[Still riding off his buzz from the Germany-Brazil game,
Geist, our intrepid truth-teller, sits in his office, full-Cheever, listening
to “Hit Me Baby One More Time” on loop through really, really expensive
headphones late into the night]
Vox’s favorite West Wing extra, Zack Beauchamp, has written,
in one venue or another, that 2013 was the greatest year in human history.
Basically, because liberalism. Though we should always be suspicious of
anyone relying on “happiness studies” to make his case, I guess I can more or
less see his point. Instead of dying, more people live on the edge of
starvation than ever before. But let’s talk about why this rosy picture of the
world might not persist in the coming decades.
Let’s talk about why a lot of people in the world are probably
fucked.
(1) The entire African continent. Status: massively
fucked
It would make more sense for me to discuss
Africa after I cover the environment and the global economy. It would be more
dramatic if I gradually scaled up the fuck-level, capping it off with the
massive fuckery that awaits this continent. But I’m not going to do that.
Because it needs to be said upfront: Africa is stone-cold fucked.
[Drunkenly re-reading the above paragraph
out loud, Geist is a bit taken aback by the task he’s set for himself]
It’s not just because Africa has no
physical or institutional infrastructure to speak of, leaving it hypersensitive
to climate fluctuations and the resulting famines, droughts, migrations, and
conflict. And it’s not just because African leaders have struck deals with Asian
and American multinationals to exploit the fuck out of its people and land.
No, let’s assume that, somehow, these
things are resolved, or at least ameliorated. Which they certainly won’t be.
But let’s assume that they are. Africa is still bone-deep fucked.
All countries undergo a crash course in
technological development as they industrialize because, as late adopters, they
have the benefit of being able to buy what’s already been developed. China
didn’t independently have to invent the computer. India is the
beneficiary of the Internet and smart phone technology. Much of the “growth” we
see in these countries is a function of high returns on these technological
soft cases. It’s when they catch-up that we see their economies slow down
(*cough* China).
The multinationals sinking their FDI into
Africa in the coming years are going to import the same industrial technology
into Africa as is being used elsewhere: robots. Within the coming decade almost
all industrial production will be manufactured by automated processes. The
factories will have no need to employ the African people. Despite how fucked up
modernization is, it at least put people to work and pulled them out of their
even shittier conditions. Africa won’t even get that. There will be no jobs. In
the West we’ll be talking about the ‘African miracle’ up until the point we
have the shit shocked out of us when there are mass revolts by the unemployed
workforce.
(2) The Environment. Status: Almost certainly
fucked
You know how we know that the environment
is fucked? Because when pressed, the only
solution optimists have to offer is the faith that somebody will figure
something out. Because we have to. When
hard-pressed, sparks will fly. And from those sparks: a perfect solution.
Whatever it is. Because that’s how narrative arcs resolve themselves,
Goddammit.
My empirical work—when I did empirical work—was
in international relations. I was a terrible scholar. But I know one thing
about states: getting them to cooperate on anything non-trivial is like getting
a libertarian to share a cookie: it’s not going to happen.[1]
States are nasty, nasty Randian assholes. China will spray as much Prius repellent
into the atmosphere as is necessary in its quest to build an authoritarian
capitalist hyper-economy for its one billion citizens. Yes, it cares about pollution
within its borders and will take care
to hire Thomas Friedman to scrub every coal stack in the nation’s arsenal with
his moustache. But fuck anyone who tells China it needs to tie one hand behind
its back as it builds the most powerful economy in the world. Ditto India
fifteen years from now. And the American people will take any excuse not to do
anything, which leaves the EU, recycling so much of its trash that it’s
actually causing more pollution than it’s preventing.
You know who will be least affected by
global warming? The states that caused it. Their infrastructures can more or
less handle the shocks. No, the global periphery will bear the brunt of the
effects. There will be climate induced famines. There will be mass migration and
a mass backlash and possibly mass violence from native populations. There will
be resource wars. And water wars. Hyper-scarcity, bro. And the West and China
and probably India will say “oh shit!” and raise the draw-bridge.
(3) The Global Economy. Status: somewhat fucked
Though the environment is almost certainly
fucked, for at least the next 50-60 years it’ll be business-as-usual among the core
countries. They’ll largely be insulated from shocks and, let’s be honest, it’s
not like the periphery really has
that much of an effect of global economic trends. So things will largely be
stable on that end.
But things are likely not going to be great
by any measure. Global economic dynamics have made Keynesian interventions into
economies largely impossible. The 1950s America Paul Krugman talks about, the
one where the government-fostered middle class formed the economy’s demand
base, is no longer possible for the simple reason that in the 1950s, companies
weren’t able to play competing countries off one another. America was all there
was. Today that’s not the case. The 2008 financial collapse was brought about,
in part, by financial firms playing New York and London against each other with
the result being decreased regulation across the board. The race-to-the-bottom
abounds: wages, taxes, debt management.
There will be pressures for increased labor
mobility. The welfare state will be largely dismantled. An entire generation of
Westerners are likely to be uneducated and uncompetitive and underprovided for
by the state when they enter into the global economy. And the jobs they
otherwise would have taken, manufacturing, has either been outsourced or
automated. Oh, and there will be no demand to sustain continued growth.
(4) The Palestinians. Status: who are we
kidding here?
Do I really need to go into this?
(5) Immigrants and migrants. Status: royally fucked
You know what the non-NPR consensus is on
immigration? Hunt them down, round them up, ship them out, and build the
biggest fucking wall Halliburton advertises in its monthly catalog.
You know what the sentiment in Europe is
right now? The same damn thing. White people hate brown people. They hate black
people. And with increased global labor fluidity and climate induced mass
migrations all but assured, they’re going to be freaking the fuck out. Cue the
nativist backlash.
[1] I
once knew a staunch libertarian in college who, during one dinner in our dining
hall, had his cookie playfully stolen by a mutual friend. Red in the face and
fists clenched, he turned to the friend and barked “Give me back my property”.
He also loved Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and anything by Selena Gomez.
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