Portland Hangover

I don't have one, technically - but I think a lot in Portland must after the long weekend.

There was a Blues Festival just outside the hotel, on the waterfront. In a partly successful attempt to stay awake to readjust my body clock, I went there. The hard cranberryade was only about 3% alcohol by volume, but one cup was enough so that by 8pm I had to hit the hay. And went out like the proverbial light.

I did score some lovely silver rings (in my size!) for $25 though. I wish I had more time - and more money - the handcrafted jewelry, the pottery, the fabrics... there's a lot to be said for being in a place where Weird is what they do best. Not techno-weird as I'm used to, more tree-hugging weird. I think that for either to be successful in the future, we'll need to form a synthesis of both.

A return to the Good Old Days (sic) of low planetary population, kept in check by starvation, disease, child mortality, ignorance, etc is not in our future - because some smart-alec will always come up with a high-tech solution to prey on the low-tech "sustainable development" types and take their carefully husbanded resources by force. But I'm not sure just how many people at the festival realised just how different it was from the Third World it superficially resembled.

The water was clean; there were few beggars or indigents. People were well-fed, well-clothed, and the prices were low. Much of the transport was people-powered, despite the hilly topography: but many of the cycles were hi-tech mag alloy or titanium, not heavy mild steel. I doubt that the energy saved by their use came remotely close to the energy needed to produce them.

The combination of something like 60 hours with only 2 hours sleep, a cup of hard cranberryade, being in a place that was alternately familiar and different - definitely substituted for a more conventional means of attaining an altered state of consciousness.

I was acutely aware of the industry, the factories and power plants, the transportation infrastructure, and the means of allocating and distributing the fruits of applied knowledge and effort that we all depend on. Just the fact that there are no water restrictions here was jarring, we've lived with those in Canberra for many years. No constant reminders, the illuminated signs by the side of each major road giving water usage targets, current consumption, and dam storage (now nearly 60% at last, after many years).

It takes a high-tech civilisation to support a low-tech society in the manner to which it's become accustomed. We can't afford though some of the excesses of the past. Excesses caused because distortions of the market have made the price of many things completely different from the costs.

From the number of TO LET signs in downtown Portland, I think the US, and the World, Economy is in for one heck of a shakeup in the next six months, and will be suffering the effects for at least a decade. Many of the Financial Movers and Shakers have partied like there's no tomorrow - or possibly getting theirs while they can and salting it away somewhere safe in expectation of the economic storm about to hit. In the USA, bipartisan porkbarreling and funneling of billions to the "well connected" (not to mention sheer cluelessness) has led to some real disasters, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Don't get me started on the new head of NASA, and it's new missions which have nothing to do with aeronautics or space.

I have friends in the US military (no names, no pack drill) engaged in nation-building in failed states. Trying to help others get their society healthy. One problem they've always had is ridding such places of the corruption and peculation that such places cannot afford. But their efforts have recently been stymied by what's going on back home. When the guy in charge of the IRS doesn't pay his taxes - and gets away with it, without even an investigation - when the politicians don't even bother to hide their corruption any more - when obvious voter intimidation happens at polling places, with records on film, and the investigation is quashed through political pressure - then the Americans trying to persuade others to act in their long-term best interests, rather than short-term gain, no longer have the high ground. Worst of all, left-leaning media ignores peculation by "their team", just as right-leaning commentators ignored peculation by theirs during the previous administration.

The USA is rich enough, in resources, in infrastructure, and most of all in human capital, that it has been able to afford the luxury of such leeching on the body politick. I think a hangover's coming though.

Rather than seeing inexorable Doom coming towards us, I see just how vast the US's reserves of wealth are. Such "corrections" will be most painful to many, but the basics of clean water, food, information, shelter and power are still there, and there's enough for everyone. This isn't like the 1930's. It will seem as painful - but only because our expectations have grown so very much higher. It won't last as long either, a decade at most.

We have a lot more to fear than fear itself though. Incompetence, and corruption that is endemic in systems that encourage pork-barrelling.