Sunday, August 25, 2002

Our Faustian Bargain with Oil Our Faustian Bargain with Oil   In all of the Bush bashing that is common among left commentators, we sometimes forget Bush is only a figurehead.  No matter how maddening, dumb, or inconsistent Bush seems, in the long run, he doesn’t matter.  What matters is the growth of corporate power over all aspects of our society.  This power makes much of our democratic freedoms illusory.    How is this applicable to Iraq.  I think a strong argument can be made that most Americans don't see a need for war with Iraq if they understand the facts and they understand that such a war will kill many Americans, and may require a decades long occupation of parts of the Middle East.    But we have made a Faustian bargain with our corporate sponsors, so in return for comparatively high living standards, we agree to be completely deceived.  One way to think of this is to ask whether businesses could be profitable if they had to bear the true cost of their products.  Oil is a perfect example.  Oil companies are quite “profitable” so long as they do not bear the costs of air and water pollution, of military garrisons in the oil producing regions, of lead poisoning in our cities and a myriad of other health concerns, or the true transportation costs of their products.  All these other costs are borne by us, in the form of government expenditures for oil.  Yet the benefits go to the few people who control these companies and generate great wealth.   “Power” is too abstract a concept for many of us.  But power in our society is control over a large corporation and its ability to commandeer tremendous additional social resources, all for personal enrichment of those at the top.  Political contributions and parties are the way different corporations fight to commandeer these social resources.   The true crime of Iraq is being an independent oil state that is not a client of the U.S.  After the fall of the Shah, Iran became the first major oil state to achieve complete independence from the U.S.  Iraq was the second.  There are many countries around the world who posses weapons of mass destruction, and this is something that we have lived with for years through deterrence.  The crime of Saddam Hussein is that by possessing his own deterrent, he can defy the will of the U.S.   Some estimates are that the war with Iraq will cost a minimum of $60 billion to $80 billion, not counting long term occupation costs or the damage to the world economy.  If this money was spent on a program to reduce demand for oil, such as building hydrogen fuel cells to bring down the cost of alternative power, then there would be no need for client states in the Mideast, nor a need for war.  But, corporations have built a system of power based on present products and markets, and they do not want to change.  We have grown comfortable with the use of 25% of the worlds resources for less than 5% of the population.  This is where the demand for war is originating.    Two articles in the news bear on this.  One is Thomas Friedman, in Sunday’s Times, who talks about the corrosive power of oil.   The other is Ralph Estes, who was interviewed last week on Marketplace, on the true cost of corporate profits, and how they are illusory.   Sorry for being so academic.  I was away for the weekend—so I couldn’t break this up in two parts. 9:24:33 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:29:44 PM.