Economic Growth in the 21st Century

"As the decline in production begins first in oil and then later this century in coal, the decline and collapse of modern civilization will also occur without a society already adapted to less net energy usage.  This phenomenon is known as resource depletion...  It's not just energy or erosion we're dealing with, but a crippling combination of things which will make it impossible for economic growth to continue."

The study of economics has become known as the dismal science, a phrase coined by the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle.  Carlyle coined the phrase, most likely in response to a prediction by economist Thomas Malthus.  Malthus' Essay on the Principles of Population predicted that, "The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race."  A dismal prediction indeed, and likely one that would cause some sort of cognitive dissonance among those who fully understand just what his essay implies.  However, in the modern era of economics, any such notion of a catastrophic or dismal failure of the earth to be able to provide for the needs of man has been removed from thought and theory.  This is not true of every economist, but it is far too often true that "legitimate" economists do not believe in such nonsense.  These "legitimate" economists are often simply the result of corrupted academe so adeptly described by Charles Ferguson, both in the Academy Award winning film Inside Job, as well as this article.  It's not just the corrupt few on the side of wall street, but nearly every mainstream economist has a commonly held belief that economic growth - the increase in the capacity of an economy to produce goods and services - is the proper response to alleviating poverty.  In fact, the 21st century will not continue to see this ever expanding increase in goods and services.  Here's why...

The basic assumptions of modern economics, going back to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, are flawed. They're based on a scientific paradigm that ignores ecological realities, as well as a flawed view of exactly what is responsible for this production.  John Michael Greer in The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered points out this very thing.  Greer points to the beginning of The Wealth of Nations which states, "The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessities and conveniences of life."  Greer's response to this was that, "left unrecognized is the crucial fact that the annual labor of a nations would be utterly useless without the goods and services provided free of charge by Nature, which enable labor to be done at all by making human life possible in the first place and by providing all that labor with something to labor on."  What Greer is referring to are the natural processes which allow us to grow food.  These would include the hydrologic cycle, pedogenisis (soil growth), and the large amount of solar energy provided by our center and steward of the solar system, the sun.  However, they also include the anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms which have become our fossil fuels (such as oil and coal).  This would also include ore genesis processes, which create the various mineral deposits in the crust of the earth.

The thesis of The Wealth of Nations asserted that the division of labor increases productivity - and therefore the increase in the capacity to produce goods and services - as well as asserting that a condition of opulence or great wealth would arise.  This thesis overlooks the simple fact that increased productivity doesn't necessarily mean better productivity, or a better life for everyone indefinitely, by increasing production.  Without the understanding that the economy was both dependent upon the environment that supported it, and limited by Nature, it is easy to ignore that economic production can damage the earth that supports it.  This could be seen in early agricultural economies and the great empires of ancient times.  For example, ancient Mesopotamia suffered greatly as the increased agricultural production from irrigation caused soil erosion that made farming impossible and caused collapse.  Another example would be the economy of ancient Rome which collapsed due to over expansion, which was largely due to resource shortages and environmental degradation.  By the CE the Mediterranean basin had been largely deforested, which in turn caused erosion and the need to seek timber for their growing economy elsewhere.  The erosion this caused made Rome more and more reliant on the fields of Northern Africa to feed the population of Rome.  This was also a case of military expansionism that deforested Northern Africa and turned it into "the bread basket" of Rome.  Much of the area once plowed under to raise grain for the Romans has now turned to desert.  So in past times there have been collapses due to this increasing capacity to produce goods beyond what the primary economy (the primary goods provided to us by natural processes) can provide.  For further evidence of this, or a detailed study of societal collapse for similar reasons, see Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies.

The main difference between the modern economy and the ancient agricultural empires, is that we have used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to power industry and production.  Coal literally sprang up as a replacement for fuel for heating homes after timber shortages made this fuel - that was once banned by Edward I (blacksmiths using coal could be hanged) - an in demand item.  However, as I've talked about in my early post on Energy and Society these fuels are not a limitless resource, but a finite source of energy that has brought about unforeseen environmental effects like climate change.  As the decline in production begins first in oil and then later this century in coal, the decline and collapse of modern civilization will also occur without a society already adapted to less net energy usage.  This phenomenon is known as resource depletion, and has played its role as previously stated in the collapse of empires.  It's not just energy or erosion we're dealing with, but a crippling combination of things which will make it impossible for economic growth to continue.  These include desertification, loss of fresh water sources from overuse and pollution, loss of biodiversity/extinction rates which signal a new era of extinction, depletion of fossil fuels, topsoil erosion, climate change, as well as the limits to a debt based monetary system (more on this later). 

With all this in mind and the mountains of evidence that humans are doing seemingly irreversible harm to our ecosystems, why is it that economists continue to propose more growth as the means to help our society?  Usually clear headed economists, like Paul Krugman, still throw their weight behind policies to continue or try to continue growth even after writing in a NY Times article: "What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story."  It's truly a case of the old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer then everything you see starts to look like a nail.  Rather than refocusing our energy towards real solutions to material problems, economists keep positing that more growth can and should be achieved even by the taking on of more and more debt privately and publicly because, well, it will keep the economy growing and unemployment will lessen.  Why doesn't he mention that there is simply a class of dependent laborers without access to resources or the freedom to live life without the managers of capital (which direct economic activity in the modern world)?  Instead he suggests more economic growth will help alleviate the poverty caused by this second "great depression."  Perhaps he is failing to ask whether or not growth in the modern era has begun failing to make us richer (as is it did when the world was not yet entirely conquered by European empires and industrial society), and if it now makes everyone poorer, as we deplete what is left of our resource base. 

Of course I'm not alone in saying that the previous trends of growth are not going to continue indefinitely.  In fact a recent study at MIT, which set out to re-examine the famous 1972 book The Limits to Growth, has stated that the world could suffer from a "global economic collapse" which could cause "precipitous population decline" if resource consumption was left unchecked.  Richard Heinberg has also warned in 9 of his award winning books, about the perils of energy depletion.  In his latest book The End of Growth, he explains with detail how policies that once led to prosperity are now leading us to disaster.   He also argues that growth in consumption should be dropped for a new goal of improving the quality of life.  The problem with this is that the obvious answers to improvement in the quality of life involve sharing, which has become labeled as class warfare.  Self interest can only take a society towards the interests of those that come to dominate society and communities when it is not checked by some sort of ethical or cultural standard of caring for the community around you (including not just humans, but rivers, streams, fish, wildlife and Nature as a whole).  Without delving too deeply into the subject, it's easy to summarize that there are alternative economic theories and ideologies that involve cooperation, and more local and communal living that probably provide our best chance to stabilize our society.

If resource depletion wasn't bad enough, there is also a very big problem with monetary systems and especially debt.  The amount of debt in the world has been growing steadily, especially debt held by sovereign nations.  The world debt held just by these nations alone is more than $45 trillion dollars.  At the same time, especially within the US and some European countries, the percentage of domestic corporate profits in the financial sector boomed.  As Simon Johnson cites "From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007."  What this information is telling us, is there has been a serious amount of financialization within the world.  Even though resources necessary to the continuation of our industrialized society are beginning to go into decline, the financial sector is claiming greater and greater wealth. 

In order to understand this process it's useful to be able to classify the economy into its smaller parts.  E.F. Shumacher has classified the difference between the goods and services provided by human labor, and the goods and services provided by nature.  He labeled the former secondary goods while the latter he called primary goods.  Primary goods in fact, make it possible for the secondary goods to even exist.  The world's primary goods like oil or mineral deposits are being depleted.  However, there should be a third tier added to the economy above the primary and secondary goods.  This is a class of goods that are neither produced by nature or labor, but they are produced by the financial sector.  This comes right to the heart of modern monetary policy as it involves all bonds in creation.  A bond is simply nothing more than a promise to pay an amount in the future.  This is viewed as an economic good as there are those who produce them and those who want to sell them.  This good can be passed along from seller to buyer any amount of times and even if it's highly unlikely for this promise to be honored, the chance of collecting is seen as an object of value.  As the primary economy begins to shrink in the amount of goods provided, the tertiary or financial economy continues to claim more and more wealth from promises to pay, by selling these debts not just to private citizens, but national governments.  Since the world has increasingly come under a debt based monetary system it has become possible and very profitable to exchange money for money.  The entirety of the financial sector uses this concept to make its money, and it has created a sort of economic monoculture wherein all economic exchanges are valued by their exchange value for money. 

The end result from this is that a collapse in the primary economy (one that many ecologists are warning is coming) would certainly cause a collapse of the secondary economy of goods and services provided by human labor, as the materials to labor on and with become scarce.  Such a scenario would surely collapse the bloated financial economy with it's continual growing debts and it's metamorphosis into treating money as a good to be produced and sold.  The limit to debt is the ability the debtor has to pay back that debt.  Therefore, the economy is going to need to produce a serious amount of goods to pay back the debts already on the books at a time when the amount of goods and services available is on the brink of a serious decline.  Our financial sector has been issuing debts that the earth simply cannot pay, especially when these debts are necessary for financial growth on a continual basis.  With these simple and logical conclusions about our new economic reality, how can we continue this radical view that limitless growth is not only possible, but desirable and the only way to fix poverty?  Any economist that still holds the ability to value human and all life beyond merely its monetary exchange value would tell you that while growth does provide more goods and services in the world, it does not cure poverty because the same economic conditions that produce growth also produce poverty by the distribution of goods and services.  It's like building a wall with one hand while the other knocks it down. 

The most important thing to take away from this is not some depressing doomsday scenario (although it is important to acknowledge the disaster just around the corner), but to realize that other, better options exist to meet our economic needs than endless growth.  Without adoption of the environmental sciences and some simple logic into economics, we are doomed to fail.  If we instead adopt more ecological understanding into our economic system, we are destined to change the nature of economic exchange to a nature based system, erase the class of money rentiers which monopolize current economic exchanges, and possibly design a society with the stability needed for a healthy ecosystem with a more healthy and just human society.  It's simply a matter of re-framing our view that more is better into one in which we seek improvements in the quality of life.  This could also mean reestablishing our connection to the community of people, as well as nature that surround us.  None of this will be accomplished though without the diffusion of economic and environmental knowledge to the increasingly radical majority that believe growth can and will continue infinitely. 

Obama: LGBT Rights Warrior or Campaign Strategist?

On May 10th 2012 President Barack Obama on "Good Morning America" stated, “I’ve concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”  Before anything else is said on this issue it should be noted that this is important, and I'm personally glad that he supports the rights for same sex couples to marry.  However, we have to understand this comes with a caveat; he thinks that states should decide the issue.  In other words, he supports states rights to discriminate against same sex marriages as long as that's what the state wants.  It seems to me that most people in support of gay marriage would agree, this is historically important.  Even if it doesn't mean Obama actively supporting changes to federal laws allowing gay marriage, it is still a step forward for gay rights.  The problem is Obama is using this PERSONAL stance on gay marriage to campaign for re-election.  Take a look at this "documentary" produced by the Obama campaign.

Documentaries are usually thought to be for instruction or maintaining the historical record, and this is clearly a campaign video.  That aside, President Obama assures us he is that strong asset in the white house for the LGBT community, and he can keep us "leaning forward."  What does that really entail though?  If he supports letting states decide the issue of gay marriage, and would lend support to repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, but is no longer part of the legislative branch then what policies are going to change?  Even with the repeal of DADT, (Don't Ask Don't Tell) same sex marriages within the military don't allow a military member's partner the same rights as non same sex marriages when it comes to travel or housing.  If a vote for Obama is a vote for gay rights as the Obama campaign is lobbying hard for his base to accept, then what political outcomes is he seeking?

This is not a critique of Obama on his personal stance on gay marriage (which I applaud him for). This is simply a critique on campaign politics and the mindless followers intensive propaganda campaigns (AKA election campaigns) generate, which ruin electoral politics.  What I'm saying is,  Obama is clearly using and touting himself as being a warrior for LGBT rights, while at the same time refusing to say that he thinks it should be legal federally, or even decided on that level.  That to me equates to saying, "well sure even though 12 states prohibit same sex marriage by statute and 30 via the constitution, I think states should decide what right same sex couples should have even though that means nearly nationwide discrimination."

As an exercise in thought if we were to travel back to say the late 1850's when the issue of slavery was a hotly debated topic; imagine a president running their campaign as a warrior against slavery or being a strong advocate for slaves in the white house, by simply stating they personally viewed slavery as an evil, and their view had evolved to say they personally support ending slavery.  However, they note that states should decide whether slavery should exist.  This at the time was known as popular sovereignty and that was exactly what the Democratic nominee for president in 1860 supported.  Although he didn't support ending slavery and his views were considered more moderate on the issue, he supported the right of states to decide.  This man was Stephen Douglas of Illinois.  The debates in 1858 between Lincoln and Douglas have become somewhat famous, but in these debates Douglas clearly stated attitudes now seen as racist or bigoted.  Namely he insisted slavery was not a moral issue, that Lincoln advocated equality of races and even that they should be able to intermarry (Lincoln denounced such radical equality), and the government was drawn up "by white men for white men".  What's important is, he used this tactic because he had to walk a fine line to keep the support of the northern states where abolitionism was popular, while not upsetting the southern base of democrats at the time. 

It's a very similar situation back here in good ol' 2012.  Rather than being hotly debated on the grounds of how this issue should be approached politically or what should be done politically about it, it's being used merely as a social issue, and to show personal virtue to garner support for the president from his lackluster base.  The aforementioned announcement of Obama's support for same sex marriage came just before he held a fundraiser at George Clooney's house in which he touted his support for same sex couples and raised a total of $15 million.  Remember this isn't a political position, but a personal position as he doesn't support anything more than popular sovereignty outside of his comments of support for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act.  This seems to amount to a kind of "progressive" hypocrisy where the left constantly criticizes the right for it's election of government on the grounds that they have similar views on religion, or other social issues.  This while ignoring the fact that many of the leaders of the religious right advocate policies that are harmful to their constituents economically, environmentally, and in some cases like abortion and defense, go against the core conservative value of a small government.  However, as I've written about earlier, the Hypocrisy of Obama supporters is not a new thing.  Electing a president or throwing full support behind a candidate because of a non-political stance on same sex marriage, while at the same time continuing policies which any truly progressive person should find deplorable (and often are illegal or borderline illegal), shows either personal moral decay, or the total corruption of the electoral system.

What it means to support someone because of a personal stance on a social issue, is that we've made a bigger deal out of something that is in fact politically trivial and thus trivialized more important issues.  That's not to say that LGBT issues are unimportant by any measure.  They are profoundly important issues, but if a president was going to campaign on being a gay rights president than one would expect him to have the courage to say that he believes that the nation should stop discrimination against same sex couples federally.  Merely calling on democrats in congress to address the issue and stop discrimination would even suffice.  After all, there are federal laws against race discrimination.  So what could these more important issues be than the president's personal opinion on same sex marriage?  How about you name one; education, energy, agriculture policies, economic solutions to get out of this "Great Recession", foreign policy (which includes global conflicts, drone war campaigns, and making threats against Iran for purportedly manufacturing or seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons), monetary reform, Wall Street regulation, the student loan bubble, domestic spying, and crushing levels of government debt, and that's just to get you started. 

Take for example education.  Obama and his now official Republican opponent Mitt Romney are nearly identical on education policies except for Romney's support of the voucher system and some small differences on higher education.  (There was an interesting Washington Post article about this recently that pointed out their similar stances.)  It's also true that Obama's educational policies don't differ from President G.W. Bush in any substantial way.  His policy is that of "high stakes" testing which punishes schools and teachers that don't meet standards or show improvement.  A mandate that schools be 100% proficient in reading and math by 2014 now has the administration allowing a waiver form for states as no school will be able to reach this seemingly impossible goal.  What isn't often stated is, the education reform Democrats aren't really much different than their education reform Republican counterparts that were responsible for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the first place.  The biggest problem of NCLB is that it made test scores the ultimate measure of educational quality, ignoring aspects of critical thinking, and providing a liberal sciences education that citizens need to keep a functioning republic.  Instead it focuses on education for competition in the global market, re-affirming our deep subconsciously held belief that man's purpose is to participate in global markets.  In other words to not work against the global markets that determine your place in the economic hierarchy, but instead support it.  Obama's plan goes a step further than NCLB and its obtuse measures of educational quality.  His plan asserts that teachers alone are the only thing responsible for whether test scores go up or down.  They attribute nothing to poverty, students, parents, or economic status.  If there's one thing that can be pointed to as being a factor of lower test scores it's poverty.  If you're still not convinced that Obama has an expanded version of Bush's education plan, just think after Obama appointed Arne Duncan to head his education department.  Duncan went on tour with Newt Gingrich to promote this "Race to the Top" education plan.  Obama however flew to Florida to promote it at a Miami high school with Jeb Bush.  If you're still not convinced, just wait a decade and watch how schools privatize as public education continues to become stigmatized as underachieving wastes of money despite this manufactured crisis.

How about another issue like energy.  In reality, Obama's energy policy is really no policy at all according to Bill Mckibben.  He makes the point, if you think about it, if a president had a foreign policy of everyone is an equal ally, he would be laughed at, but that's precisely Obama's policy for energy.  Mckibben said, "Burning all the oil you can and then putting up a solar panel is like drinking six martinis at lunch and then downing a VitaminWater. You’re still a drunk — just one with your daily requirement of C and D."  Obama's strategy is to promote that under his administration the US has drilled a record number of oil and gas wells.  He also touts the great reserves of natural gas the US has, but fails to state that hydro-fracking practices necessary to get this gas are extremely environmentally dangerous, especially to water sheds and the safety of our water supply.  No one is mentioning that at some point all the carbon based fossil fuels are going to be either too expensive, too hard to get to, and simply put, too depleted to power industrial civilization as it currently stands (which is as a society under the yoke of the carbon barons).  The most Obama can do is promote fuel efficiency as a solution to the depletion of fossil fuels, which is not a solution, but a continuation of dependency on fossil fuels.

I could go on about every issue including agriculture policies which give large subsidies to Agra-business and helps Monsanto keep it's business up by: not allowing for GMO labeling or banning, keeping a former Monsanto lobbyist as a senior adviser at the FDA, and pushing African countries to accept "investment" by Monsanto in order to start the next "green revolution".  Meanwhile his FDA goes around shutting down those who wish to sell raw milk using armed FDA agents to seize goods.  Then, we could look at his economic solutions, which amount to take on more debt without providing a meaningful jobs program while continuing with the mindset that an economy is akin to a family budget.  This clear in statements like, "We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs."  He won't get in to the very complicated subject of resource depletion and an economy that demands constant growth as the norm (which only came about because of fossil fuels).  Nor has he clamped down on Wall Street and the financial sector as he continues to give key positions to people within the financial market.  Most assuredly we could discuss Obama's foreign policy, which includes his position that as President of the US he has the right to launch drone missile strikes in countries without their co-operation, away from any war zone, even to strike targets they haven't identified by secret executive authority with no review by the legislative branch.  Obama has declared himself the judge, jury, and executioner to decide who can be targeted and killed anywhere in the world.  Imagine if any other country in the world declared the right to strike with a drone by internal secretive process inside the borders of another country, (or even the US).  The US would denounce it strongly.  This amounts to a failure to hold ourselves as a country, to a standard we expect of others.  We could also talk of his support for the Bahrain-an dictatorship that has been protested against, much like Egypt protesting against the Mubarak regime, or Libya's protests against Gaddafi.  The point is Obama doesn't really have a progressive leg to stand on.  Many of his own policies go against the heart of progressive thought yet he needs to continually bolster his image as the champion of the people or the champion of gay rights.  What's really true is that Obama has a nicely paid team of campaign strategists that promote the president and his persona to pacify the left, while continually caving in to demands of the right, or more accurately big business.  So it's worth it to take a look at exactly what his strategies are, even if that means having to think critically about the only person standing in the way of a US with Mitt Romney as president. 

One of his big campaign points is he's strong on terrorism, as well as ending the war in Iraq, and putting the steps into place so that down the road the US can leave Afghanistan.  What he promotes is that he killed Bin Laden, while he continually leaks more and more information to the press about this otherwise classified operation (as long as it makes him look like a strong leader that's tough on terror).  It just seems that no matter what issue you examine, Obama talks a certain talk, but when it comes down to real policy, the talk is replaced with policies that show talk is all it is.  The failure of the US public (and specifically the progressive portion of the population) to hold Obama accountable for keeping Bush's policies on warrant-less wiretapping not just intact, but expanded, as well as expanding his ability to wage war without congressional approval and authorize drone killings via a secretive kill list, amounts to a betrayal of not just progressive, but humanist principles that eschew a consistent moral or ethical standard in favor of blind political worship or demagoguery.

This is why The Association of National Advertisers awarded him for marketer of the year in 2008.  This is because he got into office convincing the US public that this was not going to be politics as usual, but change was going to sweep the white house and all of government.  In the hangover from this progressive orgy of hope without political substance that has become the Obama administration's first term, it has become more and more clear this is not just more politics as usual.  The acceptance and now normalization of activities once decried by progressives and even moderate democrats put in place by the previous administration, undermines any moral authority they might have once had as they foolishly support a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Citizens that can't demand a president work within the confines of the constitution and uphold the rule of law, but instead insist the president be supported merely because he personally believes in anything, have shirked their duty as citizens of the nation.  Isn't this the exact same thing Liberals have decried when it comes to electing official because of religious belief?  After all if it really comes down to the lesser of two evils, and Obama's personal stance on same sex marriage is the deciding factor for you, doesn't that analysis also entail that the electoral political system of the US is broken?  Maybe the whole point is, while Obama pushes to raise a billion dollars to convince the US he should remain president, we keep accepting a broken system every four years to elect another person to look after the interests of those who paid to get them in office.  What remains to be seen is how long the US citizenry is going to keep buying into such ridiculous and trivial campaign tactics while the environment, rule of law, education, and economy collapse around us.

The NSA, Warrant-less Wiretapping, The Big Spy Center, and The Erosion of the Rule of Law

According to James Bamford of wired.com, "Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks."  He goes on to say, "In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret."

An ominous sounding project to be sure, but it's very interesting that he brings up Nixon.  Although he is wrong that this is the first time since the Nixon administration the NSA has surveilled US citizens, the Nixon administration was important in laying the ground work for the current policies surrounding domestic spying and wiretapping.  It's important to start here because this has indeed become one of the slow cons of the business and political elite which is leading the US to a sort of "soft" fascism.  The Watergate break-in and the criminality of Nixon and his administration that followed to cover up the break in is standard US history.  Part of that illegal break-in or series of break-ins involved wiretapping the DNC headquarters in the Watergate complex.  After the "smoking gun" tape revealed Nixon had known and participated in the covering up of crimes being investigated his legal team suggested he resign or he would surely be impeached for obstruction of justice, and conviction seemed imminent.  After Nixon's resignation Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and quickly pardoned Nixon for all crimes involved with the Watergate scandal.  In other words Ford decided to use his presidential authority to pardon a criminal simply because he was the former president.

The problem is this goes against the very foundation of the USA as stated by John Adams, "The very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men."  James Madison argued in Federalist 57 that "I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together...  without which every government degenerates into tyranny."  Whether it's Adams, Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, or even Hamilton they all favor the rule of law over all citizens equally and warn that privilege or exception from the law will bring tyranny.  Without adherence to this rule of law over all they all understood that the constitution and other such laws would become suggestions with compliance by government optional.

So Nixon got pardoned and while many were glad to move on or that the "end of the national nightmare" had come to an end, it has also set a precedence of excusing crime and criminality at the highest levels of US government.  For a more in depth look at this process I recommend Glenn Greenwald's With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.  The precedence set by this has allowed things once thought to be unconstitutional (i.e. warrant-less wiretapping, assassination of a US citizen by executive decree, extraordinary rendition [torture by proxy], and use of aggressive military force without congressional consent) to become quasi-legal through claimed executive authority.  This is true even if they are strictly forbidden within the US constitution.  The warrant-less wiretapping of domestic citizens is strictly forbidden.  After the abuses by Nixon, and other domestic spy programs used mostly for political purposes, congress decided through the Church committee resolutions to create the FISA court of 3 judges that would issue warrants for domestic wiretaps.  However the G.W. Bush administration was committing the crime of domestic wiretaps and collection of data from electronic communications through the NSA.

A NY Times article in December of 2005 by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that the Bush administration had allowed the NSA to participate in this domestic spying ignoring the law that warrants must be obtained.  In other words the rule of law was ceded in the name of national security and allowed immunity for such crimes granted by the political class.  If the failure to prosecute or impeach Bush for clearly illegal activities seems bad, what about retro-active grants of immunity by congress for those involved in the crimes?  It was later revealed by whistle blower Mark Klein that AT&T had, "installed a fiber optic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers, and provides those copies to the NSA."  AT&T wasn't alone in allowing the NSA to illegally spy on US citizens, but the list included other telecom giants like Verizon and Bell South.  It's important to note that FISA grants the Telecom industry full immunity in the case that they were acting in good faith and not knowingly breaking the law.  Qwest at that time decided not to co-operate with the Bush administration because they questioned the legality of such actions even asking the NSA to take their proposal to a FISA court.  The above mentioned companies however were all on board with the program.

So once AT&T customers began suing AT&T in court and winning for the illegal release of their private communication data the Telecom companies decided to use their influence on congress to grant the retroactive immunity from all crimes related to the NSA wiretapping scandal.  The telecom companies began to use lobbyists to persuade a Democratic congress would concede to voting for immunity for the telecom industry.  Glenn Greenwald wrote that in the first three months of 2008 AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast "spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists." The details of how these connected lobbyists used their influence to gain amnesty are in Glenn's aforementioned book.  However the lobbying wasn't the only tool the telecom industry used to receive this retroactive immunity.  The campaign donations to key Democratic senators and congressmen helped in gaining congressional support of the amnesty legislation.  Jay Rockefeller for instance was one of these as he sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.  He was also up for re-election in 2008.  As revealed by a Wired.com article Rockefeller saw great gains in contributions from the telecom industry.

"Top Verizon executives, including CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Dennis Strigl, wrote personal checks to Rockefeller totaling $23,500 in March, 2007. Prior to that apparently coordinated flurry of 29 donations, only one of those executives had ever donated to Rockefeller (at least while working for Verizon).

In fact, prior to 2007, contributions to Rockefeller from company executives at AT&T and Verizon were mostly non-existent.

But that changed around the same time that the companies began lobbying Congress to grant them retroactive immunity from lawsuits seeking billions for their alleged participation in secret, warrantless surveillance programs that targeted Americans.

 AT&T executives discovered a fondness for Rockefeller just a month after Verizon execs did and over a three-month span, collectively made donations totaling $19,350.

AT&T Vice President Fred McCallum began the giving spree in May with a $500 donation. 22 other AT&T high fliers soon followed with their own checks."

Also according to the watchdog group Maplight:
Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:
$8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)
$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for Telcos (116 Dems)
88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008). See below for list of these 94 Dems.
All House Members (June 20th vote):
 Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging:
$9,659 to each member of the House voting "YES" (105-Dem, 188-Rep)
$4,810 to each member of the House voting "NO" (128-Dem, 1-Rep)


This type of collusion by the corporate and government sectors  has become business as normal within  the government, but it is especially egregious when it is to retroactively immunize criminal behavior.  The elected officials are winning their positions mostly due to fund raising efforts.  The Center for Responsive Politics stated that in 2008, "the biggest spenders won 93 percent of House races and 86 percent of Senate races. In 2006, the top spenders won 94 percent of House races and 73 percent of Senate races. And in 2004, 98 percent of House seats went to candidates who spent the most, as did 88 percent of Senate seats."  These facts show the role money is playing in our elections, but what goes unseen often is that the push to fund raise can lead politicians to spend most of their time with those who can finance their campaigns.  However egregious this type of election process is towards our representative form of government on a regular basis, when they can be seen in collusion on granting large scale immunity retroactively for crimes the rule of law has ceased.

When the FISA amendments act of 2008 passed in the Democratically controlled senate it stamped out the investigations into the warrant-less wiretapping, granted immunity to the Telecom companies who knowingly broke the law, and vastly expanded the wireless eavesdropping powers of the government.  The bill passed with support from top democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and of course Barack Obama who violated his own promise to filibuster any bill with telecom immunity.  Instead Obama voted against Chris Dodd's filibuster and for the bill itself.  As soon as the legislation was signed into law by G.W. Bush all the suits filed against the telecom companies were dismissed.  The NSA and the illegal activities they participated in were codified into law rather than punished.

However a recent whistle blower named William Binney has gone on record for Wired.com which states:
The NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. “I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,” Binney says. “That’s not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast.” ...

Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency’s worldwide intercepts. The haul only grew from there. According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light. ... 


The software, created by a company called Narus that’s now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.
The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.
According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.

The new spy center is a perfect example of rolling back of personal liberties and the rights of US citizens.  It should also serve as a chilling example of the collusion of centralized public and centralized private power working together to ensure their interests are forwarded.  It shouldn't come as any shock that in the midst of the scandal that AT&T and Verizon both received government contracts as part of a deal worth $48 billion dollars to provide telecom services to the government and it's agencies for 10 years.  For those who have spent anytime studying the rise of fascism in Germany before WWII, one thing that stands out is corporate and government collusion leading to a build up of military and intelligence forces.  Now I'm not trying to say that the US is on the verge of a Hilter-ian type of fascist revolution, but there should be no doubt by anyone who has been watching the past 3 or 4 administrations of the presidents that the two greatest centralized powers in history (the US military empire [with it's 737 worldwide bases], and the corporate/financial elite who control much of the world's economic development and market shares) are colluding to each others interests.  This great combination of power has allowed them to halt the rule of law for the benefit of an elite that could be called a title-less aristocratic class.  Until US citizen demand it's government stay within the powers granted to it by the constitution and not use the constitution as merely a set of guidelines which can be disregarded at will by executive authority, you better watch what you say, because the government is too.


"It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation."
Alexander Hamilton- Federalist No. 15

Obama Supporters and their Hypocrisy

The beginning of the 21st century in the United States of America with George W.  Bush as president quickly became enraptured by issues of terrorism and war after the attacks on September 11th 2001.  Bush left office with low voter approval ratings averaging just over 60% disapproval average his last two years in office.  This was in part due to a response to terrorism which included an unconstitutional war in Iraq (of course the US hasn't entered a declared war since WWII despite continual conflict) based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction, prisoner abuse scandals, a failing economy, and the loss of liberties by legislation such as the Patriot Act.  A very dark spot on the US policy on terrorism was the prison at Guantanamo Bay where prisoners were being subjected to "harsh interrogation techniques" which are more rightly called torture unless you asked the Attorney General at the time who redefined torture.  The prisoners were also guilty without the chance to prove themselves innocent which takes away the presumption of innocence that rule of law requires in order to apply to everyone equally.

Obama took on this issue in his 2008 bid for the presidency.  Here he can be seen speaking even as president elect in 2008 before taking office. 

Obviously Guantanamo Bay hasn't been closed, and for me this comes as no shock, but what's interesting is that even though the prison was so heavily criticized under Bush it now gains acceptance under Obama according to a poll by the Washington Post.  53% of self identified Democrats and 67% of moderate democrats support keeping the facility open.  Not only that but 83% of US respondents approve of the drone policy (although I'm sure far fewer understand what that policy entails).  On top of that 77% of liberal Democrats are in favor of his drone policy.  During the Bush administration one of the most frequent complaints was that he all to often did what he wanted, without approval, and often shrouded in secrecy.  The facts are that this is no different from what's happening in the current drone program.  Obama has authorized multiple drone strikes inside the borders of countries like Pakistan, where recently there were protests against the US's drone war campaign within Pakistan where epitaphs of President Obama were burned.  Also according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, "research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children."

Pakistani Minister Hina Rabbani Khar:"In our view, drones are not only completely illegal and unlawful and have no  authorization to be used within the domains of international law, but even more importantly, they are counterproductive to your objective of getting this region rid of militancy and terrorism and extremism, because if one strike leads to getting you target number one or target number three today, you are creating five more targets or 10 more targets, in the militancy that it breeds, in the fodder that it gives to the militants to attract more people to join their ranks." 

The problem lies not only in upsetting the autonomy of a country that has nuclear arms and a strong militant right wing influence, but this program has resulted in the assassination of US citizens.  Anwar al-Awlaki was a US citizen that President Obama ordered assassinated using the drones.  Whether or not Anwar was a terrorist or not if he is committing crimes against the US he should be tried by the due process of the law rather than refused his rights as a US citizen to habeus corpus and assassinated.  Had Bush ever claimed the right to assassinate US citizens it would have been used as fodder by the left in the US.  However they are perfectly willing to look the other way when it comes to Obama ordering such strikes in countries where no war is declared, even when shrouded in secrecy.  The CIA has claimed that disclosure of information on the details of the process of either how the orders are given or how they choose the targets would aid the enemy. 

This is the perfect demonstration of the blind following or worship of political leaders in which they give their loyalty not to any ideal, but merely the whims of the leaders themselves.  This is clearly the case with Republican leaders who supported every expansion to military spending for the war on terror, but now call for fiscal accountability and reigning in spending (just so long as it's not military spending).  It's a big problem within the US political system because it has the effect of allowing something that although criticized at first by the opposition party, if continued when that party takes power it receives bipartisan support from the public.  Now days both parties both speak for increases in military spending and yet wish to be seen as trying to reduce the deficit.  The same is true with starting a war or military operation without congressional consent and now seems to be true with drone assassinations and secret military prisons.  It's all part of a broken political system that's going to require more than simply voting for the lesser of two evils or worse yet supporting them even when their policies conflict with a persons own ethics.

Music and Industry: The Consumption of Corporate Culture

"Modern music is people who can't think, signing artists who can't write songs, to make records for people who can't hear." Frank Zappa

 Music developed historically within cultures as traditions which served prominent roles in societies.  In ancient Greece music was present for marriages, funerals, and rituals, as well as accompanying theater, and ballads of epic poetry.  There were also forms of folk music or music of the common people.  In Ancient India, Africa, China, and etc. we see a similar use of music.  Often times the purpose of this music was to express not just who we were as individuals, but the culture as well.  Irish traditional music is a great example of this.  Take a song like The Shores of Amerikay or Dear Old Skibbereen which express not just the individual mourning and loss experienced, but what it was like to be a common person in Ireland during the 19th century in the eyes of the common person.  Music itself has undergone many changes in compositional techniques, styles, and instrumentation, but I'd like to focus on the function of music in modern times and the processes by which we make and consume music. 

The growth of a real industry of music was originally centered on sheet music publishing for consumption in the home by playing the music yourself.  Composers wrote songs to be sold as the emerging middle class were able to purchase instruments, and get musical instruction for playing western classical music that wasn't available to most people before the industrial age.  Entertaining in parlours was in fashion, and music was specifically composed and disseminated for this purpose.  Eventually in the US, the growth of the industry led to the growth of copyright laws, which led to further growth of the industry.  Originally music copyright laws weren't as strict in the US as in Europe and publishers often printed different versions of about any popular song.  However late in the 19th century many copyright laws were enhanced and many of the major New York publishers moved over to West 28th street between 5th and 6th Ave. in Manhattan, a place known as Tin Pan Alley.

Here song writers like Irving Berlin and others sold songs to publishers or were hired to write songs by publishers.  The firms hired "pluggers" (which included George Gershwin) to demonstrate songs to people, often in music stores.  They also gave away songs to popular performers knowing that it would increase the popularity of the songs.  The industry eventually even began to incorporate blues, cakewalk, and jazz although since the main purpose of the music was to be sold to amateur musicians they were often just commercial representations of these types of music.  The reason for this is that these types of music all involve certain processes of creation (i.e. improvisation) rather than just stylistic differences.  It's important to note that originally the publishers did not originally promote music or develop writers.  It wasn't until this Tin Pan Era developed after 1880 when "plugging" was developed that promotion really started to expand business.  As more pianos were being made by factories, the price came down, and piano ownership rose.  In the first quarter of the 19th century 10,000 pieces of popular music was printed.  In the first decade of the 20th century 25,000 songs were sold annually.  After the Ball by Charles K. Harris sold 2 million copies in 1882 and went on to sell over 5 million.  This industry boom was to be short lived in part to a technological innovation known as the Gramophone.

John Philip Sousa had this to say about the new recording technology,

"Sweeping across the country with the speed of a transient fashion in slang or Panama hats, political war cries or popular novels, comes now the mechanical device to sing for us a song or play for us a piano, in substitute for human skill, intelligence, and soul...  Under such conditions the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant. Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises, so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture, will be out of vogue!  Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?  When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?"

You can read the rest of his 1906 article "The Menace of Mechanical Music," here.  Seemingly harsh words for a device that would over time make him a lot of money (although he refused to conduct his band for many of the recordings).  With the ability to record performances by the best musicians more people began to consume music not through either playing the music or listening to live musicians but to recordings.  Of course this allowed for certain pieces of music to be archived, played anytime, and introduce people to music not heard in their geographic area.  Originally many of the recordings of the early 20th century were classical music recordings.  In 1910 it is estimated around 75% of recordings sold were classical music.  However piano sales in the 1920's dropped while record production rose from 190,000 in 1923 to 5 million in 1929.

Radio also played a part in changing how we consume music.  In 1913 there were 322 amateur licensed radio operators in the US.  After being closed down for a time because of WWI it wasn't until 1920 that commercial radio began.  Eventually more and more people in the US began to tune in to programs of musical variety shows and comedy.  It wasn't really till the mid-twenties that radio started to really get big.  By the late 1920's there were over 500 stations broadcasting in the United States.  Sales of radios went from $60 million in 1922 to $843 million in 1929.  In turn money began to be poured into advertising.

Changes in government regulation played a big role in the amount of money that went into the radio business.  Although originally radio was to be developed for public good, because of many competing amateur stations, radio interference became chaotic.  Also many people who were developing the technology and those financing it were eager for it to begin to pay off.  In 1921 Herbert Hoover, then guiding the Department of Commerce, held a conference and in the opening speech he said,

"It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, for education, and for vital commercial purposes, to be drowned in advertising chatter."

By the third conference in 1924 Hoover was still speaking out against direct advertising, but he had accepted it as an inevitable.   The airwaves had been won for private development to not stifle technological innovation, although there were regulations on the number of stations one could own.  This stood till 1996 when the limit to radio station ownership was lifted to allow for virtually limitless ownership of radio stations by a single company.  Radio consolidation has become a reality.  The Contemporary Hit Radio/Top 40 formats, only four radio station groups - Chancellor, Clear Channel, Infinity and Capstar - control access to 63 percent of the format's 41 million listeners nationwide. For the country format, the same four groups control access to 56 percent of the format's 28 millions listeners.  


Consolidation by the recording industry has also occurred.  The big 4; Sony, EMI, Warner, and Universal now control 80% of the US market as of 2005.  However the music recording industry has been in a steady decline over the last decade and has continued to decline past the period this graph covers.

Reasons for the decline in the consumption of music abound.  However people can listen to more types of music more easily in the US than ever before.  While this sounds like a great technological innovation there is reason to believe we're actually in effect numbing ourselves.  In a recent study it was shown that listening to a favorite piece of instrumental music could raise your dopamine levels by 9%.  Another study on the effect of consuming a milkshake on the striatum (the area of the brain that’s rich in dopamine neurons and involved in the processing of rewards) showed obese people had reduced activity in the striatum.  Or as science journalist Johah Lehrer put it, "They kept on consuming the milkshake in a manic search for satisfaction.”  In a day and age where more music than can be listened to in a year can be transported with you everywhere, and listened to constantly there seems to be a case for music having a similar effect.  We consume it more and more, but enjoy it less.  What's really important is the process by which we consume this music.  Instead of consuming records with friends or family, or enjoying the playing of music by ourselves, or friends and family we consume it individually with headphones more and more.  When we share music with friends today more and more it's by copying a playlist, or some other digitally stored information rather than sitting down and listening to a record together.  Many people purchase records where recording techniques such as auto-tune have fixed vocal intonation may fear to sing themselves.  If 40% of people fear public speaking, then how many fear singing in public?  What is playing out is a battle by a few companies to sell the most music which has translated into a battle against human music production, and for consumption of corporate commodity music.  In short,

"The contrast between music-as-expression and music-as-commodity defines twentieth-century pop experience. /.../ Read any pop history and you will find in outline the same sorry tale. However the story starts, and whatever the author's politics, the industrialization of music means a shift from active musical production to passive pop consumption, the decline of folk or community or subcultural traditions, and a general loss of musical skill." From Andy Bennet, Barry Shank, Jason Toynbee (red.): The Popular Music Studies Reader

It must be noted that music itself was not commercialized but it was the process by which we create and consume music that was commercialized.  Music after all is the finalized product, but what has changed is the process in which music is made.  So much of the music consumed today is designed to sell the most units possible, thereby providing the best return on investment for the 4 corporations that control 80% of the music sales.  Besides any economic implication this might have, it has changed music from cultural expression to corporate cultural expression.  The processes by which people have expressed themselves culturally or socially have been manipulated to the point that consciousness has changed into self expression being a matter of what one consumes rather than what one produces.  Simply put the creative process has been removed from your hands and instead your sense of self expression (often told to the others through social media apps like last.fm, your interests section on social media sites, voting for American Idol, or a favorite video back when MTV used to play videos) relies on what type of music you choose to consume.

So although this entry seems to show the negative side of the rise of the music industry, I'd like to end it with a positive message.  With the industry in peril, musical knowledge and skill seemingly in decline (per capita), and the expressions of whole generations manufactured for industry profits, the changes needed in the system are ripe.  With the advent internet and changes to recording technology which is much more affordable now, you have the option of releasing your own music on whatever terms you want.  However I encourage smaller non-signed musicians to look at new ways of distributing music, and new ways of making a living from it.  Simply trying to copy the production and sales methods of the already established industry with the re-creation of genre or style will only further us down a path of consumption as expression.  You're much better off in this day and age seeking support directly from those who want to support what you do (if you're an up and coming musician or have no major label to support you).  Projects like Artist Share or Kickstarter actually allow people to take part in the creative process and support artists rather than major recording companies.  You could even make real relationships (not digital) with people in your community that will support your art.  What is happening (slowly) is that people interested in real expression are taking back music production and handing it back over to the common people.  All of us should work to create a culture wherein amateur music production is en vogue once again, as it only leads to more support of the professional musician as basic musical skill sets are obtained by more people.  After all is the point of music how good it is, how many people heard it, and how many units were sold, or the human connection we experience when another human moves us with musical expression? 

"A real musical culture should not be a museum culture based on music of past ages. . . . It should be the active embodiment in sound of the life of a community—of the everyday demands of people's work and play and of their deepest spiritual needs." WILFRID MELLERS

Most information in this post besides where it is otherwise cited comes from Radio and television regulation: broadcast technology in the United States By Hugh Richard Slotten
Something I'd like to suggest if the subject interests you- Culture Inc. The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression By Herbert I. Schiller, 

Energy and Society

There is something to be said for understanding energy in both ecological systems and human social systems, as well as its relation to complex economic and political systems.  This understanding doesn't seem to be common knowledge and yet the basics of energy seem to be within the grasp of most people.  This entry is aimed at providing a basic overview of energy and how energy systems affect our society.  

All life depends on energy.  Most of that energy comes from the sun (with very little exception).  Even though the Earth is 93 million miles from the sun we always have 1,372 watts of energy from the sun per meter hitting the earth.  This energy is used for weather systems such as heating the atmosphere and oceans, as well as fueling life by providing autotrophs with energy.  As we all learned in biology,  photosynthesis is the process whereby plants trap solar energy and chlorophyll molecules turn this into chemical energy.  It is because of these autotrophs that us hetrotrophs or consumers can survive.  We are locked into a system often called the web of life or food chain which energy is the currency and it is transferred i.e. from green plants to herbivores to carnivores to decomposers.  As it is transferred the some of the energy is lost and merely 5-20% of the usable energy can be transferred between members of the food chain.  This is why autotrophs account for a much higher percentage of the biomass since they are the energy producers for the rest of the system.  If left undisturbed these ecosystems often tend to get to a state of dynamic equilibrium known as climax phase.  This means that organisms have adapted themselves to live with relatively constant population levels, to avoid direct competition, and recycling energy as efficiently as possible.  In other words they have formed a community.  That's all well and good but what does this have to do with human society?

We humans like nearly every other organism are trying to capture solar energy.  Although there is much data that shows humans can live as members of the long term climax ecosystems in modern times we have taken more and more of this solar energy acting as a colonizer or invader.  Even 60,000 years ago in Australia when humans arrived they used fire to flush out game for hunting, which in turn wiped out the food sources of giant kangaroos, and other large mammals and birds.  In fact within a few millennia of human arrival on the island 85% of animals weighing over 100 pounds disappeared.  The same kind of trends followed when humans arrived in many new habitats around the earth.  However what's really important about this is what happened next.  That is that in Australia the Aborigines developed systems of myths, and rituals wherein over hunting was forbidden and fire was only to be used seasonally.  They also limited their own population through extended lactation, contraceptive herbs, and even infanticide.  In other words they adapted to their surroundings.  However this was only after a strategy of takeover had been applied.  This strategy of takeover was through tool use in the form of fire.  From early in our history most all of our tools were used to gain more access to and get greater amounts of solar energy - or in other words most of our tools have been used for the takeover of ecological systems.

Most of our strategies for takeover come from a culture of agriculture.  This is because agriculture is by it's nature a strategy of takeover.  Forests are cleared for fields which contain plants only to be used by humans which is a literal takeover of the ecological system which used to provide energy to many different types of organisms.  The act of clearing land for use by a monoculture fed on only by humans and their livestock however was not the most startling strategy by which humans seek energy in my opinion.  The most startling thing is when humans began to use other humans as tools systematically.  This happens through slavery as well as specialization or change to a hierarchical society.  Or as David R. Montgomery says in Dirt, 

"Class distinctions began to develop once everyone no longer had to work the fields in order to eat.  The emergence of religious and political classes that oversaw the distribution of food and resources led to development of administrative systems to collect food from farmers and redistribute it to other segments of society."

 Or Richard Heinberg in The Party's Over,

"Some humans could capture the energy of others who had been seized in war, putting them to work at tasks too dangerous, dreary, or physically taxing for any free person to undertake voluntarily - tasks such as mining metal ores from beneath the Earth's surface.  Those ores were, in turn, the raw materials from which were fashioned the chains and weapons that kept the slaves themselves in bondage.  Eventually, metals also came to be used as money, a tool that would become the basis for a more subtle form of energy capture: wage labor.  Through the payment of money, humans could be persuaded to give their energies to tasks organized by - and primarily benefiting- others."

This use of humans by other humans was a cultural of empire as well.  This meant that if you had a larger area with which to trade or often steal resources from you had a better chance of surviving local catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, or most likely famines.  This system is now known as globalization.  We now survive mostly off of goods coming from far away.  Even an average carrot comes 1,838 miles to get to you.  A t shirt may travel 17,000 miles.  Neither of them are the most important good to be shipped around the globe though.  The most important goods to modern human society are fossil fuels.  Fossil fuels are what make this globalization really possible.  The reason is simple, they are packed with energy.  A fit human adult can sustain about one-tenth of a horsepower, so a human would have to labor more than 10 years to equal the energy of a barrel of oil.  Except for maybe John Henry no human can compete with most any modern machine.  Why would you hire workers for tasks like agricultural labor, making cars, t-shirts, band aids, and most all consumer goods when you only have to pay for the energy for the labor of a machine which needs no retirement or other benefits?

The new fossil fuel based economy had dreadful effects on society.  With fossil fuels being used in farm equipment it allowed one farmer to farm much more land.  Cattle could now be shipped via railway to major cities.  Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century in the US, cattle often fed on lands that once fed Buffalo that in turn fed Nations of Native peoples.  As less people were needed on farms the small farm that was idealized in early US history was almost impossible to keep.  There were other reasons though.  Soil erosion from farming with the new fossil fueled machinery was a major often caused lower yields as well as the infamous dust bowl of the 1930's.

This came at a time following wheat farming became very profitable because of WWI and price inflation and then very unprofitable as the price collapsed.  Farmers had no choice but to plow large acreages in order to get money which led to farming practices that were ruinous.  Banks began to seize land and assets from those who could not pay back loans made as the economic depression was setting in.  This caused people to migrate to the cities much like English Land Enclosures of the 19th century displacing peasants.

1840
Total population: 17,069,453; farm population; 9,012,000 (est.); farmers 69% of labor force

1900
Total population: 75,994,266; farm population: 29,414,000 (est.); farmers 38% of labor force; Number of farms: 5,740,000; average acres: 147

1930
Total population: 122,775,046; farm population: 30,455,350; farmers 21% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,295,000; average acres: 157; irrigated acres: 14,633,252

1970
Total population: 204,335,000; farm population: 9,712,000; farmers 4.6% of labor force; Number of farms: 2.780, 000; average acres: 390 http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm

 Now oil is responsible for harvesting crops which also have to be transported by oil to get to you as in the example of the carrot.  Fossil fuels have completely reshaped our economy and now our economies are very reliant on fossil fuels.  The only problem is that they're a limited resource.  According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) world oil production peaked in 2006.  Coal is set to peak by 2025.  The decreasing supply of fossil fuels with an increase in demand for energy is going to make oil, and coal much more expensive.  Some may think what about solar, wind, hydrogen, nuclear, and bio-fuels? 

Alternatives to fossil fuel based energy systems exist but, they cannot replace the amount of energy we currently use because of fossil fuels.  The main reason can be attributed to a figure known as Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI).  First of all keep in mind oil had an EROEI of 100 in 1940, meaning that 100 units of energy were returned for every one invested.  By the 1970's the oil EROEI had dropped to 23.  Solar photovoltaic can be anywhere from 1.7-10, wind up to 2.  Hydrogen is hard to get a real number on but so far it's a net energy loss since it requires fossil fuels to fuel the process to make it.  Nuclear plants are about 4-4.5 and bio-fuels about 1.8 at the highest.  In other words we're facing a world that in the very near future is going to have more energy demands than can be met.  The repercussions this will have on our economy will change our world and force us to change from economies based on continual growth since that will no longer be possible.  Our economy will be hampered by the loss of cheap, and easy to get energy to do our work.




So where does this leave us?  Undoubtedly although applications of renewable energies could avert a total crisis, although according to the Hirsch report which stated, "Initiating a crash program 10 years before peaking leaves a liquid fuels shortfall of a decade."  Prospects of an easy transition don't look good but all is not lost.  There are many efforts which can be undertaken to help mitigate the shortfalls in global energy.  If we look to Cuba, who after the fall of the USSR, began to grow more and more of its food locally rather than import Soviet grown foods.  More than 200 gardens in Havana supply its citizens with more than 90% of their fruit and vegetables. Yields have more than quintupled from 4 to 24 kilograms per meter squared between 1994 and 1999, and currently around a million tons of food per year is produced.  This story is well told in the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.  This type of food production could help to stem off problems of hunger once oil becomes to expensive to be used to transport consumer goods around the world.  In other words globalization will peak and recede since it will become more and more expensive to transport goods.

Possibly the best strategy to be pursued by humans in the near future will be to re-examine the fundamental strategies of controlling energy and using it in our culture especially on the ecological level.  Many people such as Bill Mollison have done considerable work showing that much energy is required in order to stop ecological succession with agriculture.  Creating forest gardens could both reduce the work load and provide an abundance of food.  Not only that but the systems are more drought resistant and contain more biodiversity which is becoming more important with the changes occurring in Earth's climate.  We also have to confront that working simply for existence and the gain of others is an immoral practice by which one man purchases your energy to sell it's effect at a greater price.  In other words we'll probably have to stop the hyper-individualistic lifestyle led in the US in order to make better decisions based on how it affects the community at large.   The future maybe bleak if all we try to do is continue with our same system in place, but the collapse of the fossil fuel economy may help the people to win back the power of production away from corporations, machines, and the super rich that own and finance them.

I hope this helps you wrap your head around the energy and it's effects on society.  Although it is a short summary if you're interested I will leave a few links as well as books you may be interested in checking out. 

http://www.postcarbon.org/end-of-growth-chapters/
http://www.theoildrum.com/
The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies- Richard Heinberg
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations- David R. Montgomery 
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy- Matthew R. Simmons