I wrote this a few weeks ago, prior to the recent Supreme Court decision to let the campaign process go to hell and several other developments. However, I still feel it's relevant, so here we go...
Now, I don't want to make this a 'the sky is falling' type of thread, so let's try to avoid getting into either liberal or conservative talking point nonsense. Furthermore, although some alarmist articles are up for discussion here, I want to make it clear that I'm not agreeing with them simply by posting them - rather, I'd like to explore and discuss just how much merit the notion that our civilization may be on the decline has, and what steps should be taken if it is.
As the past few years have progressed, I have become more and more interested in the increasingly more visible parallels between the perceived decline of the American empire and other empires that have come before it. Before anyone takes offense to my saying 'empire', don't kid yourself - we are one, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. For the better part of the past century the actions of the United States have had arguably more worldwide impact than any other country.
Let's take a pause for a moment to examine a few quotes:
Source:
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Fall-of-a-civilisationTheodor Mommsen in his "History of Rome", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay."
Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127).
Arnold J. Toynbee in his monumental "A Study of History" suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariat.
Source:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.htmlThe Wealth Distribution
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.7%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2009).
When exactly does the cultural elite become the parasitic elite? It's hard to say exactly, but I'd say a pretty good measure is how good of a job of
redistribution they are doing. The basics of 'trickle-down' economy and other similar conservative economic ideals assume that the cultural elite - i.e., the redistributors of wealth within our society - will act for the good of society and distribute wealth in a way that benefits those lower on the totem pole than they are.
These aren't bad economic ideals. For years, they've actually worked - the redistributors at the top of our society have provided the American citizen with an unprecedented level of material wealth, etc. Liberals who argue that the 'trickle-down' model of economics doesn't work often ignore the fact that it has successfully worked in our economy (and many other economies throughout history), where the function of the wealthy is to spread wealth in a way that benefits everyone in a society.
So what's the problem? The problem is when organizations with no fiscal responsibility or sense of morality begin to accumulate all of the profits they possibly can while totally ignoring the 'redistribution' part of the model. When corporations and individuals are allowed to hoard all of the resources available in a country without performing their fiduciary duty of redistribution, the economic model fails and we have a major problem. Under these circumstances we get the withering of the middle class that we've seen in recent years as well as the emergence of a plutarchy.
Of course, this class disparity has meant far less because of the unprecedented level of material comfort new technologies have been able to provide the average American citizen with. But the disparity has become more and more clear within the last decade - especially with the revelations that people like Bernard Madoff have literally been feeding off of the American populace like bloated financial parasites without returning anything of value or worth. And of course, he's just the very tippy-tip of the iceberg - Wall Street itself has essentially become a machine meant to fuel 'casino economics', wherein investors are lured by lenders and banks into making increasingly risky investments because of the hugely unrealistic returns that are waved in front of their faces like a monetary carrot on a stick. Homeowners prior to the housing bubble bust seemed to think their homes were giant ATM machines whose value would simply continue to increase by magic.
And at some point, 'casino economics' are absolutely guaranteed to fail. They already have once, and they will again. The problem becomes increasingly complicated with the advent of electronic worldwide trade, which is an order of magnitude more difficult to monitor and regulate than traditional methods of trade ever have been.
Another interesting article to check out is
Death of 'Soul of Capitlism' by Paul B. Farrell. It comes across somewhat as fear-mongering to me, but some very good points are made about the current
Crippled State of Capitalism as a whole and the fact that there's a possibility the world economy is teetering on the verge of (a much greater) systemic failure. Unlike Mr. Farrell, though, I think it's dishonest to say we absolutely know for a fact that such a systemic failure is going to happen or that we'll be unable to either fix the existing system or come up with a new one in time to save ourselves and our model of life.
I had some amount of faith in Mr. Obama when he took office, but unfortunately that faith has (mostly)
(addendum: as of this posting, I'll change this to 'pretty much completely') eroded. I think he unfortunately is a man who may have done the country a great amount of good, say, two decades ago, when his ideas might have been realistic - but probably not now. As far as I can tell he is either oblivious to the dire straits we're in and thinks the system is far more secure than it is in reality, or he's got an ace in the hole that nobody knows about. I have serious doubts about the latter.
Is it possible, though, that we're living under outdated concepts that simply aren't going to provide us with the momentum necessary to move forward? If so, what exactly do we need to fix, what do we need to replace, and what do we need to avoid? Two-faced party politics need to be avoided if a problem actually exists with the system itself. If there's a problem, the problem needs to be examined and fixed, not squabbled over while the system continues to trip over itself and invite further disaster.
It seems to me that capitalism has been tried, and has been seen to fail, and fail badly. Self-regulation
might work, but is an unrealistic prospect to hope for when we have a government in place that is willing to ignore the very tenets of capitalism on which it must operate. Communism is just as bad or worse - a too-idealistic system that opens the way for people with big 'new ideas' to practice gangster politics by talking a pretty talk.
It is my personal belief that we have come to a tipping point. And even if we haven't, the timeline of the past decade should make it clear that the capitalistic model of regulating an economy is not nearly as effective as we'd hoped, especially when we allow the government to intercede and take actions that effectively quash any merit that the system of freeform capitalism has (i.e., takeovers of economic sectors (i.e., the collapse of AIG, Fannie May, Freddie Mac...)).
We need a return to real capitalism, or we need something new. And we need to stop practicing socialism at the top and capitalism at the bottom. That ain't capitalism, folks.
Does anyone at all agree with me that our current economic model is simply not going to work in the future? What ideas might work better, or which could be used to implement or fix this clearly-unhealthy situation?
