Energy and independence
There are just two issues, one material, the other moral.
The material issue is energy. There isn’t enough energy to power the economy we want. Our energy supply has not been meeting our expectations for economic growth. Energy is there, but is not so easily available to us as it was. It is energy that determines how much making and buying and selling we can do. There is no economic activity whatsoever that is not use some form of energy. The economy simply is energy consumption.
But this supply has not been growing fast enough to keep up with the larger economy that we have all been banking on. We have been compensating for this missing energy by promising one another that it will be there in the future. We have declared that future energy will create future economic growth which will compensate for the energy and growth that is missing at the moment. The economy of the future will be so much bigger that it will allow us to catch up after the smaller economy we are presently putting up with. The future will be bigger than the present, guaranteed. On the basis of that promise we have issued IOUs on this future growth. Those IOUs are debt, personal, commercial and governmental debt. Central Banks then turn some of that debt into money. Simply by saying so, they convert debt into money in the hope that this will grow the economy. But it is not more money, and it is not more debt, that creates more economic activity. Only more energy creates economic activity. Only the arrival of more energy makes an economy grow, because the economy simply is the supply and consumption of energy.
The second issue is about our independence. It is about our belief that we are dependent, or are not, on the state and corporations. If we think that we cannot let go of our present standard of living we will believe that the present corporates-dominated global economy is necessary and inevitable. Globalism is the cost of convenience and prosperity. If we want to make ourselves more independent, and so less dependent on international corporations, this will mean doing without some of what the global supply chains have been providing for us. We will lose the convenience and security, and our standard of living may suffer, but we will be a little more independent as a result. It is a trade-off, between dependence with greater prosperity, versus less prosperity but greater independence. Ultimately, there might just be less prosperity anyway.
The question is to what extent people are willing to take responsibility for themselves and live with whatever standard of living results. Is this a nation of feisty independent people, or a nation of helpless powerless people? Perhaps the helpless and dependent are even going to resist the more independent and prevent them from providing for themselves. Perhaps government action will be taken to prevent independent economic initiatives and revival of local economies. Perhaps the farmers will go to prison for ‘hoarding.’
Do people really want to take power back into their own hands? If they do, they are going to have to wrest it back from all those who are happy to remain dependent, and all those in public sector jobs, who want to go on providing services centrally and don't want people to take matters into their own hands. They want to remain indispensable, and so will insist that the rest of us remain dependent on them.
This second issue is whether people prefer maturity or childishness, whether they insist on being treated as adults or whether they are content to be treated as children. Is the government our universal sugar daddy? Is the state our true provider? Is it the government who is the real parent of every child, and every woman’s real husband? In other times, men were providers and protectors. Now perhaps we don't need them, and they should be happy to be honourary women and come to terms with it. Soft times make soft men. It was a growing energy supply that made a single global economy, in which all the most basic functions, iron and steel and manufacturing, are carried out many thousands of miles away from consumers, with the result that recent generations of Europeans have never had to learn how to make things. Soft times are paradoxically hard for men who want to provide and protect. Of course, soft times can’t last. The energy is not available to sustain this global form of economy, or least, we don't have enough energy to remain customers and valued members of that global economy. But can soft men toughen up? Can they do it when less energy is available to revive some of the basic economic functions in this nation? Or perhaps they can they only do it when there is so much less energy is available. We shall see.