Politics Is Irrelevant

L.W. Nicholson

1991

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 2nd quarter 1991, No. 323

Society in this country and on this Continent has become entirely too complex and far too expensive to be operated by the dictates of an economic system based on the concepts and the working mechanism of a social system handed down from the dark-ages, however much it is patched and modified.

The political method of reaching conclusions on the basis of beliefs, opinions and superstitions is just not accurate enough for the administration of a high-energy, highly technological society such as that now existing on the North American Continent. In past centuries of slow-moving, slowly-changing, low-energy, human-powered social activities the politician was a natural descendant of the strongman, the witch doctor and medicine man. They have all been antiquated by the rapidly expanding use of science and technology. The difference is literally like stepping out of a two-horse wagon into a Boeing 747. The methods of control are entirely different. The political techniques of the past no longer fit the conditions of the present. And 32 million Americans living in poverty is proof that this is so. The soaring debt structure, exploding health care costs, the S&L crisis, increasing crime, environmental degradation, and the deterioration of the Continent's infrastructure are all additional proof that the present politico-economic methods handed down from the past no longer have the ability to efficiently control and operate this high-energy society.

Politics and the political method have become irrelevant. Politics is a governmental operating mechanism based on existing beliefs and opinions which have had only minor changes since ages past. Such methods have no place in a highly complex, highly technical society. They are not solving this society's problems. Politicians don't know how to solve such problems and, unfortunately, there is little chance that they ever will. So -- why shouldn't they be considered irrelevant?

Obviously everyone knows that something, somewhere along the line, must give. Everyone knows that the debt can't be increased forever in increasing amounts if money is to have any value. Everyone knows some kind of change is inevitable. But, paradoxically, everyone seems to think that it is unpatriotic to admit that the country and it's political referee is in trouble. This is the attitude which has put us on the brink of disaster, and it is the attitude which could very well make survival doubtful. If we can't see, or if we refuse to see the trouble, to admit that it exists, we certainly can't fix it. It is long past the time when we should have started a careful investigation of our problems in an attempt to understand their magnitude and the physical requirements for their correction.

While scientific investigation and the engineering abilities based on the factual knowledge that result from those investigations have built a technological mechanism on this Continent which is unparalleled in human history, a control technique based on superstitious nonsense about monetary values is still maintained to affect the distribution of the vast quantity of goods and services that result from the use of technology. The result is millions of Americans living in poverty when plenty for all can easily be produced. A few examples of social idiocy: Farmers are paid to produce less; millions of tons of goods are shipped abroad every year, but not for humanitarian reasons; the shoddy goods racket is wasting natural resources and polluting the environment; while the debt structure is increased by the millions every day to pay for it all. What an insult to our intelligence!

Here we are after years of "good times" under George Bush, with a half trillion dollars down the drain for the S&L bailout, with banks following the same path, with financial difficulties in almost every school district, financial difficulties in the cities, in the counties, and in the states as well as the federal government itself. Everywhere there are money troubles, the federal debt is 3.3 trillion and increasing at more than a trillion every four years. Everyone is up to their ears in debt; consumers owe $737 billion; they can't afford higher taxes, and they certainly can't afford a half trillion S&L bailout or the cost of environmental cleanups. Neither can they afford three to five trillion dollars to repair the nation's infrastructure, nor can they afford the $4,160 per capita interest payments on the nation's $13 trillion total debt.

32 million Americans are living in poverty, not because we can't produce enough, but because they don't have the money to buy what they need.

This is the financial condition in which the United States found itself in the year 1990. And Canada is in a similar condition. What kind of recession can one expect with these conditions? What can be expected when the increasing debt can no longer be maintained and a major recession can no longer be avoided? North Americans are facing the biggest financial mess they have ever known. And they are not being prepared for it by their political "leaders", the educational system or by the press. North Americans are still depending for solutions to their economic woes on the same "leaders" who profit most from existing economic methods which are the cause of those economic woes in the first place.

All the goods and services North Americans need are available. Walk into any department store; the selection of merchandise is almost unlimited. Look over the automobile dealers; whatever kind, size or color is on display. Vast shopping malls are built throughout the country to expedite the sale of almost every type of commodity one could desire. But the trouble is money. North Americans could have plenty, because they have the natural resources and the technology to produce it. What they don't have is the money to buy it. Which means that the supply of money is too limited, and its distribution is too restricted for all citizens to have enough to buy the things they need; those restrictions exist because of the traditional values man has been taught to believe in.

All over the world, all during the dark-ages (from which man is yet to emerge) little children are taught to believe in the value of money. They grow up to value it out of all proportion to its physical usefulness. Man will work from dawn to dark for it, he will lie, cheat, steal, murder and fight wars for it. And he will ruin the only environment his species can live in for it. Money, and the theory of money as well as the system of trade and commerce based on it has been a failure. This failure becomes more oppressive, more unreasonable, as our ability to produce increases. The more difficult it becomes to maintain the scarcity required for a monetary system to operate the more it costs to maintain the system. If anyone thinks Congress, or any other political body can balance the budget without bringing on a depression they should have second thoughts on the matter.

We must realize that in this technological age, in order to maintain this monetary system, man must act ever-more like a fool. He must pay farmers to produce less so he can pay more for what he eats; he must make shoddy goods so they will wear out in a hurry so he can buy more goods to make more jobs for people who need to work longer hours to make enough to pay for the cost of maintaining scarcity. And the rich get richer and own the factories, the banks, S&Ls and insurance companies. The poor get poorer, as they must borrow the money from the rich to pay for maintaining the scarcity required to operate the system which makes the rich richer. And they must pay interest on the money they borrow from the rich which makes the rich still richer.

This system cannot operate without an increasing debt structure; and now the rapidly growing debt required for its operation is becoming too expensive to pay the interest payments. Society on the North American Continent is about to reach an impasse in which it can't operate under the limitations required by its dark-age concepts. In order to avoid the chaos likely to result from a collapse of an economic system based on debt, the citizens of this Continent must overcome the social restrictions imposed by the traditional "values" of the past.

Is all this to be wasted? All the knowledge concerning that real physical world in which we actually live, all this useful knowledge supplied by the scientific method which has propelled mankind along a path toward the ability to greatly improve his life on this earth -- is all this progress to end, to be wasted, to result in an increasing number of North Americans living in poverty, with an increasing debt which requires an increasing sacrifice to pay the interest on a debt which can never be paid?

How long can North Americans be expected to tolerate the limitations of an economic system based on dark age superstitions concerning commodity valuation when they could be enjoying the fruits of a technologically produced abundance? The answer is just so long as they can continue to be kept in ignorance concerning alternate choices, or until the present Price System can no longer be made to operate.

The U.S. and Canada have progressed about as far as the restrictions of a Price System will allow. The burden of debt and its interest payments have become almost unbearable. The infrastructure is obsolete, and the money for repairs is becoming ever more difficult to provide. Everywhere one turns the money problems have become so oppressive that progress has come to a standstill.

North Americans, who have traditionally improved their living standards and secured their future by accumulating more money may soon find that to achieve their ends it will be necessary to install a far more efficient method of distribution which will require neither money or its substitute, debt. In that event, they will also be solving the problems of their fellow North Americans. No longer can individual economic problems be solved by individual efforts at chiseling the rest of society, or by individual greed. In spite of our dark-age concepts, the technologically produced abundance requires the cooperative efforts of all citizens despite old antiquated opinions and beliefs that are not easily discarded. However, whether or not these new concepts are acceptable to individual citizens, the nature of the job to be done makes cooperation necessary.

As it becomes ever more obvious to you that fundamental changes are necessary, please keep in mind that you may contact Technocracy Inc. for more information.