We are caught between a landslide and a landmine.
The landslide is our economy, the crumbling decay of an industrial system, tumbling to be rebuilt into something new. The landmine, exploding beneath our feet, was something we built ourselves, while our sight was failing: a belief that we could become rich by selling each other silly putty.
In all of human experience, until very recently, we have lived in three great "economies". First, we were hunters and gatherers. We killed other animals, and ate plant seeds, and fruits, and roots, and shoots. Such societies still exist, here and there, in overlooked corners of the world. It was a wandering, nomadic world.
About ten thousand years ago, or so, people figured out how to domesticate both plants and animals, making it unnecessary to tramp about to look for food, and making it possible to store surplus food. That is agriculture. Once, in our own nation, about 95% of our economic activity had something to do with agriculture. Everything was powered by muscle power; human muscle power and animal muscle power. The first settled towns were born. People began to specialize their work. It is a fraction of that today.
Just a few hundred years ago, first in England, then in America and Europe, people figured out how to harness the energy in coal, and later in other fossil fuels. First there was steam power, and later, petroleum power. Even, just recently, the energy of atoms. Great cities were built. Huge factories belched smoke and firearms and tractors and trains and plastic toys. Men went down into mines for the coal, and drilled holes in the ground and under the sea for oil. Horses and oxen and human beings needed sleep, but the factories ran night and day. We trained ourselves to get up at six, and show up for work at eight, eat lunch at twelve, and go home at five. We synchronized ourselves to precise clocks. We made ourselves cogs in an industrial machine. We built Pittsburgh and Detroit.
Pittsburgh and Detroit aren't like that, anymore. It is not just that some of those jobs went overseas, to places that were just moving into the industrial age. In all industrial societies, something new is happening. The industrial age is moving to supplant agricultural societies, everywhere. In the old industrial societies, a new kind of society is emerging: an information age, an electronic age, an age that is building on the ruins of the old industrial factories.
At the same time, the really smart people figured out that big money was not to be made by planting corn or soybeans, or building automobiles and backhoes, but either by cornering the sources of energy, or by inventing fairy tales about how to get rich by manipulating money. You didn't have to plant corn, or to build cars: all you had to do was to see where the money was moving, and go stand in front of it. Sell a scheme to peel off some for yourself. It was a casino: you bet your money, and the house took it right away if you were dumb, or laid off their bad bets, and took it a little later.
The industrial age, here, is crumbling, tumbling down the hill. Our schemes to get rich by selling each other financial derivatives collapsed when it became evident that no one wanted to buy a Chrysler, and that the house mortgage, sliced up and sold to the really smart people, was mostly hot air. You can still hear the hiss.
It is no wonder that people are angry. Millions have lost their jobs in industry. Those jobs are not coming back. They have gone to the people just emerging from agricultural societies. The Ponzi schemes are collapsing. We cannot all get rich betting that everybody else is going to fail.
We have hard work to do. Even if coal and oil lasted nearly forever, simply using them in grander and grander ways will kill all of us. And Gary, Indiana is never going to be a steel mill town, ever again. Those factories are in China. We need to invent new ways to warm our homes, and do our work. We need to figure out, first, what our work is going to be. We can do that by figuring out how we can live better lives, not by hunting Wooly Mammoths, or planting corn, or building Hummers, but by imagining how billions of us can live together, for the long run. As that becomes clear, we will find our work.
The landslide is our economy, the crumbling decay of an industrial system, tumbling to be rebuilt into something new. The landmine, exploding beneath our feet, was something we built ourselves, while our sight was failing: a belief that we could become rich by selling each other silly putty.
In all of human experience, until very recently, we have lived in three great "economies". First, we were hunters and gatherers. We killed other animals, and ate plant seeds, and fruits, and roots, and shoots. Such societies still exist, here and there, in overlooked corners of the world. It was a wandering, nomadic world.
About ten thousand years ago, or so, people figured out how to domesticate both plants and animals, making it unnecessary to tramp about to look for food, and making it possible to store surplus food. That is agriculture. Once, in our own nation, about 95% of our economic activity had something to do with agriculture. Everything was powered by muscle power; human muscle power and animal muscle power. The first settled towns were born. People began to specialize their work. It is a fraction of that today.
Just a few hundred years ago, first in England, then in America and Europe, people figured out how to harness the energy in coal, and later in other fossil fuels. First there was steam power, and later, petroleum power. Even, just recently, the energy of atoms. Great cities were built. Huge factories belched smoke and firearms and tractors and trains and plastic toys. Men went down into mines for the coal, and drilled holes in the ground and under the sea for oil. Horses and oxen and human beings needed sleep, but the factories ran night and day. We trained ourselves to get up at six, and show up for work at eight, eat lunch at twelve, and go home at five. We synchronized ourselves to precise clocks. We made ourselves cogs in an industrial machine. We built Pittsburgh and Detroit.
Pittsburgh and Detroit aren't like that, anymore. It is not just that some of those jobs went overseas, to places that were just moving into the industrial age. In all industrial societies, something new is happening. The industrial age is moving to supplant agricultural societies, everywhere. In the old industrial societies, a new kind of society is emerging: an information age, an electronic age, an age that is building on the ruins of the old industrial factories.
At the same time, the really smart people figured out that big money was not to be made by planting corn or soybeans, or building automobiles and backhoes, but either by cornering the sources of energy, or by inventing fairy tales about how to get rich by manipulating money. You didn't have to plant corn, or to build cars: all you had to do was to see where the money was moving, and go stand in front of it. Sell a scheme to peel off some for yourself. It was a casino: you bet your money, and the house took it right away if you were dumb, or laid off their bad bets, and took it a little later.
The industrial age, here, is crumbling, tumbling down the hill. Our schemes to get rich by selling each other financial derivatives collapsed when it became evident that no one wanted to buy a Chrysler, and that the house mortgage, sliced up and sold to the really smart people, was mostly hot air. You can still hear the hiss.
It is no wonder that people are angry. Millions have lost their jobs in industry. Those jobs are not coming back. They have gone to the people just emerging from agricultural societies. The Ponzi schemes are collapsing. We cannot all get rich betting that everybody else is going to fail.
We have hard work to do. Even if coal and oil lasted nearly forever, simply using them in grander and grander ways will kill all of us. And Gary, Indiana is never going to be a steel mill town, ever again. Those factories are in China. We need to invent new ways to warm our homes, and do our work. We need to figure out, first, what our work is going to be. We can do that by figuring out how we can live better lives, not by hunting Wooly Mammoths, or planting corn, or building Hummers, but by imagining how billions of us can live together, for the long run. As that becomes clear, we will find our work.
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