What would be genuinely positive would be to surrender our dependence on possession bubbles and malinvested financial obligation to prop up an unstable delusion of effortless “wealth.”
The most spiritual liturgy of American culture is to always be favorable and optimistic. The greatest taboo is breaking this spiritual duty to state something positive and positive; it is appropriate (hardly) to make awkwardly negative observations, however just if you right away follow up the unfavorable remarks with a treacly, double-serving of sweet optimism: for instance, inflation is transitory, the economy is growing strongly, incomes are rising, and so on.
Therefore we sleepwalk into 2022, ill-prepared to handle reality which most aggravatingly continues responding to systemic characteristics no matter how much sugary optimism is spread around.
The limitless servings of sugary optimism serve several purposes:
1. They produce an enticing illusion that systemic problems can be fixed without materially altering the status quo or requiring any sacrifices.
2. They mask the bothersome truth that the status quo is incapable of resolving systemic issues since doing so would demand sacrifices of those skimming the vast majority of the advantages of the status quo, i.e. the wealthy and powerful.
3. They mask the huge sacrifices being imposed on the bottom 90% to keep the status quo the same, i.e. benefiting the few at the cost of the numerous.
4. The need to constantly be sugar-high positive is a convenient tool to bludgeon critics who mention the systemic failure of the status quo as alarmists, doom-and-gloomers, etc.
To put it simply, you’re just enabled to mention a critical systemic flaw if you also parrot a completely impractical, unwise “option” that fits the sugar-high optimism requirement: blend: limitless energy for everyone forever! Modern Monetary Theory: complimentary money for everyone forever! And so on, in an unlimited gush of detached-from-reality “solutions” that all amazingly fix all issues without changing anything in the class structure of who benefits from the existing arrangement or requiring any reduction in our waste is development Garbage dump Economy.
We no longer fix the difficult problems because they need changing a system that benefits the wealthy and powerful to the exclusion of everyone else. Just the debt-serfs and tax-donkeys suffer, however given that they’re passive and helpless, who cares?
The sweet optimism also masks the devastating nature of the simple fixes that are so beloved by the political class: debt, inflation and narrative control. All are politically and financially pain-free in the beginning, and however the systemic consequences ultimately erode the entire status quo, which collapses in a rank heap of lies, artifice, fakery, profiteering, delusion and deceptiveness.
Making everybody feel warm and fuzzy by obtaining and distributing “complimentary money” works marvels more or less like a sugar-cocaine speedball. The expense of the new debt is topped years in the future, and a Federal Reserve beholden to those reaping the benefit from financial obligation (banks, investors, the wealthy) is always prepared to lower rate of interest to relieve the pain of servicing debt as a way of enabling ever-greater loaning going forward.
What could be better? Obtain and spend now, pay in installments extending far into the future. Sadly, the advance of time is inexorable, and the future soon becomes today. And despite the decreasing interest rate, all that rapidly broadening debt is now sucking the earnings well dry, leaving inadequate income to borrow more or spend more.
Oops. Don’t you hate it when the system works so well and then it suddenly implodes due to its self-reinforcing, self-destructive structural incoherence? A system based on financial obligation for “development” is self-liquidating, suggesting that the debt consumes the system alive by siphoning off earnings while malinvestment, waste and speculative betting ruins the “capital” moneyed by the financial obligation.
Inflation is equally precious by the political class for the very same factors: it’s painless at the start and everybody likes the illusion that possessions are rising without anybody in fact developing any extra worth or efficiency– it’s all magic. Just print a few trillion dollars and pump the “totally free money” into stock buybacks and speculative bets, and voila, everyone who currently owns assets gets richer without doing anything but being a genius.
All the enjoyable stuff eventually creates real-world inflation and pumps up assets into ridiculous bubbles that eventually pop at the least appropriate time, right when everyone watching their wealth swell like clockwork starts believing not just in their own genius however in the perpetual-motion maker of Fed-printing and quickly expanding financial obligation.
Those anticipating possessions to bubble greater forever and real-world expenses to deflate have it backwards: it’s the possessions which have actually inflated that will deflate back to beginning levels of evaluation and it’s real-world inflation that will collect momentum and shred the economy and political structure.
Those depending upon made earnings will see the buying power of their incomes drop precipitously while those who were counting on their greatly bigger unearned “wealth” in asset bubbles to fund their lifestyle and extravagant retirement will experience 80% decreases in the “wealth” they presumed was irreversible.
It will be a great shock to the political class, however controlling the narrative to protect your interests won’t really stop the systemic momentum careening over the cliff. Requiring that everyone disavow issues doesn’t really resolve the problems.
Alas, practical speedball fixes to systemic issues just create brand-new instabilities while fueling the instabilities of the problems left unsolved. Sleepwalking in a fantasy-dream of free money forever, free energy forever and constantly broadening asset bubbles of “wealth” will take us to the edge of the cliff and after that into the void.
What would be really positive would be to surrender our reliance on property bubbles and mal-invested financial obligation to prop up an unstable misconception of uncomplicated “wealth” and an unsustainable waste is development Landfill Economy.
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