I don't usually write about the economy here. Mostly because I have a well-known distaste for the whole "profession" of economics but today I feel compelled to write something.
I'm scared.
I'm scared that I'm going to lose my job and that there will be no one left to hire me. I'm scared that I'll lose my home, and be forced to live with my grandparents in the suburbs. I'm scared that my parents are going to lose their businesses, and even their home, and that my grandparents may actually need me to live with them because their pension won't be enough anymore. I'm scared that we're looking at another Great Depression and that the only way out of the last one was another World War.
Some of these fears are irrational, I know. But I see what's happening in the world and I can't help but think of the worst: The economies of the world are tied to resources, which are in turn tied to the biosphere. The biosphere is in serious trouble and the governments of the world are all watching the economy.
Will I have to make a decision between standing on my principles or eating? If my own personal economic standing became so dire, would I choose to knowingly do the Wrong Thing to assure my own survival? How moral is that?
Mass unemployment is only one likely result of all of this. Food and Water shortages are coming and with them, violence in its many forms. I think the scariest part of all of this though, is that no one seems to know what to do. It's one thing to know what everything will suck for a while, but that there is a plan in place to get us all out of this mess, but that's not the case here. The "free" market has gone insane and the whole world is just holding on, hoping that it will end soon. No one seems to know how to get out of this mess.
Maybe the way out of this will be the abandonment of the system that created it. Maybe, out of all of this chaos, a new kind of economy and political structure will emerge and we'll be better for it. Perhaps, but in the present, I'm really scared.
