Jim, very good questions to which I have no definative answers -- except perhaps a tentative one to the first, dealing with globalized capitalism. If Kunstler is correct, globalized capitalism will be one of the first casualties of the end of cheap oil. In fact, all of the writers I have read on the subject make the point that (capitalist) markets can not deal with the challenges of the end of cheap energy or of global warming and that only governments can and must, even such Bush advisors as Hirsch. Kunstler takes particular aim at global corporations such as Walmart which he argues will disappear. He gives no specific time table for this disappearance but following the logic of his argument, we are talking about perhaps 10 or 20 years after peak oil. That, of course, does not rule out imperialism of an earlier, pre-industrial sort (e.g. Europe's colonization of North & South America) though I think that is much less likely because of the economic and political cost of suppressing insurgency (e.g. Iraq, Chechnya) given the small scale, low technology and cheapness of light weapons. (For example, Tito and the Yugoslav army managed to manufacture sufficient weapons in clandestine manufactories to hold off and eventually defeat countless, motorized divisions of the German army in Bosnia in the 2nd WW.) Obviously, some form of world government will be necessary to prevent the kind of local resource/land wars typical in feudal Europe, warlord Asia, or tribal North America though, equally obviously, the current UN model would not suffice.
Paul Jim Devine wrote:
Paul, how do localized governments -- which hopefully would have governments subordinated democratically to the democratic will -- deal with a globalized capitalism (i.e., imperialism)? without some sort of democratically-controlled world government, how are wars between the localities avoided?
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