Don’t care how; I want it now!
I don’t see how we Americans can continue living as we do.
Let me explain: I drive around town and see teenagers driving BMWs, Hummers, and other luxury vehicles. Everyone walks around with a smart phone. We use vast amounts of water and fuel and other resources and then blithely toss them into the garbage as soon as anything with them stops working.
And I think: Can we really afford to do this? Are we really this wealthy? Or are we living on borrowed money, on the backs of overseas workers doing dirt-cheap labor, and on the erosion and slow ruination of our farmland?
Truly our abilities and resources seem vast. Yet just a few weeks ago fires raged toward Colorado Springs, a major city, and suddenly it seemed as if we would not be able to stop them. For 400 families or so, we weren’t able to stop them and their homes were torched to the ground. It was almost an affront to us: how is it possible that we do not have complete dominion over nature? This event showed another chink in our armor. We are not all-powerful.
But back to my question: Surely it is not possible for us to continue to consume at such a rapacious pace without facing the consequences. We must pay the piper sooner or later.
I look around and see the Hummers and smart phones and fast food, and I am starting to disbelieve that this is real. That we can float this, swing it, pay for it, without collapsing. Because our country’s debt is enormous and growing everyday; because other countries (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc.) are in danger of default; because we as Americans are used to being number one and having every convenience and luxury at our fingertips.
Is the sky falling? I hope not. For the sake of my children more than anyone else. And I have never known anything in my thirty-four years of life but the fast food and convenience and indulgences of a middle-class American. But that doesn’t mean that times won’t change during my life; I think they will. I don’t know what will trigger our decline first, but it seems inevitable that it will happen.
My plan: buy some land; plant a garden; build a straw-bale house; have some animals; do my best to live a more sustainable life.
What do you think: Am I too gloom-and-doom, or too optimistic?
I get the feeling that I’ll give up my smart phone one of these days, probably definitely when I get married and have bigger expenses than just a car loan and fuel driving 90 miles a day. I like it since I’m connected to the Catholic blogosphere / twitter with it but my spiritual growth doesn’t need it and I don’t use the GPS on it a lot anyway.
Philip that is a good attitude.
Another question is this:
Even if “the end” is not coming soon (which I think it is), do we want to continue to live this crazy lifestyle? No way. So yeah, bro, I will be there with ya. Except not by the hair of my chinny chin chin will I build a house out of straw. I read a book where that didn’t work out well for the occupant.
Kidding of course. There definately are some cool new methods that are cheap and strong. Stone is another good option, especially if you can get them free, also cord wood. But heck, a simple life in a double wide would be good as well. The point is we need to get out of the rat race and be our own men, living in a comunity of men that are their own men, and being leaders of our families from within the home.
David awesome; always love to hear what you are thinking about with this agrarian stuff.
Well when I was growing up most people did a whole lot of reuse and it was common for crafts and even toys to be made from house hold items. It wasn’t to be environmentally aware, it was just being practical and “everyone else was doing it”. In the 1990s society developed a throw away mentality that shamed reuse, and in the late 1990s it was common for people to replace computers every year or two and shame anyone who didn’t. These days, reuse is back in vogue, to a lesser extent than before and for different reasons, and people are less shamed for using old technology than for not being in “the in social technologies”.
So I do see an ebb and flow in these things. If push comes to shove (and it will if the US keeps on its current track), people will adapt and tighten their belts and likely do it without realizing they are since “everyone else is doing it”. People are pretty elastic.
None of us really optimizes the gifts that God has given us. And it seems we do take things for granted. (I know I often do)
I do think that the boom times are over, but people want what they want.
It will be interesting as to how it will all play out.
I actually think that you’re underestimating the consequences.
There’s nothing inherent in America that catapulted it to economic prowess after WWII. But something was giving to America around the time of the invasion of Normandy: the Brettonwoods agreement that made the dollar the world reserve currency.
This allowed America a virtually infinite capacity to inflate the currency while exporting the inflation of prices overseas. While other countries didn’t have access to such a well of capital, they couldn’t compete with the American industry, not because of its quality, which was actually a trait of it decades ago, but because of its volume, possible only because of capital being created by the influx of reserves into the dollar.
Ironically, it got to a point that the major export industry in the US is now not manufacturing goods, but exporting colored pieces of paper with dead presidents on them. Finance became the larges industry in the US at 30% of their GDP, an industry that doesn’t really add value to the economy. And not just capital, but fancy financial maneuvers more akin to bets and shell games.
It was good to America while it lasts, but it’s in its last legs. Other countries got tired of the bad deal that they agreed to in WWII, which worked well for them too, but for shorter than it does for America. The EU tried to get in the same gravy train of providing virtually infinite capital to its industries by creating the Euro, but it was too late in the game and everybody already knows that it’s not in their interest, so the Euro is faltering before our very eyes.
Many large economies are divesting from the dollar by trading in each other’s currency, like China and Japan, India and Iran, the BRIC countries among themselves, etc. IOW, they won’t have excess reserves in dollars to buy US debt.
And when the dollar loses most of its status as a reserve currency, which I don’t think will happen now, but perhaps in this decade, what will happen to America? First of all, the dollars abroad will come back, inflating the domestic money supply, leading to massive price inflation. America won’t be able to import products cheaply anymore, especially those products that were stopped being produced here long ago. There won’t be capital to finance the re-creation of the industries that America lost, as it’s given up on accumulating capital decades ago when it got addicted to Monopoly money. Then, the living standards will be quite lower and so will be employment.
Historically, empires enjoy half of their lives in their ascent to primacy and the other half in their decadence. People may disagree when the decadence in America began, but nobody would consider it to be still in the ascent. IMO, America’s been decadent for longer than it might seem, for although materially it seems to have been making progress through the 90s, it hasn’t been sustainable. But, more importantly, America lost its soul decades before that. And just like a body can’t survive without its soul informing its existence, America has been a carcass of what it used to be ever since. It’s a matter of time before the signs of corruption become all too ominous to ignore. Look at the American culture for clues.
Nice body/soul analogy Augustine. Decadence is the perfect word too. I think the point of no return for our decline happened in the generation after WW2 in the cultural revolution, but that that the decline actually began after the war between the states.
Augustine, good insights there. Very sobering.
This discussion reminds me of a something a local Catholic school official recently told me regarding a nearby parish w/ a school — young, professional, 4000 families, located in the heart of a growing suburb. Drive by any Sunday morning, and the parking lot looks like a Lexus dealership. But yet this school official told me that more families request financial assistance for their child’s education at that school than at any other parish she had worked at (and she’s in her late 50s with a seasoned career).
Joel and I have been praying about “right-sizing” for several months now. Not sure if we are being called to go the Catholic Land Movement route (minus the straw-bale home) or toward a more walkable life (find a right-sized home in the heart of the city that allows us to walk to Mass, for groceries, etc.).
Lisa that is really cool that y’all’ve been thinking about these things as well. The Lexus example is telling; what does it say about these families’ choices? Or perhaps about their willingness to try to get any monetary incentive they can from the parish/diocese.
Devin,
I like Robert Kiyosaki’s phrase “turning our cash into trash.” That one phrase has helped me rethink my purchases. I sell my most valuable (and truly non-renewable) resource, my time, for something less valuable, money, so that I can exchange it for even less valuable items (many times) that will end up in the trash. It’s kind of like the 2nd law of thermodynamics applied to finances.
Marc, what a great way to visualize it! I had never thought of it that way before, but it is quite helpful.
Just recently found your blog and have been reading the recent entries like this one. You are right on the money (pardon the expression) in this and all your posts. I couldn’t agree more with everything I have read. Regarding finances, I am upset that even in my devout Catholic family, as well as my husband’s more lax Catholic family, everyone lives beyond their means. The wealthy relatives live beyond their means, and the poor relatives live beyond their means. We do not; we live very modestly and save. The problem is when the nonfrugal relatives get into a tight spot due to lay-offs or medical problems they expect us to bail them out because we have savings (they know my husband has a decent steady job so they know we have money somewhere). But the only reason we have savings is because we sacrificed the kinds of things they have. So what is a good Catholic to do in charity? Should we give them money (basically enabling because they never change) or refuse to help despite the fact they have kids to support? I don’t want to severe family relationships over money but it’s not fair that we sacrifice and save for our kids’ college and our retirement and for emergencies while they spend their money on the latest computer equipment, vacations, parochial schools, large homes, pets, etc. and then we bail them out.
Thanks Ann! I would say, you must made prudential judgments in each situation and decide how you can best help your extended family. And that might mean saying “sorry, we cannot help you this time.” A tough situation to be sure, but if they do not change their lifestyles and make good choices, it is not fair to punish your own children and their future (as well as your own) because of it.
Whatever you do, just don’t ever loan money to family. Give without expecting repayment or don’t give (or loan) at all.
Otherwise bad blood begins to develop.
I think a major source of anxiety is the thought that, if the dollar crashes, so few of us would know what to do or even how to get food or fuel. My parents have 100+ acres of land that could be plowed and produce food, so my fallback plan in case of national crisis is to move there, clear some acres, build myself a log cabin, etc. But I certainly don’t have the tools or any practice at that sort of thing! High on my list of priorities is to get some land of my own and start gardening so that I won’t be in such a desperate situation if it comes to it.
I wonder if you’ve ever read the book “The Black Swan”? It proposes a way of thinking about risk, not as “What’s the chance of X disaster happening?” but rather, “How many things have to go right for my plan to work?”. You want to minimize the number of things you’re depending on. The author pointed to the 2007-8 subprime crisis as an example… the whole house of cards depended on one thing: that housing prices would continue to rise. By analyzing your dependencies you can tell how precarious your situation is. Well, as a society, we have a heck of a lot of dependencies.
For example, only a couple percent of our population are doing anything related to agriculture. This makes economic sense because mega-agri-business is very productive and can feed the world. Small family farms are not so profitable. But in terms of systematic risk, we’re all screwed (pardon my French?) if, for example, the price of gasoline skyrockets and food can’t get from the midwest to your grocery store. If everyone still farmed some of their own food, we’d have a lower standard of living in good times (no more cheap South American bananas in North Dakota in February), but much more security in a crisis. Our whole economy is like this: optimized for the assumption that nothing goes wrong, but extremely vulnerable to a bunch of predictable shocks.
In all fairness, currencies fall over years, not overnight. In my home country, Brazil, it took some 10 years for the government to destroy the currency by doing the same things that the US are doing: printing money to cover public deficit and debt (the Fed has bought over 60% of public debt last year).
Once the currency was destroyed, which was a hindsight fact, we went from high inflation to hyperinflation for another decade. Did economic activity stop? No, there were still goods and jobs, though never enough to satisfy demand. Yet people kept on leaving and making merry when possible.
I say this because oftentimes many of those who realize the path that the US are leading leads to the wrecking of the country think that it’s sudden and catastrophic. Historically, it’s not. Like Brazil, it took a decade for Germany to experience hyperinflation, which lasted for several years.
As I said above, the root of our troubles lies in the past. We are now living through the consequences of past choices. And the current troubles will run their course before the consequences of new choices effect the outcome. We are still persisting in the same old choices, thinking that it’s a matter of degree not of kind of the measures in place that is not yielding the intended results. Fortunately, many people are growing increasingly skeptical and many are coming to realize that the kind of measures proposed is the problem. But at this moment few can say what the alternatives are. Devin is onto something as are others here, though hopeful signs, far removed from the necessary critical mass to engender a change of course. I myself wouldn’t count on a change of course in this generation. Until then, take care of your family and brace yourselves for a rocky ride.
We all know what followed the economic collapse in the 30s, whose causes were the same as well as the measures adopted, here and all over the world. But one thing that few people know is that it affected primarily capital-intensive economies. My country went through a mild cold for a short while and resumed back to normal, since it was then primarily an agricultural country. This was true through most of Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Yet, those countries hit the hardest dragged the whole world into the bloodiest war in human history.
God, help us.
I have often pondered the effects of the culture you described in this post and am “comforted” by the fact that 85% of the world survives on less that 2 dollars a day. It proves that we are pretty strong in our weakness. Having lived like this as a missionary puts a great deal of humility into one ‘s spirituality and as our economy declines we will notice a great shift in attitude towards this type of thinking. Who knows, you might have some neighbors who have been surviving off the land this whole time!
Great piece.
Thanks for that perspective, TJ. Very true.
I hope there isn’t a big bad wolf living near your straw house.
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