SEPTEMBER 22 2018
ARE WE COMMITTING INFANTICIDE?
All economists talk debt nowadays, meaning money owed in loans to financial institutions, or in bonds issued by governments on all levels and by corporations. Monetary debt is always repaid somehow either by being discharged in full, by getting a discount or by writing off the loan which will be the case for much of the money owed world-wide, now more than $250 trillion.
Consider this simple calculation: Twenty years ago there was $40 trillion of debt in the world; today there is $250 trillion. The leverage of the world has gone from 1.3 times the world’s GDP, which is stable, to 3.3 times, which basically means the world has created huge temporary prosperity by burying itself in debt: the world’s economy, the so fabulous rate of growth, has entirely been artificially created by debt.
No wonder there is trouble on the horizon.
1. Interest rates are rising, because inflation is shooting up as droughts and floods play havoc with harvests. Blame Climate Change.
2. Entitlements. I like that word: it suggests that we are entitled, are worthy, have a right, to receive life-long pensions and free medical care. With people living longer, a lot longer, pension funds are not really able to fulfill their obligations. Also the rates of return on money are too low, causing a double whammy. Combine that with (1) older people increasingly having physical problems such as dementia, cancer, fragile bones, all calling for care, so medical bills balloon, (2) while fewer enter the workforce, signaling double trouble.
3. And then there is the world at large: it is dying, and that too requires remedial measures. Just take last week’s hurricane: it will take untold billions to heal the damage caused by Hurricane Florence, perhaps as much as 50 billion, while the USA budget is already in the red to the tune of more than $800 billion for this fiscal year, with $1 Trillion deficit expected next year.
4. The ultimate result will be that quite soon all lenders will go broke: governments, pension funds, mortgage companies, and with them the people, billions of them, now depending on the generosity of these sources. Yes, even the so celebrated Ontario Teachers Retirement Fund which pays teachers a pension equal to 70% of their highest earnings will be affected. And then what?
What is meant by DEBT?
The German/Dutch word for Debt is SCHULD, which has two meanings:
(1) debt/trespass, as in Dutch “Vergeef ons onze schulden” = Forgive us our trespasses, and
(2) blame/guilt/fault/sin.
We simply are sinful people. In the very beginning Adam faulted Eve for taking the fruit: “she was to blame” (het was haar schuld), he told God. Debt is a form of SIN, especially where it concerns environmental debt, taking more from the earth than we are entitled to. So, yes, the wages of DEBT is DEATH. Not for nothing is a loan against a property called a MORT-gage. The word MORT means death.
New Times.
Today creation is calling in the debt owed to it by revolting against humanity. Tomorrow the financial world will do the same. It will be foreclosing on the money debt, and that means the collapse of the Capitalistic world, the system that has been a Capital Offence against everything and everybody that exists.
The most dangerous debt.
Indeed, greater than the monetary gap is the creational debt, simply impossible to express in dollars and cents. This much greater deficit is the environmental emptiness we have pushed on our children and grandchildren. How in the world do we remedy that situation? To the extent that we are today eroding the carrying capacity on which future generations would otherwise depend, our way of life could be characterized as intergenerational “predation”, or to put it bluntly, we, the old, are “eating” our young, we are committing infanticide.
Deterioration.
It definitely looks that the climate situation is getting worse, of which the Florence fiasco is just one of the many. Take far away Asia. There six great river valleys have supported most of human civilization for the past 5,000 years. During that time, the snow melt from the region’s high plateaus has always arrived at precisely the right moment, and in precisely the right volume, to support the crops upon which the region’s teeming billions rely, while another billion people plus depend on the monsoon arriving at the right time, and in the right place, each year. And yet, as the planet heats up and sea levels rise, the pattern of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and elsewhere will change. If they grow stronger and start roaring north toward the 250 million people living at or near sea level in the greater Ganges Delta, the world will face a long train of catastrophes.
The international community is in no way prepared for such a scenario. Just look at the US, the wealthiest country in the world: it wasn’t ready for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, or for Hurricane Sandy in New York, or for Hurricane Harvey in Houston, or for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which is now estimated to have taken 2,975 lives.
And the latest? Florence is hitting perhaps the most vulnerable of all states, the Carolinas, with close to 10 million pigs, lots of buried chemicals and the filthy slurry of pig effluence. On every TV screen we see a disaster of epic proportions unfolding.
Remember: these last five hurricanes have been among the most damaging in US history, and they have all occurred in just the past 15 years. The severity of their impact was not merely a product of administrative incompetence or the increased density of coastal residential and commercial development. Precisely it was the predictable result of a changing climate. Even worse, as natural disasters go, these were small pinpricks compared to what the future holds in store if current trends continue.
There’s one more.
So I have mentioned two kinds of debts or deficits: monetary and environmental. There is one more.
There also is what I could call “the GOD deficit”, ”the religious” debt, the moral inheritance our ancestors have left us, and we scorn.
By this I mean such matters as ‘faith of our fathers’, and the ingrained work ethic, the thrift and human frugality that were typical of those grown up during the depression of the 1930’s and before, when 90 percent of the population in the Western world had to live by their wits, depending on family, neighbors and friends, when there was little governments could do or wanted to do to help those in need.
These three different debts mean that everything is different: money owed that will never be repaid; environmental deficits that will never be remedied; a Religious heritage that is in the process of disappearing, so it’s no wonder the ECONOMIST doesn’t get it.
The Economist, that venerable British weekly magazine, last week published a special 175 year MANIFESTO, lamenting that the world is failing to rekindle the spirit of Radicalism. By Radicalism it means unfettered liberalism. It correctly states that during its 175 years of being the world’s leading periodical, life expectancy has increased from 30 to 70 years globally and literacy from less than 10% to more than 80. So, by rights, people should be extremely happy, but the contrary is true: the world is at odds with itself: discontent is universal.
The Economist blames the current moral malaise on the upper 1 percent, and calls on them for a return to compassion and genuine sharing.
It is true that global literacy has increased, but this has given people a false sense of accomplishment. Years ago Dr. Johan Huizinga wrote, “Onderwijs maakt onder-wijs”, indicating that “A little learning is a dangerous thing”.
A little knowledge makes people over-confident and unwilling to be led, while leaders are at loss as well, causing people such as Trump to exploit ignorance, by claiming scientific observations such as Climate Change, diet guidelines, exercise benefits and religious givens to be seen as fake news.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle summed it up neatly when he noted “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” This was confirmed a couple of centuries earlier by the Chinese philosopher Confucius who observed, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”, said Socrates.
The trouble is that, with the God Deficit, true wisdom too has gone, with living in a polluted, plastic filled climate minds too are affected, while pressing money problems cloud people’s judgement.
The Economist does not understand that we live in a different world where ignorance reigns, where people no longer can be influenced by so-called ‘rational’ policies. We are hooked on CARBON and will do so till the bitter end.
Of course people like Kate Raworth, an Oxford professor, struggle with this and have come up with good solutions. She has devised the “The Doughnut” symbol, focusing on the need for a deep renewal of economic theory and policymaking so that the continued widespread political prioritization of gross domestic product growth is replaced by an economic vision that seeks to transform economies.
Years ago E. F. Schumacher in SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL too found a wide following, but the opposite happened: bigger became better. Goudzwaard et al. in several publications such as AID FOR THE OVERDEVELOPED WEST, and BEYOND POVERTY AND AFFLUENCE, just to name two, also offered reasonable solutions.
The deciding factor in all cases is human nature. Attempts at wholesale redistribution haven’t worked out very well in the real world. Virtually all gains for the developing poor these days come in the context of economic growth that disproportionately benefits the wealthy and drives ecological overshoot.
Sorry, Economist, Sorry, Raworth, Sorry, Goudzwaard, there is no solution as human nature – conceived and born in sin – will never change. On the contrary, as the world turns uglier, so will humanity. As Gandhi said, the Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed.
That does not mean that we should give up. Revelation 14: 13 clearly states that “our deeds will follow us into eternity”, so praise to Schumacher and Goudzwaard and Raworth and the many others who struggle to make this world a better place to live.
What all these learned academics forget is that human nature is stuck in a paradigm that is promoted by the politicians, who talk one way- sometimes- and act a different way, because they want to be reelected, and nobody remains in power by preaching restraint and implying, let alone openly advocating, hardship now to ensure a future for the next generation.
The TRUMP phenomenon depends entirely on denial, and exploitation of the earth’s scarce resources. The increasing ferocity of forest fires and the increasing incidence of ever more destructive hurricanes simply do not translate in a greater awareness of Climate Change.
ARE WE REALLY COMMITTING INFANTICIDE?
By and large organized Christianity preaches only one aspect of sin, by concentrating on personal misbehavior. However, the original sin in the Garden of Eden was two-fold: disobeying an explicit divine command, and an environmental sin. That’s why J.H. Bavinck, in his book “Between the Beginning and the End, a Radical Kingdom Vision,” categorically states that (page 34-35):
“It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”
Does that mean that debt, especially environmental debt, killing our children with our extravagant lifestyle, is a sin against the Kingdom, and as such against the Holy Spirit?
That is a question I will not answer. Suffice it to say that there is such a thing as JUDGEMENT day, where each one of us will be called on the carpet before the Ultimate Judge who is the only ONE who really knows what goes on in our hearts.