I have posted many times about the way ALL the things planned by the morons ruling the world are neither sustainable nor even possible to achieve; and I’m often asked what are the solutions, what, if anything can we do to alleviate the inevitable suffering the coming calamities will bring to our civilization. I wish it were as simple as deploying renewables or switching to horses for transportation as someone mentioned in a comment to the last post I put up just this afternoon. It’s not simple; it’s in fact very very complicated. Worse, nobody is talking about it; all the discussion in your favourite media is about returning to ‘normal’, whatever that means. Because there’s really no such thing as ‘normal’.
The first solution of drug addiction is the admission of the problem. and we don’t have a problem, we have a serious predicament.
The pandemic has exposed, to me at least, just how UTTERLY dependant we have become on money. I absolutely believe nothing of any worth can happen until we abandon this dependence. This is because the dependence is caused by debt fueled consumption.
The Earth is dying of consumption. Not only is consumption already dying because of limits to growth, it must end even sooner if we want to have any chance of not frying ourselves before the end of this century.
The problem is, as the pandemic quickly exposed, as soon as money stops flowing through the economy, millions of people lose their jobs, and none of them can handle the trauma. Maintaining mental health becomes a priority, domestic violence starts going stratospheric, and a solution to that problem becomes essential. I’ve said over and over on this platform that ‘jobs and growth’ have to go. I still stand by that, but we obviously need to find these newly unemployed people something to do. And we need to find ways that involves them not needing money, or at least supply them with enough of it that they can at the very least survive….
Governments all over the world have discovered that they can print enough of this folding stuff, at least temporarily. It’s a rude shock to neoliberalism which firmly believes in budget surpluses and other monetary gods…..
The problem with money is that it currently only represents debts. There are probably not enough actual bank notes and coins for people to trade, hence the current rush to plastic money. Oh and I forgot all the 1s & 0s in your bank accounts…. Therefore, debts must go. With a debt jubilee comes freedom. You no longer have to slave away to repay your mortgage, credit cards, car loans, student loans, etc etc….. The corporations that supply your water and electricity no longer need to be profitable. So the other thing we spend money on should become cheaper as demand drops.
Most of all, the whole notion that money is a marker of wealth also has to go. Money is a means of trading, and it needs to be replaced with currency. Which means billionaires and their ilk disappear. Anyone with ‘investments’ lose that too. Told you it wouldn’t be popular….
Redistributing the available currency so it’s equitably divided becomes essential now. Sorry if this sounds like communism, it’s not at all my intent. All the old isms have to go too, that’s how we got into this mess.
I’m of the opinion enough renewable energy has already been deployed, so we don’t need more. Fossil fuels energy must and will be scrapped. This means the end of growth, which is precisely what needs to be achieved. And as we don’t want any more growth, all the banks can be shut down for good. Who likes banks anyway? Apart from bankers I mean…..
The biggest problem remains food production and distribution. I didn’t buy a farm for no reason! We’re going to need lots and lots of manual workers again now we’ve given fossil fuels the flick.
If you think this is all a bit extreme, just wait ’til the pandemic’s repercussions reverberate around the world.
We’ll need cobblers and weavers. there are more than enough houses to go ’round so builders will have to do other things. Bicycle mechanics may well become in great demand too…. With all this physical activity, I expect obesity to also go away…..
You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet….. Did I tell you we live in interesting times….? Or that we have a serious lack of imagination…?
Damn the Matrix 