RANT: SIZE MATTERS

Old Saw, Older Wood

And shall I carve here one last time

Some clever scroll with runes and rhyme?

Or shape such signs to keep a thought:

“It matters least what others wrought.”

Canadian Telephone Operators, 1918

I finally killed the mouse that had been skittering about my place. I laid a trap out and superglued half a peanut to the “trip pedal”. After a couple of nights it was Snap! And game-over for the critter.  And speaking of traps—we’re in one now with this Covid-19 thingy and with the economy and all, and we seem a bit like mice, fearfully nibbling on cheese set in Time’s mousetrap that’s just waiting to spring shut on us.

J.H. Kunstler wrote an essay recently reminding us we’ve been here before. In 1918, the world faced a pandemic that, after a year and a half, had killed an estimated 40 to 60 million people worldwide, perhaps more. World War One was still raging, and people began to sicken and die from the H1N1 Influenza virus, yet in America

...lashed by a far deadlier pandemic disease at the same time it was fighting a world war…daily life barely missed a step [Italics mine]. The economy then was emphatically one of production, not the mere consumption of things made elsewhere in the world…[There] was a mix of large, medium, and small enterprises, not just floundering giants… We lived distributed in towns, cities not-yet-overgrown, and a distinctly rural landscape devoted to rural activities… Banking was only five percent of the economy, not the bloated matrix of rackets now swollen to more than forty percent of so-called GDP. Government at the federal and state levels was minuscule compared to the suffocating, parasitic leviathan it is now…. (“A Bigger Picture”, Clusterfuck Nation blog, July 17, 2020)

A Performance of Magic

He goes on to state that the massive growth of corporations, financial institutions and other sectors in today’s economy, and in society generally, meant a lessening of diversity in the structures and organizations that support a healthy polity. Monocultures in an ecological sense are unhealthy and ultimately unsustainable. The same is true for societies. There are many reasons for this unhealthy growth: consolidation and monopolistic business practices, deregulation, the financialization of the economy, deindustrialization and globalization are factors. Over time, complex, diverse layers of community wither and give way to the standardization and control by fewer and fewer organizations and companies. Today in the United States, for example, six or seven powerful companies control over 80% of the media in the country. In another era, such power would be seen as monopolistic and against the public interest.

2030--BREAKING! New Oil Field Discovered

It is important to remember that following WWI and the pandemic, there was no great depression. There were recessions and economic downturns, but these were short-lived. What followed was a decade of spectacular economic growth (albeit the kind of growth that led to the crash of 1929). We ask: why has today's pandemic so crippled economies throughout the world? Why have our lives been so disrupted when compared to 1918? Because in 1918 there were more small businesses and local economies that remained open, continuing to produce goods and services, and keeping things running. And life was more localized; a greater percentage of the population was rural, and the family home was important in the production of some of life's necessities. These are some reasons why.

"Yeah? Well, I've just cornered the sandals market!"

Back then, we weren't a nation of "consumers". Back then during the influenza outbreak, people wore masks and practised social distancing, public venues were shuttered, neighbourhoods quarantined, and so on. But things didn’t stop to the extent they have now. Today, if one shopping chain shutters its doors, then hundreds of stores throughout the country close. And because our economy is globalized and trade and travel are so widely practised, viruses spread with greater speed than in the past. Like dinosaurs that can’t survive a rapid change in climate, and where smaller, nimbler creatures like mammals take their place, our giant companies and organizations are at a disadvantage when confronted with the coronavirus. They may have met their match.

Sumian Cave Art

I don’t think it will be back to business-as-usual when Covid-19 is gone. Too much damage across too many sectors of society, in the United States and in many other countries, has occurred. Too many sectors in society have become unsustainable and dysfunctional. We may very well be entering our own “Great Depression” and what that will mean is anyone’s guess. I’d like to think that we will emerge down the road a little stronger and nimbler perhaps, and if we’re lucky, a little humbler, too. But, ya gotta dream….

Cheers, Jake.