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Good points. I loved your SimplyHoping post, and I agree that the future holds a series of rolling crisis, not a collapse.
At least I hope that is the case.
It is probably of concern when an optimist such as myself feels that a series of rolling crisis is the best future we can hope for.
We are marching forward with our leaders trying to select actions based on appearance, not substance. We need water - fine, we build a desalination plant. This action has the appearance of addressing the problem - the defect in this plan is only obvious if you stop, gather all the facts, and think about it (something few people have the time to do).
Contrary to popular opinion, the job of a democratic leader is to be elected, not to take actions with a view to the long-term good of the people. Getting elected is about appearance, not substance.
So we march forward SimplyHoping....
There are degrees of crises, though. For example, I would call the current subprime mortgage dramas an economic crisis, but they're not on the same scale as the Great Depression.
The real danger is a combination of crises. It's not widely-appreciated that when the Depression hit, most farmers kept their farms - the bank isn't in the business of owning property, it just wants money, and even a small amount from a farmer in trouble is better than foreclosing and selling at a loss. But then the Dustbowl hit. What drove the farmers off their land was the combination of the economic and environmental crises. One was fixable and the other was temporary, so it worked out alright in the end, there was just a lot of suffering first.
What we have to remember is that it's not the new state that hurts, but changing from the old to the new. People are very adaptable given time. In economic crises they deveop alternate currencies (cf Austria in early 1930s and Argentina in 2000s), in environmental crises they develop new methods of growing things, and so on. But they have to have time.
As to our elected representatives, the thing to remember is that they're not actually leaders - they're followers. They follow public opinion. Even the unelected ones have limits, Hitler could not have converted Germany to Islam, nor Stalin made everyone speak French. But in a democracy they follow the public, not the other way around. So if we want change we must change ourselves - and the elected guys will follow along reluctantly.
Between 1930 and 1935, about 750,000 farms were lost through foreclosure and bankruptcy sales. No small number. To say that most farmers kept their farms is an example of happy talk often used by the media. When using such an indeterminate modifier as "most," you essentially imply that "few" farmers lost their farms.
Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many. Farmers came together and blocked roads to farms up for auction, declared farm holidays (much like bank holidays) where they refused to participate in auctions, and generally threw monkey wrenches in the machinery of the corporation and its banks. The second reason there were not more foreclosures was due to the Frazie-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act (1934) which suspended farm foreclosures for five years.
As far as your declining to equate the subprime crisis with the Great Depression, you are right, so far. Remember, the full effects of the Great Depression did not settle in the day after the crash on Oct. 29th but developed over a year and a half. I have a feeling that, not withstanding the happy talk, we will see further problems in the banking sector, housing sector, and the level of consumerism. In short, all the ingredients for a spectacular crash.
Will we adjust? Of course. All of life, every second of it, is an adjustment. To say "we will adjust" is as meaningless as saying the sun will rise. The real question is how many will suffer and to what degree. The secondary question is who is responsible and to what degree must they pay. For the wing-nuts, the little guy is to blame for being so dumb as to take on such onerous loans. To the little guy, the bank is to blame for suckering him. What you will see in this corporate world is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss. Corporations hate welfare when it goes to anyone but themselves.
There was a phenomenon known as a penny sale however:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~iacalhou/1930.html
I don't know how many of these took place, but my Dad remembered similar such things while growing up in Minnesota.
LeMars is an hour and a half southwest of here. My mother's parents lost most of their farm in the Great Depression to a local banker. That fellow is long dead and the grandchildren farm the family land ... but everyone still remembers how they came by the property.
Cherenkov, great points once again.
Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many.
That what gov’s (I know it is in the US) fear the most. Millions of people in the street and radicalized. All the repeals of laws on demostrating, Marshal law changes, etc.
Listen to a lesson learned by the establishment put into words by G. Gordon Liddy in his reply to Timothy Leary.
"We're not about to let it happen again.
THAT'S when the start of the control of all media to a few companies became an objective of the people who Liddy was talking about.
Notice how we in the states NEVER saw on nightly news nearly ANYTHING on demonstrations on BUSH around the world a few years ago.
Radicalized people in the streets are their greatest fear.