Date: 2025-01-15 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00023951
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OBSERVATIONS FROM UMAIR HAQUE
Umair Haque: How Civilizations Collapse, And Why Ours Is Starting To ... History’s Great Mistake, And How We’re Making It All Over Again
OBSERVATIONS FROM UMAIR HAQUE
Umair Haque: How Civilizations Collapse, And Why Ours Is Starting To ... History’s Great Mistake, And How We’re Making It All Over Again
Image Credit: Oxfam
Original article: https://eand.co/how-civilizations-collapse-and-why-ours-is-starting-to-e7b2cdfa33e3
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I would love to debate Umair Haque ... not because I disagree with him but in the main because I totally agree with him.
But I would like to draw him out on the matter of solutions ... things that can happen now if only the (stupid) politicians would get out of the way and do what needs to be done.
I have concluded in the relatively recent past that the political divide between left and right is not the issue, but more it is about the role of the 1% and the role of the rest of us.
Within the 1% there are supporters of both the political left and the political right ... which makes sense. The 1% had control over all the people with political power, and it therefore is no surprise that almost every policy choice in the last 40 years has been of benefit to the top 1% no matter which political party is in power. (This is a US based obeservation ... but the situation in the UK is not much different)
I have been impressed by the success that President Biden has had in getting important legislation passed with only a very very slim majority in Congress ... but appalled at the very limited understanding that there is of this huge accomplishment. Neither the media, nor the Democrats themselves seem willing or capable of giving credit for this accomplishment. I have no idea why this is ... unless it is that many of these players simply don't understand how the system works.
As I said before ... I would love to debate Umair Haque !!!
Peter Burgess
History’s Great Mistake, And How We’re Making It All Over Again
Published in Eudaimonia and Co
Written by Umair Haque
January 17th 2023
When you look around our world, what do you see? Here’s what I see: a civilization in decline, hurtling towards collapse. If you think I’m kidding, well, hold on, because I’m about to make my case.
The economist in me, when he looks at our world, our civilization, sees one in a particularly perilous plight. We face a lack of what are called global public goods. Now, the world’s better economists have spent the last, oh, two decades calling for more of them — I’m about to explain — and yet you never hear from them, because they’ve been effectively blacklisted from media. So the warnings of minds like Thomas Piketty or Joe Stiglitz or Amartya Sen — the greatest economists of their generation, and of our time — have gone ignored.
Which is how we ended up here. Where’s that? Facing a dire lack of global public goods — which is getting a lot worse, faster. And that, my friends, is a classic, ancient, time-honored formula for, well, civilizational collapse.
What’s a “global public good”? Easy. Here’s one: public health. We used to have it before…the pandemic. We used to be making progress. Now, life expectancy is in decline for the first time in modern history, more or less, and it’s hardly going to stop, because while there are plenty of foolish people who buy the myth that “Covid’s just the flu!! Not even the flu!” you should know by now that in fact it causes damage to everything from heart to lungs to brain to blood vessels, which gets worse every time you get it. So much for global public health.
Watched “The Last of Us” yet? Or played it? Why is it so eerie and poignant? Because, well, its a story that lingers right there on the edge of possibility, haunting us. Covid of course is just the first major pandemic that’s a result, even if “indirectly,” of climate change — increased zoonotic flow between humans and animals. Animals are fleeing to the poles to escape a warming planet, in a migration unseen since epochal deep history, all at once — and as they do that, rubbing shoulders with us, new diseases cross over. We know that from research, too — pandemics are expected to increase in probability as climate change accelerates.
Where does that leave…us? As in…our civilization? We used to expect a shining future of a thing called advances in global public health. We took it for granted that this public good would just keep getting…better…and benefiting us all. But now? That great, centuries long trend is going into reverse. And yes, while there one day might be veritable scientific miracles like the breakthrough which reversed aging in mice…the question then becomes…who’s going to be able to afford it?
Let’s talk about another example of a global public good. How about….water? Maybe you read the story about the town in Arizona that’s…run out of water. The nearest municipality refuses to supply it with water anymore, and that’s for a very simple reason: there’s not enough of it to go around anymore. But that’s a trend that’s hardly going to stop at this town. The town is the canary in the coal mine. The Colorado River’s in historic, breathtaking decline that you can literally see — and it’s just a question of time when towns further in will dry up, too. And yet the Colorado River itself is just an example of a civilization scale mega-problem, perhaps the most basic there can be. Climate change is taking the planet’s supply of fresh water with it.
That should make you shudder, if you think through the implications.
How about another one? What’s almost as basic as…water? How about…knowledge? I discussed recently another bit of research that showed knowledge itself is in decline. Scientific breakthroughs have slowed down dramatically — the chart looks a lot like any other form of collapse. We could think of that as “high” knowledge, if you like. Meanwhile, the average person, these days, is just as likely to believe in every form of lunatic conspiracies or political fanaticism or outright Big Lies…even if they’re reasonably educated…as to be, well, a sane, thoughtful person who’s capable of being part of civilization. That’s “low” knowledge, and that’s in a state of shocking decline too, as people’s minds are turned into mush by spending too much bathing their sorrows in the tears of misogynistic manfluencers or bigoted demagogues or hate preachers or what have you. Knowledge itself appears to have gone into sharp decline in our civilization.
Now. What’s behind all this?
Before I answer that question, though, I want to give you a little bit more context. When we look at history, and think about the question, “why do civilizations collapse?” the answer more or less always appears to be: a lack of public goods. When I say always, I mean always.
The story — the pattern — of human civilization — goes like this. One day, thanks to some combination of enlightened leadership and long-term thinking, a society builds public goods. Think of the Romans, and their aqueducts. Now think of what Rome would have been without them. Nothing, right? No empire, no Senate, no Colosseum, nothing. Or think of any number of civilizations that built canals — like Egypt — to make the agrarian revolution in living standards possible. That public good — Egypt’s canals — in turn fed Rome.
Or think of another great public good of the ancient world — the Library of Alexandria, which held the world’s knowledge, for all to use and benefit from.
Let me give you one final example. The rule of law itself. It was breakthroughs like the Code of Justinian and the Magna Carta which laid down, ultimately, the foundation for the modernity we enjoy today, by beginning to expand these novel creations called “rights” to everyone. Today, that’s a public good we take for granted — and yet again, that one too, is in steep decline, or have you not witnessed the incredible spectacle of Britain’s own leaders making millions from defective Covid equipment sold to hospitals in a “VIP Lane,” or Donald Trump still walking scot-free after inciting, according to the Jan 6th Committee, a bloody coup in the halls of Congress.
So. Public goods. And then something happens. Often, along comes a mad king or a crazy emperor. Commodus, Caligula, Nero, the classic sequence of them. Versailles and Marie Antoinette. Instead of “let’s build aqueducts and libraries,” the story becomes “let them eat cake.” Sometimes, it’s poor leadership combined with the body blow of an external shock — a primary water source dries up, or the local climate changes, and so forth. Bang. Before you know it? That civilization has turned to dust, in history’s eyes. Vines cover its temples and its roads are covered with weeds hidden in jungles. It’s all gone, in the blink of an eye.
See the common theme here? An underinvestment in public goods takes place. And that leaves a civilization vulnerable to collapse. Underinvestment in public goods severely elevates the risk of civilization collapse, I’d say formally, if I was writing a paper about it. The story repeats itself throughout history, over and over again.
Now. Let’s come back to us. Where, in this story that repeats itself, are…we?
There are statistics, and then there are statistics. Every year, Oxfam publishes a report on inequality. And every year, the findings grow more shocking. This year? Deep breath — you’re going to need it. “Almost two-thirds of the new wealth amassed since the start of the pandemic has gone to the richest 1%.” And yet that’s just the beginning: ”the combined fortune of billionaires had increased by $2.7bn a day. Pandemic gains came after a decade when both the number and wealth of billionaires had doubled.”
Why does that matter? Because, like I began by saying, we are a civilization now facing a lack of public goods. Not just “lack” as in, oh no, I have to go to the store and get some milk. I mean a profound, long-term rupture. The kind that is elevating our risk of severe collapse way, way into the red zone.
Think about the the most basic forms of public goods. What have we discussed so far? Water, health, knowledge, the rule of law. They’re all showing signs of fairly shocking levels of decline. Those are warning signals blinking bright red. And yet I could go on, with plenty more examples, from democracy itself to basic infrastructure.
Now. Why are we in this dire plight? First, let’s sum it up accurately. Our civilization is repeating the Great Mistake of History — it has developed severe, long-term deficits in public goods. Which are beginning to mean fairly shocking things, like there isn’t enough water to go around, or enough healthcare to go around, and that’s in the world’s richest countries, like America and Britain.
So. Why are we repeating the Great Mistake of History? The answer to that question appears self-evident, too. Because the gains of our economies are being concentrated at the very, very top. That is why Oxfam’s research matters. It begins to show us in stark terms precisely in what sense we’re repeating History’s Great Mistake.
Inequality is why we’re repeating History’s Great Mistake — failing to develop and sustain and nurture our public goods, to the point that the most basic ones a civilization can have, are beginning to crumble and implode around us now.
Not just any old inequality, though. I’m not exactly writing the Communist Manifesto here, sorry Marx and Engels. Sure, there’s always going to be some level of inequality, and to a moderate degree, that’s perfectly OK, and yes, we can and should debate what moderate is. But we all know extreme when we see it. And those are the levels of inequality our civilization has — extreme, off-the-charts, ones that make it more or less impossible to invest in public goods. Because, well, when billionaires have all the money, what’s left over for the average person to be able to put into the public purse, to create things like tomorrow’s great scientific breakthroughs, or build more hospitals, or just keep the rule of law and democracy stable and rock-solid? Not enough, is the answer to that question.
Now, when folks like me, in my profession, we boring old economists, discuss this thing called “inequality,” eyes glaze over. People think they know it all already, and they tend to have two sets of opinions. First, there’s the guy, and it’s usually a guy, who thinks that “I did it all by myself!!” And so extreme levels of inequality are totally OK. But guy…listen…you didn’t lay down those pipes…irrigate those fields…discover antibiotics…write Newton’s Principia. You stand on the shoulders of centuries of giants — and everyday people. Second, on the other side, there’s the kind of good liberal who’ll repeat the shibboleth, yes, inequality bad, without really fully grasping why, so they can get on with their day, and I don’t blame them, hey, it’s tough out there. And between these two poles, well, we’ve stopped discussing inequality. But we shouldn’t have.
Extreme inequality has become the hallmark of our civilization. And when I say extreme, I really mean it. Inequality today? It’s quite literally off the charts. “Rome’s top 1% controlled 16 percent of the wealth, compared to modern America where the top 1% controls 40 percent of the wealth.” That was written in 2011. Now, most of us would say that our civilization has something in common with Rome, which at least aspired to be a democracy, sure, despite its love of empire and whatnot. But us? We make Rome look like a veritable socialist utopia. America, which is the nation that basically sets the agenda for the world, like that fact or not, is more than twice as unequal as Ancient Rome.
Is it any wonder, too, that America’s a poster child for a society which lacks any form of basic public goods? Now, don’t get insulted. I don’t mean that in a childish way. I mean it in a real one. Those endless school shootings? What are they, in our formal economic terms? They’re a lack of a public good — in this case, the rule of law. Why is it that Americans of a certain kind seem ready to believe in all kinds of crackpot theories and basically justify extremism? That’s the living embodiment of another failing public good, knowledge. Then there’s public healthcare, transport, media — all basically nonexistent.
Civilization is public goods. When I say “civilized,” today, most people will think of Europe. Now, there’s the kind of leftist who’ll give me a lecture about that, and tell me to “decolonize” myself, and I’ll happily say to them that as someone who’s actually lived in the kinds of places they theorize about, most people living under theocracies and dictators and so forth hunger and yearn for democracy, freedom, justice — civilization. And, well, Europe embodies it, which is precisely why so many head there, by any means they can.
Why does Europe embody the word “civilization” in this “doesn’t even need to be said” way? Well, it’s not because you can head to Paris, stop on the Place Vendome, and buy your wife a glittering million dollar necklace. Plenty of warlords had those things. It’s because Europe founded this great tradition of public goods, in the modern sense, and continued to build on it, until it enjoyed the world’s highest living standards. Those medieval town squares — the spirit they embodied — became things like cutting edge healthcare and high speed transport and affordable education and abundant media for all, as basic rights. Europe was the first society in human history to do any of that, to make advanced public goods basic rights, and remains the only one, still, really. That is why it enjoys history’s highest living standards today.
But our civilization isn’t Europe. On a civilizational scale, we’re like America. We’ve underinvested massively, for decades, in every form of basic public good. And now we’re beginning to pay the price. What price is that? Well, now we face an “exogenous shock” — even though it’s not really “exogenous,” meaning “from outside the system.” That shock is climate change.
If we want to survive it, we have a decade, maybe two, at the outer most three, to reinvent public goods on a civilizational level. What do we…drink…on a planet whose stocks of freshwater have gone into freefall? What do we…eat…on a planet where crops are failing on every continent? How do we go on being knowledgeable enough not to turn on each other, and give into demagoguery, bigotry, hate, superstition, hoping to burn the witch so the Bad Times go away? How do reinvent our economies so they can produce the things we take for granted — computers, brooms, clothes — in a post-industrial way, where resource scarcity doesn’t mean all those things go on skyrocketing in price right into global depression?
How do we do that?
The answer to that question is: we don’t know. We don’t know how to do a single one of the things on that list. Not a single one. Think about that for a second. We’re a lot like some civilization that history forgot, millennia ago, living by the side of a lake, who thought, contentedly, it’d be there forever, and wham — suddenly, it was gone. Like one living beside a forest that provided generously for it, and thought, this is amazing, it’s going to be here for eternity, until wham, one day, all the trees began to rot. And just like that — forgive the reference — it was all over.
We’re in that kind of situation now. Only most of us don’t really understand it fully. Because when you’re in that place, well, you don’t see with history’s eyes. You see with desperation’s, and they’re just about trying to survive this day, this week, this month, pay the bills, keep your head above water. We’re all in that place, more or less, unless we’re ultra rich — and yet this necessary fixation on the intensifying struggle of everyday living, as the once abundant becomes scarce, expensive, unattainable — this fixation blinds us to history’s view. To immediacy’s eye, taking a few decades to collapse is a lifetime, and hey, if you just survived, well done. But to history’s eyes? Taking a few decades to collapse is an eyeblink. Nothing at all.
Just another time the story repeated itself, and from the ashes, the survivors had to rebuild, maybe this time, learning a thing or two. But the moral of the story? The way that inequality leads to underinvestment in public goods, along the way producing corruption, degeneracy, cruelty, vanity, and folly? We human beings haven’t learned that yet. We’re repeating History’s Greatest Mistake because we have yet to get it.
Will we be the first civilization to? Or just another that, in the immortal words of Freddie Mercury, bit the dust? It’s too easy to say: time will tell. The truth is: that part, because no destiny is written in the stars, depends on us.
Umair
January 2023