disco decline

DISCO DECLINE
There was a guest article posted earlier.
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Yes, yet another flashback to disco, Burt Reynolds heyday and wild and crazy hair on both genders. What I’d like to talk about today, just to put you all asleep again because that’s the swell kind of guy I am and I know you all need the maximum possible amount of beauty rest, is that rather than use the seventies decline as a celebratory tale, it should make you very afraid ( okay, even I’ll admit I might be reaching here today, having few other ideas pop into my head- shut up and buy Amazon crap and I’ll eventually put forth such dazzling blather that you shall once again bask in my radiance ). We didn’t escape the seventies. We might have escaped disco ( fun filled fact, the very first commercial CD was Abba is 1983 ), but we never escaped our peak oil. I’d just like to recap a before and after so you can say to yourself, wow, we’ve been in decline for forty years and to expect to be able to escape the consequences of our inactions any longer is both foolhardy and retarded.

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We used to have a gold based currency. That really ended in the Great Depression when FDR outlawed private ownership ( and ever since then we’ve had to take the central banks word for it that there was actually something left in Fort Knox ). But the illusion of precious metal backing lasted until the 70’s, when we said, piss on all you smelly foreigners that only have cheese in your vaults backing your money, we aren’t sending you any more gold. Naturally this pissed everyone off because now all they had in their faults were cheese and worthless dollars. Of course, the bankers who are certified Evil Geniuses figured out that they could back the dollar with Saudi Arabian oil which to me is extraordinarily brilliant. I never would have thought about that. The dollars went back to being backed by something and everybody put back on the Abba CD’s and went back to discoing. But it didn’t just go from gold to oil. That was bad enough but once everybody got used to it it was all good, dawg. No, now it is far worse. It is paper currency backed by derivatives. The oil is disappearing.

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We used to be the globes leading oil producer. We were the leading oil exporter, but had so much pouring out of our ass we also were the top consumer. In 1971, fifteen years after Hubbert predicted it, our lower 48 oil production peaked at about nine million barrels a day. Now, after adding in Alaska ( which long ago peaked in its production ) and the Gulf, we only produce half of our own oil ( we were only producing 40% of our own oil, until imports started drying up. The good news is we are more self reliant on oil. The bad news is the only way we got there is to use a lot less ). We went from a oil powerhouse to an oil beggar. We are no better off strategically than Europe which must kiss Russia’s ass to get most of their natural gas to survive the winter.

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We used to be the globes factory. And we put out quality stuff. Taking shop class in school actually got you ready for a factory job ( now it just gets you a nice expensive hobby skill ). When our oil started declining, the only way we could keep that decline from being more drastic was to farm out our manufacturing and hence reduce our need for more energy. Now we are at the point that our military supply chain is in constant danger. Another change was our military. We had a mechanized army with a draft, to fill the needed personnel slots for fighting a conventional, WWII type war. Once oil started to decline, you saw an end to the draft and a switch to a volunteer army. Who thinks it is a coincidence that as soon as the oil started to decline, and our manufacturing went overseas, and our military was too big to support with domestic resources, we suddenly had all the computer breakthroughs? Computers allowed us to drastically reduce our energy needs. It was conservation through chips that made the economy able to run.

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We used to be able to raise a family on one income. There was enough energy and wealth to allow everybody to share in the pie. That started to shrink, we had to go to two incomes to keep paying the bills because real wages started to drop. The government and bankers don’t care about women’s lib. You bitches went to work not because you were becoming more equal but because men were becoming marginalized workers. Congratulations on your independence, latch key kids ill educated at public schools and all. Yet even that wasn’t bad enough. Two incomes didn’t cut it, centralizing agriculture wasn’t enough of a cost savings, soon everybody had to get into debt to keep their living standards up. Oh, you can live on one income and no debt, but you can’t live middle class. The car and 1200 square foot house in the burbs are only possible as a debt serf. Not all borrowing is because everybody is a shallow greedy whore. Sometimes it is the only way to achieve the American Dream as conventionally thought of.

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None of what we used to enjoy ever came back. It was a permanent lose. We didn’t recover after the 70’s, we just accepted a new normal. The break up of the family, the emasculation of men, lifelong debt, the end of job security. We didn’t just now start our economic decline, it has lasted two generations. Yes, it is lazy and easier when I say “Alaska and North Sea oil allowed us to recover economically”. But really, it just traded the collapse of civilization for a far lower level of living standard. This time there is also no “recovery”. The oil is gone, and to get to happy serfs farming organic radishes under the windmills, we have to go through the die off of nearly seven billion folks. But most of us alive now were already warned with disco. Too bad it took so long to sink in.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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