Disarray

     The dark tunnel that the US economy has entered began to look more and more like a black hole last week, sucking in lives, fortunes, and prospects behind a Potemkin facade of orderly retreat put up by anyone in authority with a story to tell or an interest to protect -- Fed chairman Bernanke, CNBC, The New York Times, the Bank of America.... Events are now moving ahead of anything that personalities can do to control them.

     The "housing bubble" implosion is broadly misunderstood. It's not just the collapse of a market for a particular kind of commodity, it's the end of the suburban pattern itself, the way of life it represents, and the entire economy connected with it. It's the crack up of the system that America has invested most of its wealth in since 1950. It's perhaps most tragic that the mis-investments only accelerated as the system reached its end, but it seems to be nature's way that waves crest just before they break.

       This wave is breaking into a sea-wall of disbelief. Nobody gets it. The psychological investment in what we think of as American reality is too great. The mainstream media doesn't get it, and they can't report it coherently. None of the candidates for president has begun to articulate an understanding of what we face: the suburban living arrangement is an experiment that has entered failure mode.

      I maintain that all the "players" -- from the bankers to the politicians to the editors to the ordinary citizens -- will continue to not get it as the disarray accelerates and families and communities are blown apart by economic loss. Instead of beginning the tough process of making new arrangements for everyday life, we'll take up a campaign to sustain the unsustainable old way of life at all costs.

        A reader sent me a passle of recent clippings last week from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It contained one story after another about the perceived need to build more highways in order to maintain "economic growth" (and incidentally about the "foolishness" of public transit).  I understood that to mean the need to keep the suburban development system going, since that has been the real main source of the Sunbelt's prosperity the past 60-odd years. They cannot imagine an economy that is based on anything besides new subdivisions, freeway extensions, new car sales, and Nascar spectacles. The Sunbelt, therefore, will be ground-zero for all the disappointment emanating from this cultural disaster, and probably also ground-zero for the political mischief that will ensue from lost fortunes and crushed hopes.

     From time-to-time, I feel it's necessary to remind readers what we can actually do in the face of this long emergency. Voters and candidates in the primary season have been hollering about "change" but I'm afraid the dirty secret of this campaign is that the American public doesn't want to change its behavior at all. What it really wants is someone to promise them they can keep on doing what they're used to doing: buying more stuff they can't afford, eating more shitty food that will kill them, and driving more miles than circumstances will allow.

     Here's what we better start doing.

     Stop all highway-building altogether. Instead, direct public money into repairing railroad rights-of-way. Put together public-private partnerships for running passenger rail between American cities and towns in between. If Amtrak is unacceptable, get rid of it and set up a new management system. At the same time, begin planning comprehensive regional light-rail and streetcar operations.

     End subsidies to agribusiness and instead direct dollar support to small-scale farmers, using the existing regional networks of organic farming associations to target the aid. (This includes ending subsidies for the ethanol program.)

     Begin planning and construction of waterfront and harbor facilities for commerce: piers, warehouses, ship-and-boatyards, and accommodations for sailors. This is especially important along the Ohio-Mississippi system and the Great Lakes.

      In cities and towns, change regulations that mandate the accommodation of cars. Direct all new development to the finest grain, scaled to walkability. This essentially means making the individual building lot the basic increment of redevelopment, not multi-acre "projects." Get rid of any parking requirements for property development. Institute "locational taxation" based on proximity to the center of town and not on the size, character, or putative value of the building itself. Put in effect a ban on buildings in excess of seven stories. Begin planning for district or neighborhood heating installations and solar, wind, and hydro-electric generation wherever possible on a small-scale network basis.

     We'd better begin a public debate about whether it is feasible or desirable to construct any new nuclear power plants. If there are good reasons to go forward with nuclear, and a consensus about the risks and benefits, we need to establish it quickly. There may be no other way to keep the lights on in America after 2020.

     We need to prepare for the end of the global economic relations that have characterized the final blow-off of the cheap energy era. The world is about to become wider again as nations get desperate over energy resources. This desperation is certain to generate conflict. We'll have to make things in this country again, or we won't have the most rudimentary household products.

     We'd better prepare psychologically to downscale all institutions, including government, schools and colleges, corporations, and hospitals. All the centralizing tendencies and gigantification of the past half-century will have to be reversed. Government will be starved for revenue and impotent at the higher scale. The centralized high schools all over the nation will prove to be our most frustrating mis-investment. We will probably have to replace them with some form of home-schooling that is allowed to aggregate into neighborhood units. A lot of colleges, public and private, will fail as higher ed ceases to be a "consumer" activity. Corporations scaled to operate globally are not going to make it. This includes probably all national chain "big box" operations. It will have to be replaced by small local and regional business. We'll have to reopen many of the small town hospitals that were shuttered in recent years, and open many new local clinic-style health-care operations as part of the greater reform of American medicine.

     Take a time-out from legal immigration and get serious about enforcing the laws about illegal immigration. Stop lying to ourselves and stop using semantic ruses like calling illegal immigrants "undocumented."

     Prepare psychologically for the destruction of a lot of fictitious "wealth" -- and allow instruments and institutions based on fictitious wealth to fail, instead of attempting to keep them propped up on credit life-support. Like any other thing in our national life, finance has to return to a scale that is consistent with our circumstances -- i.e., what reality will allow. That process is underway, anyway, whether the public is prepared for it or not. We will soon hear the sound of banks crashing all over the place.  Get out of their way, if you can.

     Prepare psychologically for a sociopolitical climate of anger, grievance, and resentment. A lot of individual citizens will find themselves short of resources in the years ahead. They will be very ticked off and seek to scapegoat and punish others. The United States is one of the few nations on earth that did not undergo a sociopolitical convulsion in the past hundred years. But despite what we tell ourselves about our specialness, we're not immune to the forces that have driven other societies to extremes. The rise of the Nazis, the Soviet terror, the "cultural revolution," the holocausts and genocides -- these are all things that can happen to any people driven to desperation.

   

Comments

[XER]

Nature demands that we come to the peace table.

[XER]

Her terms are fair and just.

[arizonaTOM]

"a PASSLE of clippings"---now there's a comfortable friendly old word that i haven't heard in at least 20 years....! Great post, as usual!

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Riddick, some music for that grainy footage you are seeing in your head:

Right! Now! ha ha ha ha ha

I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Don't know what I want but
I know how to get it
I wanna destroy the passer-by coz
I wanna be anarchy !
No dogs body

Anarchy for the u.s.a. its coming sometime and maybe
I give a wrong time
Stop a trafic line
Your future dream is a shopping scheme coz
I wanna be anarchy !
In the city

How many ways to get what you want
I use the best I use the rest
I use the enemy I use anarchy cos i

I wanna be anarchy !
The only way to be !

Is this the f.e.m.a.
Or is this the c.i.a.
Or is this the n.s.a.
I thought it was the u.s.a. or just
Another country
Another coprorate tendancy

I wanna be an anarchist
Oh what a name
Get pissed
Destroy!

[montysano]

I appreciate it when Jim lays out some solutions. Too many pundits are great at ranting about problems without offering any solutions (I'm lookin' at you, Arthur Silber).

But when Jim talks about how "we" need to build passenger rail, and "we" need to end subsidies, and "we" need to quit building highways......... well, I am part of "we", I guess, but I can't do any of those things. I need to elect someone to do it.

My point is this: those things, to be accomplished, require national leadership. They require a serious national conversation about where we are and where we're going.

Where, oh where could we have such a conversation? Hey.... how about presidential debates and campaign speeches? Or maybe our broadcast media could pick up he ball?

Or maybe they'll continue to blather about John Edward's hair and Hillary's cleavage.

Jeebus......... we SO deserve what's in store for us.

Sorry to be negative on this beautiful, sunny Monday down here in the South. But it's tough: so many of us are ready to get started, to get serious, to have that national conversation. But those issues are absent... completely absent.... from the candidates and from the media.

[mikey1313b]

From Barack Obama's website:

"Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Over the longer term, we know that the amount of fuel we will use is directly related to our land use decisions and development patterns, much of
which have been organized around the principle of cheap gasoline. Barack Obama believes that we
must move beyond our simple fixation of investing so many of our transportation dollars in serving drivers and that we must make more investments that make it easier for us to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives."

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/EnergyFactSheet.pdf

[Alan_NJ]

"Put in effect a ban on buildings in excess of seven stories."

Can anyone link to some good articles about why taller buildings are unsustainable?

Is it pumping up water, elevators, what?

[XER]

Montysano,

On the national discussion. We have a long way to go, considering we are at, "Fire bad, food good."

[montysano]

XER,

Oh, c'mon: it's not that bad. I think we've progressed to "fire bad, food good, American Idol best".

Nice one..

[Movenonup]

Alan NJ,

In TLE, Kunstler talks about this. Without the grid, in the summer, I don't even want to be on the second floor, never mind the seventh. As they like to say around here, taller buildings "don't scale."

[Dr.Doom]

I really don't think that Dave needs any help from me, but let me "just say" that Dave is no dummy. He is in fact, a lot more clued than many posting here today, and that includes our fearless leader, JHK. So careful whom you pick upon, recall Gandi wasn't much to behold physically, but appearances can be deceiving.

OEO, congratulations on posting that math revelation by Matt Simmons. Now, please put these two thoughts together: (a) running out of energy versus (b) building new infrastructure. A + B = C where C = not gonna happen.

[Dr.Doom]

"It took fifty years to accomplish, it’s going to take fifty years to undo."--Nicholas P.

Wrong. It will take much less time for it to come undone. The halt grinding will take your breath away, why, it may even take your life away;

[teicher]

"End subsidies to agribusiness and instead direct dollar support to small-scale farmers ..."

The problem is that in much of the country there are very few small scale farmers. The average farm size in Iowa in 1925 was 150 acres. It is now over 350 acres. Significant land reform would be needed for small scale farming to again be the norm. Most small farmers that I know cannot make a living from farming and have a wife who works in town--both for added income and for employer-provided health insurance.

Another problem is that much of the farm infrastructure has disappeared. Farm houses have been abandoned and are falling apart. Farm buildings are in a similar state. It is rare to see a barn that can still function as a working barn (except in Amish country). Orchards and household truck gardens have disappeared. Fences have been torn out to make large-scale cultivation easier. County roads that once led to small farms have been abandoned for lack of use.

In addition, the biofuels scam is making things worse as farmers are now farming fence row to fence row with corn or beans. Highly erodible land is being brought back into production and I imagine wetlands restoration will cease.

Another problem is the age of the average farmer. In Iowa, the average age of a farmer is over 55 and very few young people are going into farming. Much of the knowledge needed to farm on a small-scale is being lost.

While I often indulge in a bit of agrarian romanticism myself, a return to small-scale farming of the sort that existed in 1900 would take significant time and a large investment in infrastructure.

[JLee]

It's not just the end of suburbia with its stip malls and SUVs. The real issue is that Bubble Capitalism is finished (or almost), and no one can even imagine that they aren't capitalists! Can you name one person you know who isn't a capitalist?

[Uncle Remus]

D3PO,

Dr. though you may be, it is unlikely you could render the help Dave might need anyway.

[Uncle Remus]

Think economic genocide.

[oneEyeOpen]

"OEO, congratulations on posting that math revelation by Matt Simmons. Now, please put these two thoughts together: (a) running out of energy versus (b) building new infrastructure. A + B = C where C = not gonna happen."

I need not put your thoughts together. Simmons already has. His point was that even if the tooth fairy came down and helped out with infrastructure and all the heavy lifting we're still fucked. What enlightening revelation do you believe your A,B,C equation brought to the table?

[Dr.Doom]

OEO, Simmons was discussing oil production. The second thought was the infrastructure redevelopment being touted here by JHK. Those are not the same thoughts, and I think in trying to belittle what I said you have overstated Simmons' contribution, which BTW, is not new to some, but it's good to see a pundit getting the word out to the masses, or a least some subset of them.

[Holmes, I presume]

dave, at first I thought Modest Mouse made those videos, than I discovered that they were taken from the movie Satantango, a 7-hour long film of Hungarian peasants drinking and doing whatever else they do.

There's plenty of social and other commentary embedded here, if only you farmbots would pull your heads out of your asses and scratch a bit deeper past the surface layer. Oh, sorry, it doesn't include an explicit proposal for rejuvenating light rail, or hacking the top floors off buildings, or mass-scale transitioning to home schooling, or implementing isolationist fantasies, or… . Welp. It must be part of the problem then. Monday... jezz.

[Uncle Remus]

And Rome just keeps on burning...

Spank it!

[EEofDC]

"The United States is one of the few nations on earth that did not undergo a sociopolitical convulsion in the past hundred years."

Hm-m-m-m. Have to disagree with you on this one, Jim. You and I weren't around for all of disasters and upheavals in the early part of the 20th Century but had them, this country did. (Think Great Depression, Dustbowl, Cosa Nostra, Cuban Missle Crisis, Kennedy Assasination, Anti-Viet Nam War movement, etc.)

We're a young nation, founded by a bunch of white guys (landed gentry for the most part) on some pretty hi-flown idealistic rhetoric and slave labor. Women weren't part of the equation, directly. With Washington being the exception, many of these folks died under financial clouds.

While reading comments here and elsewhere on the net, I was compelled the other day to go and read our Declaration of Independence and was shocked to read the following indictment of England by our founding fathers:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Quite a feeling of cognitive dissonance came over me. Perhaps we are reaping what we sowed over 200 years ago when we destroyed the homeland and cilture of the "merciless Indian Savages and their culture." (I've always thought that cigarettes/tabacco--used by Native Americans in ritual--was a huge karmic payback for the European conquerors.)

XER-
I hope you're writing your thoughts down and turning them into poetry or song or both! Ya gotta take your message to the amygdala!!!

Holmes-
o-o-o-o, I love it when you get worked up!

[Johnny Rico]

“Dampening the Administration’s customary upbeat tone on the economy, President Bush acknowledged Monday that the economic signs were ‘increasingly mixed’…” – The New York Times, 1/7/08

“Increasingly mixed?”
Is that pseudo-Texan for “impossibly fucked?”

It’s like saying the Titanic became “increasingly moist” after hitting the iceberg – like a couple good sponges could have solved the problem.

Wow, a titanic analogy? You must be one of those bold, paradigm-shifting visionaries God sometimes sends to save our economy.

***
The new Get Your War On is out for a few good chuckles. It’s like CFN is comic form.
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war71.html

[Dr.Doom]

Holmes, I was having the same thoughts. Hey, in case anyone missed it, PeakLife made an appearance late last night asking the usual absurd questions, sprinkled with anti-doomer remarks, etc. Nudge must have gotten up early this AM and replied. Reading them is a lot like watching a cat play with a mouse, before killing and eating him. Worth a read, at bottom of last week’s thread.

[ethanol4u,gas4me]

We protect the Saudis (and their oil) and then they turn around and steal our women and take them away to their medieval kingdom.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-wives14jan14,1,1160452.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true

Thank you Jeffrey Fleishman for exposing this outrageous behavior. And to think our good God-fearing president is over there right now treating them like friends.
--------------------------------

And to attempt to be on topic...
This week's posting is nothing more than the same old hopelessly naive utopian thinking from JHK. The downslope won't be a time of creative reorganization. Just won't happen.

[Holmes, I presume]

One man’s monkey spank is another man’s activism, which isn’t to say that activism, whether to the end of doing nothing, actively attempting to delay or manage die off, or something in between, isn’t pointless.

Speaking of holding tightly to things, I don’t quite follow why JHK endorsed Edwards. Look at his (JHK’s) proposals. They seem closer overall to the platform bullet points of Duncan Hunter. Old habits die hard I guess.

Ethanol4, word. Yeah… who says we Americans don’t export anything anymore? A great, errr… untapped resource is all around us.