by Ulrich Schreglmann

ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de

The US used to be in a situation where people were able to live miles apart and the land in between would feed them and cheap gas would keep them connected. This made the place a paradise of freedom of thought and speech. But paradises tend to fill up, and the resources per capita tend to decline. Still, there are those who have become so accustomed to the habits they used to be in when there was still more room that they think it's a God-given right to live the way they used to live. They don't understand it if suddenly the neighbors complain about their music because they live closer by or if gas is suddenly expensive because it's mostly used up.

And this is where the politicians come in using libertarian rhetoric, promising those people that they have the recipe to continue or restore their lifestyles, and they try to do this by trying to bleed other parts of the world for resources that used to be lying on the street, as it were, ready just to be picked up.

And suddenly the blessings of the libertarian lifestyle that have worked for so long in the past, when there was still abundance, can only be continued by being decidedly anti-libertarian, by stealing the wealth that used to be free for everyone, by oppressing others or by sponsoring oppressors in foreign countries.

And yet those of the libertarian mindset haven't realized this. They think that what worked in the past must continue to work in the future???that their wealth is still a product of freedom rather than oppression. But if, on the other hand, they are forced to do with a little less wealth themselves they come to the conclusion that this must be the result of oppression and invasion of their own liberties.

And this is where you are today. This is how your glorified ideas of freedom have led up to your military trying to impose their values on places far away, which just happen to have huge oil reserves underneath their soil.

And this is where the politicians come in using libertarian rhetoric, promising those people that they have the recipe to continue or restore their lifestyles, and they try to do this by trying to bleed other parts of the world for resources that used to be lying on the street, as it were, ready just to be picked up.

And suddenly the blessings of the libertarian lifestyle that have worked for so long in the past, when there was still abundance, can only be continued by being decidedly anti-libertarian, by stealing the wealth that used to be free for everyone, by oppressing others or by sponsoring oppressors in foreign countries.

And yet those of the libertarian mindset haven't realized this. They think that what worked in the past must continue to work in the future???that their wealth is still a product of freedom rather than op- pression. But if, on the other hand, they are forced to do with a little less wealth themselves they come to the conclusion that this must be the result of oppression and invasion of their own liberties.

And this is where you are today. This is how your glorified ideas of freedom have led up to your military trying to impose their values on places far away, which just happen to have huge oil reserves under- neath their soil.

Small nation states work in an economy in which each of those states is relatively sustainable to feed their own, with trade making things easier, but not necessary for survival.

Nation states turn toxic if sudden droughts or disasters make certain nations uninhabitable, so the population has a choice to either emigrate or starve. It is out of this that conflicts and wars between nations are born. Of course if there is a huge sink for human resources, such as the US was one, then that sink may profit handsomely during such times.

So small nation states have their drawbacks once trade and imports from far away become vital for a nation's economy. This is why the small nation states had the bloodiest world wars in the last centuries, and this is why, economically, they merge into larger economic unions such as the EU or NAFTA in times of peace and cooperation.

I think the American libertarian system is the best within a frontier situation, when a huge country is still open to be explored, exploited, settled on and when overly strict law enforcement, regulating the minutiae of people's daily lives rather than just the most egregious crimes, would only drain the resources of a central government. Within such a situation people who have hit bad times are less likely to steal from their neighbor anyway if there is always a second chance waiting somewhere else of getting what you want in life without having to take it from others. It is also necessary within such a society to severely punish those who'd still decide to choose the lifestyle of the bandit.

This is why the US is such a country focused on few rules and rather strict and merciless enforcement of the criminal laws it has. It was a rather easily accessible country for a lot of people, and you didn't have to give them a lot of a social network to be able to live and to help each other out.

Within a continent such a Europe, which has been exploited for millennia and which is much more densely populated, something like the social market economy we have is indispensable, however, since people who live like Americans would be called gypsies over here.

The problem you have in a country that has filled up is that people who are down on their luck and trying to find a livelihood elsewhere are unlikely to find a white spot yet left to be settled on, they'll invariably move in on someone else's turf. That's simply Parkinson's Law in its final stages, when a population has filled up the space available to it.

Leaving people who are rootless to their own devices has more downsides than benefits. Within a place that still has unexploited resources left it is likely to bring out the ambitious worker. Within a systems in which all the cake has been taken it is likely to bring out the ambitious criminal. That is why you have to take care of people who are down on their luck in those societies, because the likelihood that they'll endanger others out of desperation is much higher.

This is also why the American way of doing things is breaking down, now that the resources fueling their industrialization are diminished and now that the country is filling up with people to a point when the room grows scarce, without proper social institutions in place to defuse socio-economic conflicts that could previously be defused by people having the chance to climb the social ladder.

The less densely populated states are, of course, slower to pick up on that trend than the cities, as well as those countries in which social strife has become a centuries-old habit, such as the former slave states. That is why all those states are red, while the big cities are blue.

Ultimately they???ll have to learn to get a social market economy. The question isn't, will they, because it's the only viable option in the long run, as their country becomes as populated and as exploited as Europe, but the question is, how hard will the lesson be until they learn? Will they go through colonial wars, world wars, holocausts (hopefully not nuclear ones), as we did?

And ultimately they'll have to learn to live off of renewable energy. Just as we will, by the way, only we are already further along the road, and we're closer to the world's remaining fossil fuels, so the problem isn't as severe for us as it is for them.

Of course this is all assuming there isn't an energy revolution waiting to happen, which will render the present energy crisis moot. The solar energy falling on our planet would be enough to fuel our present economy if we had the technology to collect it efficiently, and the solar energy wasted into space exceeds that by billions. So at some point we may reach a stage when we have more energy than we ever had from fossil sources. It may be a breakthrough as overwhelming as the computer revolution.

That will leave other resources the bottleneck, such as space to settle on, to grow one's food, to dump one's excess heat and other trash. A social market economy would still be necessary under such circumstances, although, for a while, new technologies might make new surface space of the planet inhabitable that will give people much more elbow room. Within such an environment the libertarian capitalism has its advantages, as it did on the American frontier, but the strain on and danger for our environment will also be higher.

Only if we managed to settle in space itself would a new age of uninhibited capitalism be the best system???at least for the millennia until that available space has eventually filled up. And by that time there are other star systems.

Of course I'm not under the illusion that there won't be wars and environmental catastrophes while there are human beings or whatever their sentient successors will be. But the chance of those catastrophes being lethal for the entire system will be diminished by certain forms of social order, whether it's the "may the best man win" robber baron ideal in times of growth and of space to grow into or the social market in times when the limits of that growth are within reach.