I was planning to write another post entirely, except that I bopped out to Wikipedia to double-check the accuracy of one historical assumption I was making. I found it, but with it the realization that the notion of bootstrapping entire economies is far more important than individuals.
The point of fact I was checking had to do with the explosion of slavery in the south after the popularization of the cotton gin. Normally, the mechanization of a trade means that fewer workers are needed. But in the economy of the pre-Civil War South, it instead triggered a near-monoculture (cotton production) and corresponding need for slave labor--and, of course, ever-expanding frontiers.
Here in the North, seven-score years after Fort Sumter, the Civil War is--thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe--entirely a moral enterprise. To me, it largely serves as an example--albeit extreme--of why single industries cannot be allowed to dominate government. Not only because it stinks of corruption. But also because sooner or later, the cash-cow runs dry, and it takes generations to rebound (e.g. Detroit). Had the Civil War not occurred, eventually there would have been no more land suitable for planting cotton anyway, which would have brought the whole thing crashing down. (The South, in fact, had at one point proposed annexing Cuba for that purpose.) Sustainability FAIL.
But the corresponding problem is that governments, at their worst, are reactive. Which means that they tend to measure the forest by its tallest trees (no matter how rotten they might be at their core). And, lest we consider Yankees innocent of greenback imperialism, let's recall that less than a decade before the Merricmack-Monitor slug-fest, the U.S. Navy was used to open Japan's markets to U.S. goods at cannon-point.
Fast-forward to 2010, and the lessons of history are clearly squandered on the powerful and peon alike. Goldman-Sachs and their ilk can thumb their collective nose at meaningful oversight (while 401K deductions are still dutifully flow from hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of paychecks to their coffers). Meanwhile, Governors Jindal and Barbour, Rep. Tom Barton and Judge Feldman ignore the devastation to other industries while coddling Big Oil. The distinction between Don Blankenship and the 19th Century coal barons handing 10 year-olds the death sentence of black lung blurs with every safety violation--and fatal "accident." Likewise the arrogant egregiousness of mountaintop removal.
If you buy into the idea that that the "moral superiority" of capitalism lies in its raising of the standard of living through efficiency, even that falls short in a world economy dominated by mega-corporations. The widening gulf between rich and poor, between manager and managed, would be closing otherwise.
Because--sooner rather than later--the soi-dissant "investment houses" need to produce something of tangible value. (For historical interest, see also: South See Bubble and the Tulip Craze.) And, similarly, substituting "oil" for "cotton" should starkly highlight the patterns of history and foreshadow their similar ends. The fact is that the United States reached peak oil in the 1970s. (Like him or hate him, Carter nailed "energy independence.") By all rights, the political clout of the petroleum industries should have been slowly dwindling since at least the first Reagan Administration. But it hasn't. And that's a problem. Along with a myriad of closely-related problems sired by the "too big to fail" codswallop.
Efficiencies in production and distribution systems have their merits, but they can also lead to economic monocultures. As a nation, we're still feeling the effects of that, both in The Great Recession and in the mess in the Gulf.
All of which is why I believe that we need small business more than any time in our history, with the possible exception of the so-called Gilded Age (meaning the heyday of the Morgans, Carnagies, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts...and also of Tammany Hall politics). But in the wake of Citizens United, I'm certainly open to rethinking that ranking.
