I think you raise a What If scenario that will undoubtedly pose a huge challenge for people. I think government control of our labor resources is appealing to the powers that be. During Katrina, detainees were forced to choose between waiting for trial in an upstate prison or doing 1 week communtiy service cleaning up the streets during the day and returning to concrete floors at the makeshift bus depot-made-jail at night.(The New Standard) Most detainees were simply out past curfew, some were even arrested on their porches.
While slave-labor is possible, I think you overestimate the effectiveness of central government, ours or any other. While certain groups (like Japanese-Americans in WWII) can be rounded up, enforcing universal slave labor requires government to run efficiently, which it more or less doesn’t. In the long-term, the slave labor system breaks down. This isn’t to say some extremists like the Pol Pot haven’t been able to mobilize forced labor over limited periods. Even the 1930’s-50’s Russian gulags eventually closed.
Nowadays, why should government go to extremes if people willfully borrow and lock themselves into wage slavery? They seal their fate with huge mortgages under adjustable rates. No need to oppress if the people enter debt servitude willfully. Doing it through lending certainly has its advantage, especially if money can simply be created by the Fed. Yet for our government to really imprison requires it to mimic the methods of the Soviets or other regimes who eventually met their fate at the hands of the people.
If it were only about the power of the US government, its capacity to impose control, we wouldn’t be having problems in Iraq. We are now forced to resort to draconian methods (aka colonial-style counter-insurgency warfare), which end up strengthening the will of the Iraqi people. People-control is never easy, and managing an entire population indefinitely is impossible. Even the world of Orwell’s 1984 recognized the dissatifying incompletedness and inherent messiness of government control. Maybe the conversion to private systems, controlling segments of the population, could make control easier.
I’d recommend the movie Rapa Nui as an analogy to the decline of resources in our world. I think End is Neigh projecting needs to be tempered with reasonable limits of power projection through Statism. I also wouldn’t give in to gloom-and-doom, as humans can surprise you with their capacity for adaptive change. Faced with environmental limitations, people forced to do things better. That is one benefit of economic downcycles.
I’d strongly recommend researching bio-diesel and off-the-grid living. Look at Cuba’s efforts to move away from petroleum that have been wonderfully successful. Capacity for change is there, hopefully we can work toward positive change rather than consign ourselves to control by others, debt, or any kind of servitude.
Well-written essay.
I think you raise a What If scenario that will undoubtedly pose a huge challenge for people. I think government control of our labor resources is appealing to the powers that be. During Katrina, detainees were forced to choose between waiting for trial in an upstate prison or doing 1 week communtiy service cleaning up the streets during the day and returning to concrete floors at the makeshift bus depot-made-jail at night.(The New Standard) Most detainees were simply out past curfew, some were even arrested on their porches.
While slave-labor is possible, I think you overestimate the effectiveness of central government, ours or any other. While certain groups (like Japanese-Americans in WWII) can be rounded up, enforcing universal slave labor requires government to run efficiently, which it more or less doesn’t. In the long-term, the slave labor system breaks down. This isn’t to say some extremists like the Pol Pot haven’t been able to mobilize forced labor over limited periods. Even the 1930’s-50’s Russian gulags eventually closed.
Nowadays, why should government go to extremes if people willfully borrow and lock themselves into wage slavery? They seal their fate with huge mortgages under adjustable rates. No need to oppress if the people enter debt servitude willfully. Doing it through lending certainly has its advantage, especially if money can simply be created by the Fed. Yet for our government to really imprison requires it to mimic the methods of the Soviets or other regimes who eventually met their fate at the hands of the people.
If it were only about the power of the US government, its capacity to impose control, we wouldn’t be having problems in Iraq. We are now forced to resort to draconian methods (aka colonial-style counter-insurgency warfare), which end up strengthening the will of the Iraqi people. People-control is never easy, and managing an entire population indefinitely is impossible. Even the world of Orwell’s 1984 recognized the dissatifying incompletedness and inherent messiness of government control. Maybe the conversion to private systems, controlling segments of the population, could make control easier.
I’d recommend the movie Rapa Nui as an analogy to the decline of resources in our world. I think End is Neigh projecting needs to be tempered with reasonable limits of power projection through Statism. I also wouldn’t give in to gloom-and-doom, as humans can surprise you with their capacity for adaptive change. Faced with environmental limitations, people forced to do things better. That is one benefit of economic downcycles.
I’d strongly recommend researching bio-diesel and off-the-grid living. Look at Cuba’s efforts to move away from petroleum that have been wonderfully successful. Capacity for change is there, hopefully we can work toward positive change rather than consign ourselves to control by others, debt, or any kind of servitude.