than the country's previous leader from second chair, Dick Cheney. Romney could even come up with an excuse to step aside after one term for Ryan to run that much sooner. Romney barely has a quarter of a billion dollars. He's really the poor boy in the wealthy elite. With all the money funding the right wing, I'm sure he can be bought. Someone with real wealth can provide a very nice severance package for him.

None of this matters if he does not get elected. If Barack Obama remains in office for a second term the right wing will have to continue to inflict their damage through lower offices and obstructionist tactics to keep the economy tough so the majority of citizens will perhaps be more susceptible to persuasion or coercion next time.

Full Financial Disclosure: The Delayed Trickle

The cellist and I are having a small addition built onto our house. We did not finance it by taking on more debt. We're not secret millionaires or lottery winners. We're spending a small fraction of the fossil remains of a fortune made in the early 20th Century that trickled down as far as my bank account in the latter half of the 1990s.

Living within my meager income, I was able to purchase a tiny cottage, with a little help from a relative who provided some money for the down payment on the typical abusive mortgage given to first-time home buyers with low incomes. Then, by luck and careful maneuvering my financial and marital partner at the time and I managed to get our mortgage converted to a fixed rate. We scrabbled on until we decided to go our separate ways, coincidentally around the time I found out I was about to receive something in the neighborhood of $120,000 as my share of a stock portfolio compiled with the proceeds from the sale of Planter's Peanuts by its founders, Amadeo Obici and Mario Peruzzi.

A large chunk went to my departing ex-spouse and to settle our debts at the time. That still left what seemed like a lot of money to me. I took the stocks rather than taking my share as cash, even though I already had misgivings about the morality of the stock market and my ability to monitor my investments closely enough to keep from getting cleaned out by people who make it their business to suck money away from small holders to convey it to large ones.

The investment brokers gradually became more distant and dismissive as it became clear to them that I did not have enough income to buy more stocks and pay them commissions. Occasionally I had to sell some to negotiate a rough patch, but I tried to avoid that as well.

Stock prices soared prior to the "market adjustment" in 2000. We all know what happened in the fall of 2001.  Through all the ups and downs, the value of the stocks that an investment broker had assured me would make me a rich man managed to average out about where they started, minus the amounts I had sold. In other words, it wasn't making me a rich man. Meanwhile, potential costs for medical emergencies, predictable illnesses and retirement in general continued to bounce upward.

Mere misgivings grew to firm belief that whatever corporations were doing to be able to pay dividends to stockholders in times of rising unemployment and recession had to be screwing a lot of people hard. I no longer wanted any part of it, even if it was a mysterious well that bubbled up a little bit of cash all the time. If I took that money, it made me part of the problem.

I'm not just being altruistic. For decades I have tried to support activities that any number can play, to support a true general rise in living standards rather than relying on the misfortune and mistreatment of anyone to improve my own circumstances. Maybe that's hopelessly naive. So be it. I want to believe that the human species can develop a courteous, compassionate and respectful society in which no one has to be subservient or exploited. At the very least I expect that the stock market illusion will crumble within a few years at most. Putting my money into a tangible asset, albeit one that I have to heat and pay property taxes on, is not entirely stupid.

I sold all the stocks and put the money into a lousy savings account. If you put about $87,000 in a savings account you actually get a visible amount of interest every month. But much of that money is destined to be devoured by this minor construction project. It's going to create jobs. In fact, by doing this project and keeping my money in a local bank, the cellist and I have now created more jobs in the local economy than Mitt Romney has. But when it's gone it's gone. I will never again have that much money because I am not important enough to the people who have a lot of money or appealing enough to the multitude who might each give me a little to amass a fortune.

It is ritual suicide. At some point as yet unknown to me, I will face financial ruin because that is shaping up to be the normal destiny of what was formerly known as the lower middle class. I'm building myself a prison. It's a pretty prison in a peaceful setting. When the crunch comes I might be able to sell it to stumble forward a few more years or months, or I might just turn it into my funeral pyre. These are all legitimate options to consider. The one unrealistic fantasy is a healthy, comfortable retirement.

It is interesting to note that conservatives, who are far more likely not to believe in evolution, have a much more Darwinistic approach than liberals to social policy. Live and let die sums up the conservative position. Only the fit survive. This explains their aversion to Social Security and Medicare. By their logic, if you make it to be elderly at all, you've had more than your share of good breaks. If you happen to arrive at old age without a fortune to sustain you, die already and make room for better planners to flourish.

Mitt's Messages

Way back on February 1, Mitt Romney made his careless remark about not being worried about the very poor. It's been analyzed to death and sped off into the murk and dust of dead news cycles. But words have a life of their own. In this case, they conveyed Mitt's message to the named groups: the very rich and the very poor.

To the rich he's saying not to worry, he'll care for their interests. To the very poor he's saying the tiny scrap of threadbare rug they're on won't be yanked out from under them. To those in the middle he's saying, "go one way or the other."

The American Dream was based on the illusion of unlimited resources waiting to be exploited by bold men. Bold men did exploit resources and become wealthy. Other smart guys exploited bold men. By the 20th Century the model worked for fewer and fewer people, especially as the century progressed. Anyone who could see this too soon had to decide whether to play along or start looking for the new way. But the old way has put up a complex and determined resistance.

Whether he meant it or not, Mitt laid out a method by which the struggling masses, unable to rise, could simply drop into the waiting arms of the support system. If you'll be okay very poor and it's just an endless, pointless slog to reach up for the nonexistent rungs of the economic ladder to climb to the shining summit, let go. As the monks and nuns of old believed, our salvation lies in poverty. Right, big guy?

Of course the mass of surrendering humanity will collapse that supposedly fine "safety net." But the germ of an idea lies in the notion that regular people have to construct their own economy and quit playing the rich people's game by the rich people's rules. It means dumping the 401K and all the other tempting investments in the heavily manipulated markets and putting the actual cash money into the new economy we create for our own good.

I haven't imagined it in detail, but it's going to involve a lot of cottage industry and local agriculture. It may require some changes to zoning ordinances in urbanized areas where local agriculture has been out of fashion for many years. Sure, cash earns practically nothing as savings. You'll have to discard the concept of saving for retirement during a career doing things you don't really like. It would be nice if we could preserve the better aspects of civilization, but we may have to settle for living shorter but fuller lives. I don't mean any forcible end to life, only that the fairyland of hospitals and medical miracles is already too expensive for most of us and may not survive conversion to the new economy.

Investment has to take on a different character as well. Big returns are abnormal. They're not impossible but they are unusual. That goes for a small percentage paid to a vast number of investors as well as a big gouge paid out to a small handful. In other words, the stock, commodity and financial markets as currently conducted can't work. The economy has to be built around the middle, not hung from the top or rooted in the squalor of a rotting mass at the bottom.

I know it's doomed to fail because of simple population pressure. But it's more fun to dream a nice dream and tell myself a nice story than to think only about growing old or dying young in the cold, dirty world that really exists.