Why Green Energy Will Utterly Destroy The US Economy

I had an interesting conversation on Amtrak with a retired CIA spook who worked "behind the Iron Curtain", funnelling money and means to anti-Soviet elements.

Of course that was not how he introduced himself - he vaguely identified as some kind of businessperson who had some kind of undefined job at one of the major stakeholders of Paramount Pictures and other firms and also spent a lot of time during the 1980s doing undefined business in a bunch of countries "behind the Iron Curtain" (he loved that phrase). But given that there are CIA insiders in business and media who action the anti-populist goals of organized business, this is what they look like. It was a cincher when he got tremors when I parenthetically said (as part of a much longer and typically Aestu philosophical exposition) that we were reaching the logical limits of the Capitalist system.

Like many Boomers, this guy was utterly solipsistic. He complained about feelings of general discontent with his life and an exaggerated fear of death. He embraced my suggested to "shift the center of your identity outside yourself" by engaging in charity or whatnot, but he could only interpret this to mean to work within his comfort zone and was baffled when I suggested that there were good causes and people worth helping within 50km of where he lived, rather than in some faraway country. Fundamental to the crusade against Communism (or the latter-day "White Woman's Burden" movement) was and is a chauvinistic notion that there can't be injustice or genuinely needy people within the US. This is also why I think Misha Collins should be burned at the stake.

I freely admit that as I am unable to enjoy most of the things that make life worth living for most people, I derive great pleasure from using my strength to intimidate others. The spook repeatedly sought to make references to things, places, people that would be obscure to most Americans (the Trabant, Ceausescu, French Huguenots, Indochina, macular degeneration, etc) and was a bit unsettled that I was two steps ahead of him each time.

In true Men In Black style, he passed me his business card, with only his name and address on it. I responded in kind with my own, which included the pretense of a career, "Proficiency & Study Services". Seeking to regain the high ground, he made a point of chuffing at this. "This," - I made an ambient gesture - "is what I do".

While I was in Gambia, I had visited a gigantic mosque gifted by Qadaffi in his efforts to push pan-Africanism (which met with terminal resistance when he tried to sell oil for currency other than dollars). Years ago, when I took the FSOT, I remember being asked to write an essay about the "Triumph of Diplomacy" that was Qadaffi's "reformation" into the international community. My essay (the substance of which was characteristically cynical, presuming evanescence) won me a high pass. Less than a year later, of course, Qadaffi had tried to get off the dollar and wound up dead.

Such events in the last decade convinced me that banks, corporations and a cabal of right-wing insiders have total control over foreign policy, and that what we see in the media are simply rationalizations for what has already been decided at business roundtables. Indeed I believe this has typically been the case in Anglo-American nations through most of our history - less true of continental powers with stronger republican traditions (by that I mean that final power rests with the bureaucracy appointed by the democracy, rather than presenting the mere facade of a democracy offered by our winner-take-all two-party system).

After the conversation, I felt compelled to research the term "petrodollars" - I had wanted to better understand the macroeconomic issues underscoring oil wars.

As I understood it, American insistence that Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and other states sell oil in dollars created a strong external demand for dollars that allowed the US's debt-based economy to function.

I noticed something else, too. The term had popped into use by a professor at Georgetown at almost the same moment the US went off the gold standard. The light went on inside my head. The US didn't really go off the gold standard. The US just went from backing its money with yellow gold to backing it with black gold. Quite a revelation.

As with many Americans, debt is fundamental to my way of life, but unlike most Americans, I have the insight to plan around macroeconomic issues. That's not to say that I am putting all my cards on the dollar imploding - that would be foolhardy - rather I am structuring the debt so that it is payable should superinflation not occur, but maximizing benefit should it do so. In practice, this means maintaining low *fixed* interest rates on high levels of debt against monetizable assets (house, car, education, career), while keeping total credit lines long enough to maintain options and a good credit rating. If superinflation does not occur, then the debt will gradually be paid off; if it does, then I will simply leverage the monetizable assets to discharge it immediately, then buy more assets from cash-strapped Americans. This is also why I want to purchase more real assets - land, euro and copper (and not gold) - and build additional lives outside the country.

Anyway, reading more about petrodollars improved my understanding of the Ukraine crisis. It was my belief that Putin wanted to grab Ukraine to deny the EU an alternative source of petrol and to appeal to the many frustrated hawks and nationalists in Russia. I still think this is largely the case, but I think European indifference to the whole thing is driven by the fact that the actual target of the invasion is not Europe or Ukraine but the US.

Russia has been frustrated with the dominance of the dollar and Sino-American hegemony of global resources. Putin probably believes that by establishing strong relations with China, India and Iran - and now grabbing Ukraine - he can undermine the dominance of the dollar and make countries deal in rubles. Clearly, this is about as realistic as Stalin claiming that the language of the future would be Russian, but the basic premise - that the strength of the dollar is ultimately built on nothing more than the US's capacity to terrorize third-world nations, and that increasingly, the gig is up - is sound.

So the EU's indifference to the Ukraine crisis now makes sense: it doesn't directly concern them. They think they can win either way: either the US wins (and the reasonably acceptable status quo continues), Russia wins (and they shrug and pay in rubles instead of dollars, which will probably increase the EU's spending power), or both lose - and the Euro takes over the world.

But I said that I would explain how green energy would destroy the American economy. This is why: because green energy will destroy demand for dollars, vacillate the petrodollar system and the entire economy will go out like the Warsaw Pact.

I have gradually become convinced that the choice between fossil fuels and green energy is not really a microeconomic choice between alternatives in cost, quality and externalities. In truth, the choice between fossil fuels and green energy is a choice between two very different ways of life. The difference is as fundamental as the difference between societies based on feudalism, slavery or barter and societies based on freedom and commerce.

The economic changes that will accompany the historically inevitable conversion to green energy will change our political, economic, personal, "and yes, even spiritual", lives in a way few today can realize. Democracy, capitalism, and the very nature and purpose of life will come to mean things as different from today as what those terms meant in ancient Athens 2500 years ago.

I will explore this revelation in greater detail later. For now I am doing correspondence and tying up loose ends with my little African safari.

Why Radioactive Waste Is The Greatest Thing Ever

Nuclear power. "The Other Green Energy". Except, of course, for the occasional meltdown and nuclear waste. Meltdowns aren't actually a problem, though, assuming you don't build your plant in a tectonically active area or without a containment dome.

Radioactive waste is something else. People make a big deal about how it lasts essentially forever and is hard to contain. But what is missed, is that radioactive waste is not a problem, it's a solution.

Radioactive waste has a peculiar quality called radiolysis that makes it difficult to store safely. Radiolysis is the phenomenon of water molecules being broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by radiation. This causes dangerous buildups of hydrogen and oxygen, which in turn can cause fires, explosions or sheer material fatigue in containment units. This is not a problem, but a blessing in disguise.

Commercial fusion power demands two things: very large quantities of deuterium and tritium, and armies of experts to build and operate the reactors. Obviously, the armies of experts and fuel supplies cannot be snapped into being overnight. The key to successful commercial fusion power, is to first make a big investment into fission power. Such an investment will create the fuel infrastructure and an immediate economic incentive to train nuclear engineers and techicians to staff the fission plants, who can then be easily cross-trained in the operation of fusion plants.

Fission and fusion power can together provide limitless green energy. Now, this will have an impact much more significant than just bringing down our power bills. When the non-economic costs of energy use - fuel, environment, sheer space - are no longer a consideration, a Green society and economy changes from one based on scarcity to one based on sheer technical ingenuity. Energy is to production as money is to economy - with the correct infrastructure, it can be turned into anything. Take desalination, for example. With unlimited green energy, desal will become possible and practical on an almost unlimited scale. It may eventually be possible to reinfuse our depleted aquifers. Synthetic fossil fuels, which cost much more energy to produce than is released by their combustion, would become practical. Recycling of even the most abject waste would become practical. We might even see such marvels as the replacement of the interstate highway with a sort of giant conveyor belt.

Perhaps the biggest impact of unlimited green energy would be relieving the pressure to use more energy-efficient but less eco-friendly materials.

Currently, the cost of energy and scarcity-based competitive forces make the use of ecologically and aesthetically sound materials such as wood and stone impractical. We make roads out of asphalt and buildings out of plywood because competitive forces compel us to do what is cheap in the short run, rather than effective or sustainable. Yet cobblestone roads are more durable, more environmentally friendly, and require less frequent repair; wood has the advantage of being infinitely renewable and carbon-negative (because every time a tree is grown, cut down to make something, and another tree grown in its place, that much carbon is being removed from the biosphere).

Our irrational economy is premised on our scarcity-based Capitalist system. But, due to high technology, scarcity is no longer an issue. The premise of our economy is false; the Capitalist system is obsolete.

Green Socialist economics, in which clean energy would be essentially unlimited and a living wage guranteed, would permit non-scarcity based production - production that truly puts quality before economy. After all, who needs the efficiency of asphalt roads or motorized ships when the economy is not at full employment?

High technology and Green Socialism would allow mankind to truly reclaim what has been lost - a pristine environment and a humane quality of life.

So - how to organize this?

First, as I said, there should be a fundamental shift in our economy from scarcity to social actualization. Citizens should work to improve their lot, not for fear of losing it. The necessary policies are pretty straightforward - guaranteed food, housing, medical care, meritocratic education, etc.

Second, there must be a cultural shift in favor of humanist values. I have come to believe that humanist values are fundamentally non-rational, and therefore can adequately be addressed only by passionate movements like religion and nationalism.

There must be a new, green democratic socialist nationalism and religious observance premised on the development of the individual as the avatar of the group. In practice, this means a 21st century equivalent of the gamesmanship depicted in the Homeric Hymns - men from different communities competing for honor for their person and city-state. This would come to pass largely on its own - with material considerations no longer being a driving force in society, it is reasonable to believe people will seek other ways to distinguish themselves than conspicuous consumption. I do not believe that this item actually requires any social action other than undermining Capitalism.

The World Wars are best understood as Capitalism opting out of peaceful gamesmanship, preferring the gains to be had through military dictatorship and war. If the Capitalists and militarists had lost the first round of the 20th century, and the Social Democrats had won, it is likely that such a world would have eventually metasized, just as is currently coming to be the case in many liberal-minded communities in the Western World, where people seek notoriety through blogging or playing MMOs or doing research. While many of these pursuits are of dubious nobility, vacillating Capitalism will provide more social room for humanism to flourish. After all, why make artisan crafts or freeware or farmer's markets when you need to pay the bills and are just going to get crushed by Wal-Mart, even though efficiency is irrelevant because there's enough to go around?

I want to restate this fact one more time. ***Our economics of scarcity are premised on the biggest lie in the world.***

Poverty and want aren't caused by the global economy not being productive enough; they are caused by the malicious greed of the rich seeking to enslave the world for their own aggrandizement. There is, in fact, enough to go around. Productivity today is so astronomical that it would be exceptionally difficult at the world's level of development for that to cease to be the case.
My vision is of a world of fusion-fission plants, infotech, tree farms, zepplins, maglevs, cobble-stone roads, and clipper ships. A world of space stations and cathedrals, MMO coliseums and lyceums.

Finally, the economy for non-essential goods should be premised on ecological impact. To this end, I believe that fiat money and the gold standard should be replaced by money that literally grows on trees.

How to fix our country's problems by making money grow on trees will be the topic of my next article.