The Story Of Broke

We haven't had an open thread for a while, so it's your turn today. As food for thought, I've included two videos.

In a comment this week Gail of the Wit's End blog linked to a video called The Story Of Broke, which is a continuation of The Story of Stuff project. This happy video is subtitled Why There's Still Plenty Of Money To Build A Better Future. You can contrast that optimistic view of our future with the Daily Ticker's Budget Crisis Has State and Local Govts. Cutting to the Bone.

Which story do you believe?

 

 

Comments

[Dennis]

In order for the optimists to prove themselves right in the end, they need to be right about three things. First, the solution they propose needs to be technically feasible at the necessary scale, second the solution must not provoke unintended consequences that will overwhelm it, and third, the 'political will' to actually accomplish it must be applied. Most optimists, for example, Lester Brown and Bill McKibben can be pretty convinced of the first point but they often overlook the second point and ignore the third.

Pessimists, on the other hand usually do take the second point into consideration and are realistic about the third. I tend to be a pessimist, given that I have a background in ecology. For a while I thought politics could work, if not to prevent catastrophe entirely, at least to spot it coming and soften its impacts. Based on what's happened in the US over the last few decades, I no longer think that's true.

Now, it seems to me, a multiple set of catstrophes will occur soon - depletion of critical resources, paralyzing pollution, economic collapse - and we will have to wait and see who survives these and what they do then. I don't think collapse will be followed by an egalitarian envlironmentally aware society. Rather I think people will continue to be as they've always been, prone to organize into a mix of small elites dominating large underclasses.

In the meantime, I think there will be plenty of violence in the near future from neighborhood flash mobs to wars of all scales in many places on the planet.

My pessimism notwithstanding, I think I'm pretty happy observing things unfold, and trying to be flexible, alert, and informed enough to survive for a while and provide my children and grandchildren some protection.