http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/384/

RUMINATIONS ON RUIN AND RENEWAL

...............Our economy has been based for five centuries upon the assumption that material wealth would always increase. From appropriating new lands to developing new energy supplies, this assumption has been fulfilled throughout this half-millennium period. Now however, with hydrocarbon energy about to enter an ever-accelerating decline, and with the environmental consequences of burning hydrocarbons becoming more acute, the assumption of limitless growth must inevitably break down and our economy must collapse.

This collapse is inevitable because capitalist economies are based upon debt. Money lent today for some income-generating activity can be paid back by new wealth created in the future. Investments are based upon the expectation that new wealth will be generated to repay the loans. However, with declining energy supplies, production will decrease and less material wealth will exist in the future than exists today. Once this fundamental change in our reality is widely understood, our whole global economy will collapse.

However, human societies are capable of learning. Societal learning occurs in a manner analogous to how our immune systems “learn.” Such learning is directly encoded in the structure of the system itself. For an immune system, the physical shape of harmful intruders such as viruses or bacteria is imprinted into specialized cells which “recognize” and destroy these pathogens whenever they reappear. For human societies, institutions perform this function. National level institutions such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, founded in 1934, seek to incorporate the lessons learned by past disasters—the Great Depression for example—into the behavioral repertoire of government so that whenever conditions such as those that caused the past disaster recur, they will be identified and neutralized before they can cause harm. International level institutions such as the United Nations, founded in 1944, similarly seek to incorporate the lessons learned by past global disasters—World War II, in this instance—so that similar disasters can be prevented.

Unfortunately, as a direct consequence of the core values of our civilization which prioritize endless material acquisition above all else, one form of human organization—the global corporation—has with rapidly increasing effectiveness, subverted all forms of institutional memory along with all methodologies of popular control—democracy for example—over the agendas of governments across the planet. This has occurred not through the action of some nefarious conspiracy but rather through what amounts to faulty programming. Corporations exist solely to make profits—as much profit as possible, in as short a time as possible. This profit obligation is encoded into law which effectively “programs” corporate behavior. Responsible behavior, such as control of their pollution, occurs at the expense of increased profit. For corporations, the institutions which seek to constrain their activities for the “greater good” are impediments to profit maximization, and impediments that must be removed. These “impediments” which obstruct profit maximization unfortunately are also our societal “memory” and the institution of popular democracy itself. Public good and private gain, are generally different things. Thus, the maximization of corporate private gain requires the subversion of the public good.

Once corporations achieved the legal status of “persons” by means of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood, these artificial entities were able to out-compete all other flesh and blood persons such as ourselves. A contest between natural persons and these world-spanning artificial persons is no contest at all. In single minded pursuit of profit maximization, all human institutions along with human control over government itself have been progressively swept aside.

Yet ultimately these cancerous monstrosities are not alien impositions upon our planetary civilization, they are, in fact, nothing but the embodiment of our own individual desires for ever more material wealth. The corporations are our self-centered, materialistic values made tangible, and then subsequently run amok to trample us as they follow their pre-programmed agenda of profit maximization above all else.Thus, at the supreme moment of crisis for our global civilization, at the time when the greatest possible civilizational adaptability and the most rapid possible civilizational learning and capacity for restructuring are required—at this supreme moment of existential crisis for all of humanity—our capability for navigating these crises is declining precipitously towards zero.

Consequently, it is too late to use our existing political system to avert our rapid rendezvous with disaster. It is also too late economically and technologically. We simply cannot quickly replace most of the energy which we are about to lose due to declining supplies of hydrocarbon energy. Indeed, given the reality of corporate dominance of our political processes, attempts to develop technologies to avert the crises will likely turn out to be scams by which wealth is taken from people via taxation and given to corporations—or more specifically—to the wealthy elites who control them...................