Power to the People

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My uncle posed two questions in a family email as an informal poll. My responses were:

Question 1: Is it possible to have a thriving economy and a healthy environment sustainably into the long future?

It all depends on how you define "thriving". Global trade as practiced in the international financial markets seems to require aggressive growth in corporate financial statements and/or the promise of future earnings. The elusive search for profits does not make for a better world, however, much less a more stable one. I am of the opinion that capitalism is inherently unstable and like a horse wearing blinders, tends to keep going faster until it fails to make that critical turn and goes off the rails. But then again I am a pessimist and think that the shelf life of any human innovation, material or otherwise, is finite and good for a few centuries at most before requiring replacement with something newer and better.

We live in an age where consumers are resigned to shoddy goods because we know that the manufacturers need to ensure that we will be making another purchase in a few years; in an age where it is more economical to ship fruit from another continent than to buy them from a local grower; and a time where China's booming industrial revolution contaminates thousands of acres of arable land just to allow Western fast food chains to package a cute toy along with some scorched mad-cow meat patties on a bun. Anything to make a quick buck. Sustainability is rarely a consideration in any large-scale endeavor, environmental or otherwise. I think this is based in part on the short and aggressive lives that most of us lead. Also, witness the amnesiac cyclical trends of lessons learned and forgotten between generations. And let us not forget that resources, renewable or otherwise, are always limited. Which is why there seem to be major wars or economic crashes every thirty to forty years through much of recorded history.

So is it possible to sustain economic growth in today's highly energy-intensive and consumer-based global economy; and in a way that is based on the creation of newly accumulated wealth rather than mere redistribution? There has to be a way. But to steal a page from Paul "Grandpa" Salzberg, it will take a significant investment into the basic sciences to pull it off. Slapping a digital clock onto an existing gizmo (a la Sharper Image) or concentrating computing power into smaller communications packages (Apple is great at this) does not qualify as the quantum revolution that will form the foundation for new technologies.

If we currently live in the Information Age, I hope that the next era is the Age of Power Sources -- we need new ways to generate and store the electrical juice that powers those brand new iPods and too-little-too-late hybrid vehicles being showcased by Detroit. I like fuel cells. I want to see millions of square miles of orbital solar panel farms beaming power down via maser to ground stations. Heck, hire the Dutch to harness the power of ocean waves with tidal generators.

Power is the key to the advancement of the human race. Power, whether stored in the potential energy of a bow string, chemically in gunpowder, or in the atomic bonds of a nuclear warhead, can determine whether people live or die. Power makes it practical to have buildings taller than three stories (and by extension, urban concentrations that build upwards as well as in square mileage) since elevators (Hi Tom!), HVAC, lighting, stoves, and iceboxes are all inert metallic lumps without it.

Given enough power, many things become possible. [Think about the work and energy required to support commercial air travel.] And if that power is either portable or available in multiple options that are appropriate to the site and application, the possibilities are endless. [Now imagine modern air travel with decent food and no lines. Concentrate really hard. It is possible. I think.] Pack in more generating and storage efficiency with fewer harmful waste products (heat, gases, etc.) and we are golden. [Now struggle to imagine a commercial airline that never, ever mangles or loses your luggage.]

I hope that I live to see a time when both Libya and the Fijis are major exporters of electrical power, using massive solar farms and ocean taps to plug into the global power grid and watch their meters run backward. I readily admit that I read a lot of science fiction which tends to color my views, but exploring ideas around sustainable growth has been in vogue with the younger crop of sci-fi authors for the past few decades. Sometimes their ideas even become real, which kicks off this whole chicken-and-egg argument...

So while many folk favor throttling back and slowing down our voracious energy consumption, I veer to the other extreme. Power-intensive technologies got us out of the mud and have moved us beyond the point where we need to hunt gazelles for meat or take weeks to cross an ocean in a sail-driven dinghy (assuming you survived). There is no going back. The past is prologue. Walking everywhere has no appeal to me. And while I like veggies, I also have an omnivorous intestinal tract that is ideal for digesting cheeseburgers. So let us forge ahead in our power-sucking approach then. But we'll need to find and develop new ideas and back the occasional bold strokes of genius while we wait for the arrival of the Prometheus that will light the next fire to keep us company in the long dark night.

Question 2: Investment-wise, is this a catastrophe or a tremendous, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?

Both. The catastrophe has already happened. Billions of dollars have just evaporated affecting millions of people. But anybody who still has enough money and faith remaining to dabble in the stock market will have tremendous opportunities in both the short and long term. Day traders continue to heavily short the equity and ETF markets, which makes me see red like an enraged bull in an arena. The principle of making money from a drop in stock price strikes me as ghoulism to an extreme. The failure of the SEC to properly enforce many of its own rules further tilts the stock market into an unlevel playing field where the short interest has an unfair advantage. But I digress in my rant.

Despite massively negative sentiment and volatility, anybody with the wherewithal and gumption to jump back into the stock or real estate markets has the potential to pick up some investments at very low prices. Not every institution or corporation is going to survive, however, so caveat emptor when you buy into ailing institutions in the hope and assumption that they will recover some, if not all, of their former value. Global and local markets around the world seem to be waiting for the American banking sector to figure out how to value, much less dispose of, the troubled assets backed by the failed loans that kicked the legs out from under the great American bar stool in the first place.

Meanwhile, the great engine of global commerce is grinding slowly to a halt. Without investment loans and short-term capitalization, many small companies are experiencing cash flow problems that make it harder to meet payroll, purchase inventory and services, and replace equipment. All of which makes it harder for them to supply inventory, equipment, and services to other companies. And I won't even get into those crazy Somali pirates who are driving up shipping rates by hijacking every cargo ship that pops over the horizon...

To sum it up, money has no value when it sits idle. It might make your mattress crinkly but it needs to move around in order to have value. Ergo, the misconception that consumer spending is the heart of the American economy. Spending dough on HD television sets and new cars is just one expression of cash circulation -- it just happens to be the most ostentatious and pretty easy to measure. Buying a government savings bond, giving a quarter to the homeless guy on the corner, opening a college tuition savings account so that a bank can lend your cash to a new homeowner... these are all ways to keep cash in circulation.

But money also has a habit of losing its value when it moves around so much that you lose track of where it went. If you loan $10 bucks to Phil, who then loans it to his friend Jack, who then buys a Powerball ticket that fails to pay out any money... who is at fault? Meanwhile, you get tired of waiting for Phil to pay you back and you make a deal with Alice who gives you $8 to tide you over. She is willing to wait longer for Phil in exchange for receiving an additional $2 later. Now Phil can't pay you back, Jack took a bad risk which didn't pay off, you're mad at Phil for taking so long to pay you back, and Alice is angry at both you and Phil.

Why is everybody mad? Because Phil wants his $10 back from Jack, Jack used to have $10 and has nothing to show for it, Alice is out $8, and you took a loss of $2. Now, the big question here is why, if only $10 disappeared, how come it feels like there is $30 missing? What would a small claims court decide? Would the judge give you $2, Alice her $8, or $10 to either Phil or Jack? I guess it would depend on who told the story. But if all four people told their stories to separate judges, the court would end up handing out $30 to "fix" a $10 loan gone bad. Extrapolate this to the real world and no wonder nobody knows how to untangle this Gordian financial knot. Re-packaging debt as an asset is a really, really bad idea...

Ahem, I drift off the topic again. To return to the question at hand, this economic meltdown takes everybody down a few notches but to varying degrees. If you were struggling financially before, then god(s) help you now. And many on fixed incomes will have to make do with less or try to find work again. But for those who have not been rendered non-liquid by the popping of so many bubbles at once, this is a once-in-a-generation investment opportunity. The etch-a-sketch that we call Wall Street just got shaken clean and the first people to start drawing lines will have an open field.

Which is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The "middle" class is a slippery slope even in normal times -- having reserves to tide you through tough times and to take advantage of lucrative short-term investment windows is ultimately what will cast you downwards or upwards.

Right now, the only people prospering seem to be those damn Somali pirates. Which is the subject of my final rant. Vote for me as President in 2012 and I will redeploy all of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to coastal Somalia to stamp out this shipping menace. Let's see an inflatable boat full of hijackers try to board a Nimitz-class supercarrier. Bring it on!

 

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