Hard Times and Deeply Distressing Fundamental Issues

I believe the economic downturn is a sign of a massive global devolution of technological industries in the manufacturing and construction sectors. This devolution is because the whole development reached a critical stage in its size and connectivity, and can no longer avoid eternal factors such as the exterior celestial firmament of distant galaxies, the rotation of the Milky Way galaxy, the annual orbit of the Earth around the Sun, and of course the Earth's rotation.

During most of the opening two or three centuries of technological development, most of the time daily and annual concepts of right were absolutely sufficient to undertake huge constructions such as cities, bridges, tunnels, and highways. Newer technologies such as communications, including television, internet and portable telephone systems, were able to make do with greater use of the annual concepts of right. But in almost no case was it necessary, except occasionally on a local scale, for an industry to check itself against galactic right, and then it was only for a technical detail such as in the sciences where quantum spin is a factor.

By now, the concentration of problems has also become urgent and simply stark. Overpopulation, emphasis on employment that does not deal with such mundane things as food, shelter and clothing, the relentless machine-driven slaughter of wildlife that does the same thing to wild things now as machine guns and mustard gas did in the First World War, and other factors conspire to create a resounding rejection of certain excesses in the human construction.

These agonizingly intense raw factors are masked by spending time carefully examining secondary problems like tax rates and economic soundness of mortgage and manufacturing industries. The simple fact is that life is turning away from several factors that consume much that is of value, despoil much other that is of value, and produce a remarkable large quantity of inessential things such as extremely sophisticated consumer goods, lavish entertainment budgets, and exceedingly expensive skyscrapers, while not placing a completely dedicated concern onto the security of production of necessary, essential things like food and housing and making certain these essentials are available in the necessary and sufficient quantities whatever else comes to pass.

The upshot is that this economic recession could continue as collapse for another decade, while people muddle around trying to create works that fit the concept which is to eventually become stable throughout the earth as the planet's destiny. If it is in the future that, for instance, lavish consumer goods are simply neglected much, much more than is now anticipated, then that kind of industry is simply destined to fail utterly. Of course that may not be; it is known that lavish consumer goods existed during the Roman Empire. On the other hand there were long periods of relatively mundane, essential existence and its concomitant dedicated to fundamental necessities, throughout extensive regions in the world, and lavish consumer goods were simply not in vogue, not even as popular as they had been among those who could afford them. Tastes change.

In tastes at the present time certain flavors are almost unmentionable, though decency compels they be declared increasingly often. Two of these are bitterness and hunger. The bitterness comes from unnecessary death, both human and animal, and the hunger is among its causes. So also are the slaughter of both domesticated animals and wildlife. Overpopulation is a bitter mistake, and so are the worst standards of living. There may be no way for ANY of the world's people to avoid any of these stark simple realities, with the terrible implications of the truth they comprise.

It seems likely that the vast glut of motor vehicles is to be eventually also understood as a serious, great, evolutionary mistake, a misconstruction of almost immense magnitude. If it may be thought that the present economic downturn presents some hard questions, just consider what kind of questions may emerge from a serious reduction in automobile traffic. How will people combine the necessity of working close to home, with the existing separation of work locations from house, shelter and home? We don't know.

Telecommuting was greeted with great enthusiasm, and rightly so. Telecommuting provides part of the real answer, the real solution, to exactly that problem. The only difficulty is that it is being ignored, and it is only part of the solution. The other part of the solution is to find ways with which human beings can secure food, clothing and other income, while remaining generally close to their homes, and without creating a huge transportation glut on the roads each day just because engines make it callously possible.

So the problem is, that telecommuting provides too little, too late, of only a small part of exactly the kind of solutions necessary. That small part is exceptionally new stuff, new capabilities, but it is almost inevitable that considerable amounts of other new stuff and new capabilities will be necessary before the world reaches a state of sufferable stability in which periodic catastrophic economic collapse does not recur too often for dignity. Telecommuting is absolutely wonderful new stuff wherever it is sufficient, but it's only sufficient in a relatively small part of the economy, and in almost no case is it close the fundamental production of food, clothing and housing.

Another idea that was too little, too late, of exactly something right, is the pea-patch garden patches created under some city jurisdictions. These are an important attempt to create an agricultural base that is distributed throughout populous regions. Much more development of this approach is vital.

Bicycling is considered a valuable and viable form of transportation primarily among those who bicycle. Very few who depend on cars for most or all of their transportation are willing to admit there may be good reason for 'suffering' bike riding.

This is like dieting. If one does not diet or fast occasionally, then one is constantly replenishing current activity supplies by eating food, and this prevents a person from drawing on deep stores of energy and fat. The result is that the person who does not savor any hunger is usually sick with decomposing old fat.

The present construction is somewhat like that. Modern constructions last a long time, and they become corrupt within before they are past their useful lifetimes if they were completely flushed of old occupancy and renewed or replaced. Old buildings are things that cannot be adapted to when they become stale or insufferable. They depend on renewing superficial aspects, such as shops and stores, while retaining sometimes increasingly obsolete frame, foundation, utility connections and energy technology.

Some of the approaches to the economic downturn include renovating or replacing old constructions. Yet if it is not taken into account how important this is, the result will be that not enough old structures are replaced.

There is one other terrible danger which can emerge from an economic collapse: violence as frustrated, often hungry or homeless persons who identify or misidentify some particular group as the cause of their plights, and gain enough power to cause a nation real grief.

The consequence of not dealing with the hard and difficult questions correctly is that often very wrong solutions emerge from the earth as random or sporadic violence.

So what does "correctly" mean? At the very least, a modern sophisticated look at what worked and what did not work in the 1930's depression must be undertaken. The solutions that worked must be made into extensively distributed information on the internet, and new equivalent solutions that work must be devised, proposed, and tried.

Television, the internet, portable telephones and other technology has a good role to play in communicating facts as they appear.

Another possible solution that is only beginning to surface, though many are repulsed by it, is that millions of houses were constructed which are very large for the single family dwellings for which they are zoned. On television are shown people facing eviction from their homes, because they cannot remain in them when their income falls, yet they cannot take in boarders, share their house with another family, or share the house of a family next door because of zoning. This is likely to come to a head sometime down the road if the downturn continues; it has already resulted in people refusing to leave, and some action to help prevent the necessity, while in other cases they are forced to.

Questions like this need deep good judgement that is not always best in the hands of persons who profit by less effective but more lucrative capital aggression.