I recently read a transcript of a presentation given by a Russian man named Dmitry Orlov. The subtitle of the presentation states its premise quite plainly: "The USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US." This blog post of mine will be largely derived from Mr. Orlov's presentation, so if you'd like to read it--and in my opinion, you should, since I believe it is incredibly insightful and important--it can be found at
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259.
Of course, comparisons of the present-day United States to the pre-collapse Soviet Union might seem premature, since the United States is still comparatively intact and since no one can predict the future, it is impossible to determine exactly when or if the United States will suffer a similar collapse. However, Mr. Orlov's presentation distinguishes itself by openly admitting that such predictions are impossible to make, and rather than attempting to make strong predictions about the future, spending most of its time making insightful observations about the present. Failure to anticipate the future is often a consequence of failure to adequately understand the present, and you don't need a crystal ball to know what's happening right now; just reliable information.
I must insert my usual disclaimer that I dislike politics, believe politics are a hugely useless waste of time, and am usually hugely disappointed when people start taking political approaches to solutions. However, once again, Mr. Orlov's presentation avoids such quagmires by steadfastly avoiding political solutions, going so far as to echo my own sentiments perfectly by concluding that national politicians are a "colossal distraction"; the presentation is mostly about the state of society rather than any political environment, which is a breath of fresh air in our contemporary environment that refuses to let go of the notion that a country can regulate its people into living well without cooperation or participation from the general public. Those familiar with my own sociopolitical agenda know well that I strongly believe the only real solutions to humanity's problems lie at the social level and not the political level, so I am glad to see this approach taken, and I hope other people are, too.
All this said, then, the meat of this blog post of mine is to highlight the key mistakes that American society has made in our contemporary environment. Mr. Orlov posits that "The differences [between the Soviet Union and the United States] are just as interesting as the similarities," and once again, I have to agree with him. Politically neutral people often maintain that any basic category of political system--whether Communism, Socialism, Democracy, Republicanism, Totalitarianism, Anarchy, or otherwise--could work perfectly well given proper societal participation. Opponents of Communism will readily observe that Communism has never "worked," that it has never produced a sustainable society which offered a high quality of life to its people. The examples need no reviewing: The Soviet Union, China, North Korea. Proponents of Communism correctly observe that all these examples failed largely because of corruption in government and abuse of the system by politicians rather than fundamental failings of the system itself. The mistakes and shortcomings of the Soviet Union are well known in our society today; the similar mistakes of America, however, appear to be invisible to Americans, perhaps because those mistakes are so ubiquitous that they no longer appear remarkable, just as no one suddenly glances up at the sky and exclaims "Oh wow, the sky is
blue!"
Mr. Orlov goes into a fairly extensive list of contrasts between the Soviet Union and the United States, highlighting things which the Soviet Union got relatively right that the United States is getting very wrong. Most of these contrasts seem at least reasonably valid (although they are very much opinions which Mr. Orlov has chosen not to back with hard statistics), but I have taken the liberty of distilling these specifics down to some more general characteristics that fundamentally strike at the core of what's wrong with American society today. I have been so brash as to list these characteristics in paragraph format below. The Soviet Union was the same as the United States in many key ways, but here is one American's opinion on the most important ways in which today's America is different.
Emphasis on growth rather than sustainability The American socioeconomic reality is completely based on, and dependent on, growth. Society cannot be maintained where it is now; a year in which the GDP grows but does not grow "enough" is literally called a "growth recession," signaling growth which is not large enough to sustain the economy, resulting in a net loss. Given humanity's basic physical reality that nothing in the world is infinite, it should be blatantly obvious that growth cannot be maintained forever. Eventually, all resources will be consumed, and all space will be filled. Any society or economy which fundamentally requires constant growth is doomed to eventual failure. If any society wants to last an appreciable length of time, it must put its mind to longevity rather than the constant acquisition or generation of more capital. (Bear in mind that "capital" does not mean only money, but can also refer to natural resources such as coal or steel, industrial resources like machinery, or human resources, i.e. people and education.)
Living beyond means An inevitable consequence of the preceding point (dependence on growth) is that eventually, people will habitually bite off more than they can chew. In today's American society, it's almost a cliche that "Everyone's in debt." It's pretty much true: To rack up thousands of dollars in credit card debt and then maintain only the minimum payments is a routine practice among many people. Debt is not considered something to avoid; it is considered normal, something to be lived with. Houses and cars which cannot be afforded by people are bought on credit and then paid off over many years, leading to virtually lifelong debt. The most expensive things in America have not been paid for; they are "owned" by people who could never afford them and will spend the rest of their working lives paying off things that they think they own, but are really owned by a bank. When most things are bought on credit, there is no real exchange of capital, and the economy is utterly hollow, built upon nothing. Not only that, but this kind of mindset becomes self-perpetuating: Once people get it into their heads that they can "buy" anything they want on credit if they're willing to gladly accept debt, greed sets in, and people buy even more things they cannot afford. The United States' almost incomprehensibly large trade deficit with China attests to the fact that consumption of things we can't really afford has become a national norm; cheaply-made goods produced by sweatshop labor may seem like a good deal, but when a whole nation's supply of goods is based on it, there's a steep price to pay, and the greater that debt stretches out, the harder it will be to pay off later.
Lack of planning for the future Again, this follows from the previous points. As people take on more and more responsibility for debt, the present becomes increasingly unsustainable, but few Americans seem quite willing to accept responsibility for what might happen in the future. This is evident not only in how carelessly Americans spend money, but also other resources; Mr. Orlov highlights energy (currently a very hot topic) in his presentation, but this is really a subset of the same problem: It's not that we don't have energy resources, it's that we're using them up more quickly than they can be replenished. If people could take a step back and realize what the current rate of consumption means with regard to the future, they might live rather differently. As it is, the present situation seems like a runaway train: There's no stopping it.
Focus on the individual rather than on society The idea of reward is fundamental to American society. It is a quite mainstream idea that there is no reason to expend effort in doing something unless one can benefit personally from it. "If you can't sell it for money, it's useless" is unabashedly espoused by people everywhere. It should be quite obvious that this attitude leads to selfishness in people, as well as inequality: Those who have, see no reason to give to those who have not, since the act of giving nets them nothing personally. This also leads to apathy, since selfishness is so highly valued. Ultimately, selfishness, inequality, imbalance, apathy, loneliness, and alienation are the fruits of a reward-based culture.
Reliance on money Mr. Orlov's description of how money was handled in the Soviet Union struck me as science-fiction. I'm not saying it wasn't true (I really have no idea whether it was true or not, since I have never lived in the Soviet Union), but it was so vastly removed from the contemporary American experience that it seems literally impossible to my mind. Can it really be possible that there was a society in which money had no use, and was traded freely as if it were a trinket rather than something with real value? The idea seems not only impossible, but unimaginable in today's American society. Money is so firmly at the core of almost everything--
everything--that Americans do, that the idea that one could live without money, or regard money as having no value, is akin to suggesting that a person could live without nutrition or water. Granted, any rational person can, after thinking about it for a moment, acknowledge that money itself does not "do" anything, that in the most practical sense it is worthless since it is simply used as a medium for exchange, but the need to earn a living seems like such a global necessity that it's hard to imagine that 20 short years ago, there was a country of people who lived without use or need for money. Sure, it's not hard to imagine cavemen living without money many thousands of years ago, but in our modern society, could people in a large, technologically advanced country like the USSR really live that way? Wow! If so, that's definitely helpful in averting economic disaster, since people who live without use for money are relatively unaffected by any economy.
Lack of self-sufficiency If a typical American resident were placed into the middle of a forest, a thousand miles from any other people, how long could they survive? In the service-based economy that is so popular in America now, people make a living sitting at desks in business clothing while talking on a phone, producing business documents written in business language that is all about making money, and having meetings where several business-clothing-attired people gather around a table and talk about how they can generate even more money. Many of these people lack even a basic understanding of how to produce or sustain the things that are necessary to their own lives: Shelter, food, clothing, and the like. Most of them have no idea how to build a house, grow crops, or weave or sew. Many are not even aware of how to do basic maintenance tasks on the machines that are so important to their lives, like changing a flat tire or installing a new hard drive into a computer. There once was a time when "home economics" was taught in American high schools; these classes were controversial for some reason, and seem to have fallen out of favor. Today, children grow up utterly uneducated in "real tasks" that would actually aid their survival; instead, they are taught to rely on money, then given housing, food, and clothing by a system rather than taught to produce these things for themselves. The result is a society of completely helpless, ignorant people who are unaware of how to do anything other than prepetuate the processes of that system. If required to fend for themselves in the absence of that artificially-created system, many of these people would die. People who grow vegetables and other foods at home are somewhat buffered against economic collapse, since they do not need to buy food from a market, but can produce their own; how many Americans actually grow food in this way, other than the farmers who grow and sell the food that is bought by mainstream society?
All of this being said, it's worth adding that no one is saying the United States will necessarily disappear in a puff of smoke or degenerate into a huge civil war zone. The Soviet Union suffered some considerable instability as it went through cataclysmic changes, but ultimately most of its people survived, and today, regardless of what might have happened 20 years ago, Russia is at least relatively livable, and people can pretty much get on with their lives there as if nothing had ever happened. Things may go similarly in America; doom-and-gloom scenarios may happen, but then again, the transition to something new may be relatively painless and transparent. No one knows exactly what will happen in the future, but one thing is abundantly clear: The current way of doing things cannot remain in place forever without toppling over and being replaced. Regardless of when that happens, it is in each individual's best interests to be aware, and to be prepared. Addressing the social problems listed here might be a good start.
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