Monday, September 14, 2009

The Demands of the 21st Century Economy

Kunstler:

American perestroika really boils down to this: we have to rescale the activities of daily life to a level consistent with the mandates of the future, especially the ones having to do with available energy and capital. We have to dismantle things that have no future and rebuild things that will allow daily life to function. We have to say goodbye to big box shopping and rebuild Main Street. More people will be needed to work in farming and fewer in tourism, public relations, gambling, and party planning. We have to make some basic useful products in this country again. We have to systematically decommission suburbia and reactivate our small towns and small cities. We have to prepare for the contraction of our large cities. We have to let the sun set on Happy Motoring and rebuild our trains, transit systems, harbors, and inland waterways. We have to reorganize schooling at a much more modest level. We have to close down most of the overseas military bases we're operating and conclude our wars in Asia. Mostly, we have to recover a national sense of common purpose and common decency. There is obviously a lot of work to do in the list above, which could translate into paychecks and careers -- but not if we direct all our resources into propping up the failing structures of yesterday.

I think that's a more likely scenario than "in the future we'll all be web designers," although if I had to bet it would be on "in the future, we'll all be dental hygienists."

3 comments:

Dan Meyer said...

I'm starting to skim past Kunstler in my reader. I swear, if he went a single post without invoking "Happy Motoring" ....

Didn't he have us storming the gates of Nantucket by last Memorial Day or something.

Tom Hoffman said...

He's a little over the top, and there are lots of things he says that I flat out disagree with, but a good counterweight to the conventional wisdom, particularly the education futurist conventional wisdom.

Rob Rubis said...

I disagree with a LOT of what Kunstler says, but as Greg Craven (What's the Worst that Can Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Debate) lays it out, even if there's a CHANCE that he's half-right on half the potential catastrophes he lays out in "the Long Emergency", I'm putting my money on boning up on practical skills, and in my work (as a HS Librarian), I'm going to balance promoting great new "web2.0 technologies with learning basic skills.