Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> Ah ha! So you admit that East Asia and Central Europe *are*
> today's metropoles, after all!
Well, I never said anything else actually, except that the hegemonic metropole is still the US (if it wasn't, there wouldn't be a world crisis).
> There's no denying that the rule
> of neoliberalism is falling apart before our very eyes, or that the
> Anglo-American economies are about to enter recessions. As for the
> Apocalypse, that's something restricted in the age of permanent
> and continuous bailout Keynesianisms to October trading sessions on Wall
> Street... right?
Someone, Carrol I think, just wondered whether the apocalypse was about to 'begin' or not; I think the train with no brakes has been gathering speed for a while now. What's specific about this particular slump is that no technology is discernible which could produce a long boom the other side of it. That would require as a minimum an energy base which was (a) non-carbon (because of the impossibility of continuing civilisation with carbon-based energy-systems) and (b) could provide forms of energy as cheap, convenient and abundant as gas and oil are (relatively) today.
Since these minima don't exist, ergo there cannot be such an uplift. That is why placing your hopes in Keynesianism is a mistake. Even if it worked to keep crisis at bay, unemployment low etc (but I don't see why it would, since it never has: tell me please, when has Keynesianism EVER worked in a slump?), the only not-so-long-term result would be to hasten the day of runaway warming thru unabated carbon-burn. Seems like we're already closer to that than most people think.
-- Mark Jones http://www.geocities.com/~comparty