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Part of the crazy economic math of our system is to externalize costs as much as possible in order to make products affordable to us average Josephines. This means that we often do not pay the true cost of what we buy, such as the price of labor that is exploited from displaced populations, pollution on society, and most of all, the services provided by the environment, such as the energy that we freely exploit without replenishing. Oil is a million year bank account of solar energy deposits that is not easily replenished within the crash and burn cycles of the market. If we were to factor in all these “externalized” costs, our patterns of consumption would surely change.
If the current bailout goes through as planned, Wall St. will raid the US treasury, and hence your pocketbook, because the cost of the bailout is being externalized to the seventh generation, including your grandchildren’s grandchildren. What will this grandiose delusion mean for the environment? I’m not sure yet, but I’m quite certain that if you, the nobel tax paying citizen who grants these corporations the right to do business, is not off limits from the the utter greed of these voracious bankers, imagine how the “treasury” of nature will be viewed, especially considering the need to quickly raise capital to pay off abstract debt. Mow down a forest to shore up capital? No problem.
The crisis of 9-11 created an opportunity to reevaluate our lives and our relationship with the world. For some it changed their reality so as to appreciate life and family more. For others, it solidified their worldview, and further intrenched a militarized feedback system (the snowball effect of war and terrorism) so as to do the opposite of change: it intensified the status quo by intrenching the military industrial complex. Will Capital do the same? Or is the game truly over? I hope there are some sensical people out there who understand that the major theories about economics are failing the same way that the neocon philosophy of empire is crumbling one car bomb at a time.
The ethical imperative of media is to finally deal with the situation for what it is: we are living in a dying empire with all its assumptions expoloding around us. I’m doubtful the Denial Generator will do much to change course, but you can. By example you can change and influence those around you. I hope you will.
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