marshmallow economy

MARSHMALLOW ECONOMY


Before we start today I’d like to point out the underlining idiocy that contributes to my need to preview and approve comments. Someone was writing as Kunstler, telling me my review of “Witch” was dumb. Kunstler would not use such a phrase as “Boy, that was sure dumb”. He would tear apart a review in a much more educated manner. He might use dumb in DUMBass, having a rather low tolerance for that type of behavior. No, we don’t hang out and drink beers together. As far as I know he wouldn’t be caught dead reading my drivel. But you can usually tell when someone’s writing style doesn’t sound kosher. So, to get to my point, I told you I didn’t approve of two things in the comments- using the “N” Bomb and libeling someone that could get me in trouble with the attack lawyers. So, thank you Mr. Penishead for going the libel route. Who doesn’t get that anymore justice is on sale to the highest bidder? I thought OJ Simpson ( If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer ) dispelled any doubts there might have been ( I lost my early childhood fantasy about our justice system after learning of Texas potheads- not dealers, just users- being jailed for life, if not before ). It doesn’t have to be technically against the law for them to either railroad you into prison or to ruin you financially with court costs. Bitches like this are why I must moderate the comments section. Friggin ass whore.

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Now, before we start with the main article, I want to dispel any illusion that I’m endorsing the decades to centuries long slow collapse theory. When you say that a slow down in the growth of government spending constitutes an actual cut you are using lawyer weasel words. And when you say that a slow down in the growth of prosperity constitutes the beginning of the collapse you are doing the same. If you say that our country has been in a collapse ( Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ) since the 70’s you might be technically correct but it isn’t true as far as real suffering or disintegration are concerned. I might say we’ve been in the first stages of a collapse but that is just being lazy. We started to lose our prosperity, we started to give back some gains in our standard of living, but it has been no where near a collapse. A collapse isn’t losing luxuries, it is losing necessities. The last two years have not been the start of a collapse, it has been the end of growth at all levels. At the family unit level it is about giving up the gains that easy credit and two incomes had brought. If you thought that the end and contraction of luxury living has been bad, wait until the necessities start ending which will signal a true collapse. Keep this distinction in mind as I will more than likely be using a lot of mental short cuts for the rest of the article. I’ll try to clarify but if there is any confusion just keep the above fixed in thought.

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I was reading the latest post from http://americanenergycrisis.blogspot.com/ and I liked his dig on fat people. I’m not necessarily agreeing with his distaste, I just thought it was funny. I like a certain amount of plump in the ladies myself. If you read Tom Wolfe ( The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ) one of his novels ( A Man in Full ) had a great description of the recent taste in female bodies, “boys with boobs” describing the taste for skinny bodies. To a certain degree I agree. And it almost fits into the subject here, another example of consumerism and unnatural bodies. Why are Americans fat? It isn’t just lack of discipline. Or super abundance. It is also the food-like substitutes we make into our main diet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

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In the 70’s oil crunch, when we suddenly had to remap how our society was constructed- from oil surplus growth to oil decline, everything had to change. We didn’t just wake up one morning and decide that suddenly debt was a good idea, that we should abandon our respect for others, that we wanted to be lazy whores. That was all a byproduct of going from a production economy with a strong decentralized agricultural sector to an economy that was in effect in decline but masked it with the illusion of growth through the Information Age ( Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation) ) was about living off debt and playing fast and loose with the money system we were then in control of. I at first thought the Information Age was a great idea. As a high school student I read and reread Toffler’s “The Third Wave” ( The Third Wave ) and took it to heart. It is only in hindsight that I’m beginning to think it was all a bit of a snow job. The main thing we did was turn everybody into consumers and credit junkies. We all surrendered hands on skills and a modicum of self sufficiency for bigger and bigger TV’s and microwavable corn derived food substances. We are all dependent on very recent development of a few banks deciding how much money we get and what it is worth and survive off of a few areas of land growing corn with petroleum.

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As population exploded to provide masses of new credit card users, more and more people were stuffed into areas totally unable to survive without oil ( to include the Great Basin, home of Bisonia ) and at the mercy of Oil Down. We didn’t live in cities with ports for trade or towns surrounded by farmland, we just paved over all the worthless land and piled the people on. And without a few Midwest spots growing Petroleum Corn, plus natural gas to keep them alive in winter with heat or electricity to lift up their water, most would be dead. As the oil started running out, we jumped ahead by several orders of magnitude in our dependence for carbon fuel. The last forty years are a lesson that we became so much more dependent on oil. To think we are going to turn on a dime and become sustainable or live off alternate energy ( A Guide To Alternative Energy ) is a huge fallacy. A consequence of farming out our manufacturing sector to substitute dollars for oil was that the economy put in place produced helpless fat consumers. Of course cubical warriors fed FrankenCorn are going to be fat and disease ridden. What else can you expect? We are mostly all a product of our environment which is beyond our control. To a degree it is a self-imposed sickness, but most are unaware of the problem. How can you blame them?

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Now that the American Peak, which destroyed our luxurious way of life, is being replaced by Global Peak, we can start to look forward to real pain and suffering far and away worse than crippling health we’ve slowly embraced through generations. Oh, fun. Here’s to your health, if it hasn’t already been screwed.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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