The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

Frankly what happened at Fukushima is over-cautiousness with nuclear power. The stupid fact is that if they hadn't shut down the entire plant, they wouldn't have lost cooling, and we would all have been perfectly fine. Of course, whoever took that decision would have been fired, and skinned alive, allowed to heal, and skinned alive again. I even read at one point that the operators knew this, but followed procedure.

I would also like to say the death toll of Fukushima compares favorably with wind-power related deaths during the same circumstances, and compares insanely favorable compared to fossil-fuel related deaths (some people actually died inspecting a refinery reactor when the wave knocked it over, most are from pipes exploding due to over-pressure. Total is several hundred). Total area rendered inaccessible due to Fukushima also compares favorably compared to area polluted to the point humans can't safely live there any more for fossil fuel plants and refineries.

Coal matters if one is concerned about CO2 emissions if nothing else.

> The stupid fact is that if they hadn't shut down the entire plant, they wouldn't have lost cooling, and we would all have been perfectly fine.

Do we know for sure that containment wasn't lost due to structural damage from the earthquake?

> I would also like to say the death toll of Fukushima compares favorably with wind-power related deaths during the same circumstances...

Is death toll the only factor though? I don't know about you but I think the major impact of Chernobyl of Fukushima will not be, in a hundred years, the death toll but the fact that you have areas of land that are no longer useful for many purposes, like growing food.

The Matrix would have been a better allegory to use than Moby Dick, particularly for HNers. Moby Dick might appeal to Harvard-educated, Arabic-speaking, Vermont liberals like Hedges, but most of us haven't read it and don't want to.

It's not that I disagree with any of Hedges' major points, it's just that I find his presentation erudite, pretentious and snobbish.

Economist Kenneth Boulding summed this up more concisely: "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

And if Capitalism is a "plague," what is the cure? Hedges talks about Marxist revolution, but stops short of calling for one, instead falling back on quotations from Shakespeare, and Kant, and Dante, and Black Elk, and Nazim Hikmet.

So, what is the cure?

1. War and revolutions aren't the answer: If they decimate the population, temporarily reducing resource consumption, decreasing the supply of labor so that wages might finally start rising again after 30 years of stagnation, then what? After all the misery and suffering that war brings, we've bought ourselves a few decades with a slightly more equitable wealth distribution, and put ecological disaster in check for a while, but it's only temporary, and our populations will soon grow themselves back into the same problems all over again.

2. Technology? Increased efficiency will only spur increased consumption. It's called Jevons paradox. Technology will only speed things up.

3. Accelerationism... Help the capitalists steal all the wealth and push us over the edge of ecological disaster. Evolution will make sure something else succeeds us.

4. Enlightenment: In the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 56, Jesus said, "Whoever has become acquainted with the world has found a corpse, and the world is not worthy of the one who has found the corpse."

The world is already dead, and there's nothing Chris Hedges can do about it! Whenever something we love dies, we experience mourning. The stages of mourning are--

Denial - Most of the people in the world are stuck in this stage.

Anger - This is where we find revolutionary groups like the Tea Party and OWS.

Bargaining - I think this is where Hedges finds himself. He really thinks there's a way to resurrect the planet--Art, Poetry, Novels--but he doesn't seem sure.

Depression - Lot's of people struggling at this stage. About 800,000 to a million people commit suicide per year.

Acceptance - Doesn't mean you're ever going to be happy again. It just means you're awake to reality.

I'm a banker. I paid $10B for MBSes in 2007. Big mistake. In 2008, their valuation fell to $0. So I do a swap with the Federal Reserve. I give Ben Bernake my portfolio of MBSes. And he gives me $10B in US Treasury Bonds he's purchased.

I never would have made a dime off my MBSes. But now, the US tax payer is on the hook for paying me $10B in principal plus interest. Meanwhile, the Fed puts "$10B" of MBSes on its books. Doesn't matter that these debts are worth zero. They get to do it...

Right now, the Fed has "$1.5T" of MBSes on their books from doing these deals. Source: http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/19/news/economy/federal-reserve...

I used to be VP of Mortgage Tax and Accounting at a Wall St. bank back in the 90s, and I try to stay up to date on this fiasco. I don't have a problem with what Chris Hedges said, just how he said it: he said it too fast, and it came out wrong. The main idea is still right.

The rate isn't constant; it's decreasing. That's the point. For example, you say it takes energy and materials to go to the store or go to work; but it takes less per person now than it used to. (One obvious example is that lots of people can telework now because we have the Internet, conference calling, etc.; I do that several times a week, saving a significant chunk of energy and materials.)

Wealth at its core is a desirable modification to goods and materials in our environment.

Which is done for lots of reasons in addition to food, clothing, and shelter. Your definition of wealth is way too narrow. There are plenty of countries where people have food, clothing, and shelter and nothing else. We call those countries "poor" for a reason.