The Best & The Worst

I am not an economist. I hold most of them in fairly low esteem. But these are times when we should give some thought to the unprecedented seismic quakes rumbling through the interdependent money markets of the planet. A lot of rapacious gouging has gone on in the banking, investment and real estate sector. And little can be done to bring those responsible to justice. We can only ineffectually blame them.

There is a sense of panic in the air right now, like nothing in my lifetime. As a matter of fact, it even eclipses the crash of 1929. The safety net most of us thought we had is gone, and our governments are going to be just as powerless to actually fix the disaster as they were in the Great Depression. That depression was of such magnitude that it ushered in the second historic world war on the heels of the first, and then escalated into the cold war which brought about the implosion of one of the superpowers.

But the cautionary note was not heard. The other remaining superpower was emboldened. They, and their allies, embarked on new wars in the name of peace. These were wars which, added to the century of the most gigantic wars the world has ever known, would bring down the entire economic house of cards. Only this time, it is not just an economic upheaval. This time the natural environment is complicating the disaster to an extent that dwarfs the dust bowl of the 1930's. I am afraid that we are in for some terrible times.

The religion of capitalism is very nearly as destructive as the other isms that were hailed by other fanatics as the ultimate answer. Even the most obtuse of us should be able to see that now. The world economy has hemorrhaged, in terms of actual value lost forever, nineteen trillion dollars in the last year. That is more than a trillion and a half dollars per month, up in smoke. The system is not just in need of more incremental adjustments. It is wrecked.

That immense lost value is not just some abstract economic statistic. When the pundits say that we must bail out these huge financial institutions or other dominoes will fall as well, this mild metaphor does not represent the facts. It means joblessness, homelessness, desperation and starvation for billions of people. And not just the people in the third world. Us. There are no national boundaries to this crisis. As a matter of fact, the impact extends beyond the planet Earth.

The two things that the superpowers can be proudest of is that, for just a little while, in the midst of the steadily escalating cold war, we turned our attention on the space race, and to that extent, reduced our emphasis on mutually assured destruction, which had been the linchpin of our geopolitical "reality."

And though this great endeavor was itself of great economic risk, and could very easily have failed, it ushered in the greatest renaissance in the sciences that the world has ever known. Unfortunately, these advances were not matched in the political realm, and after a handful of men walked on the moon, we lost our direction in space. Oh, that is not to say we did no useful or exciting things. We did. But certainly the really bold moves just came to an abrupt stop.

Why was this? Because, aside from the use of private enterprise as subcontractors, scrambling for government patronage and the lavish dispensation of tax dollars, the pioneers with the greatest potential to get things done and make a profitable venture out of this ultimate frontier were not in the game. And now that the value of nineteen trillion dollars has just evaporated forever, even without the government as gatekeeper, investors are running scared. Even the boldest are running for cover.

So instead of viable projects like the mining of Earth-approaching asteroids of the platinum family of metals and other precious strategic resources, an enterprise of great potential profit, with far less risk than attempting to establish a foothold colony on the moon or Mars, we will very likely languish on this prison of a rapidly deteriorating planet, in the throes of an unprecedented array of overwhelming disasters which too few of us recognize are even happening.

And meanwhile, what are our space scientists doing? Spending fortunes digging trenches on Mars which, oddly enough, hardly even make the headlines. Think of that! We have robots on another planet for the first time in all of history, making discoveries which will have a direct bearing on our entire future in space, and few of us are paying any real attention, or thinking in any depth about the implications of the discoveries being made. How shameful.

And at the other end of the spectrum, we have our space scientists and engineers in their ivory towers, speculating seriously about notions of "Terraforming" Mars, a project that under the best of circumstances, would have a duration of centuries, with little or no prospect of profit along the way. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.