That Old Time Religion

Today we have a great post from AWOP Contributor Thurman of Random Abstractions.

That Old Time Religion

Last night I read the transcript of a talk given last Friday in San Francisco by Dmitry Orlov. The title of Mr. Orlov's speech was Social Collapse Best Practices. There were a lot of thought provoking ideas tossed out to the audience at this talk, but what struck me most was the contrast between the differences in how well prepared to handle economic turmoil the old Soviet Union was in comparison to how American society is to likely to bear a similar challenge.

Dmitry Orlov is in a good position to make this comparison, having spent the first twelve years of his life living in the USSR, before immigrating to the US. He has traveled back many times since, and thus has a unique perspective from which to observe both societies. I don't know of anyone who could honestly defend Soviet style dictatorship, but it is very interesting, even disturbing to note that due to the inherent social structure of the USSR, the people there were much better prepared to survive the collapse of their economy after the Communists fell, than we in the US are now.

For instance, Orlov points out that because food shortages were relatively commonplace in the Soviet Union, most people maintained kitchen gardens to supplement their diets. These gardens were usually planted just outside the cities and citizens commuted back and forth via public transportation. Soviet cities were built to house very dense populations, in part because such designs required shorter runs of pipe and cable to build the support infrastructure, thus reducing costs of construction and maintenance.

Compare this to the way most modern American cities have been designed and built over the last century. Ours is a very car-centric society, with large sprawling urban and suburban populations spread out over what used to be our best farm land. Most US cities do have some form of public transit systems inside their metropolitan areas, but they are generally limited to service within the metro areas only.

Another way the Soviets were better prepared when the economic rug was pulled out from under them regards housing. Under communism, every citizen was entitled to a place to live as long as they continued to breathe. That doesn't mean there weren't shortages of housing or that everyone got to live where they wanted. In fact, many times families were housed three generations deep, meaning that adult children, their parents, and grandparents often occupied the same tiny quarters.

While this may sound a bit cramped to most Americans, there were a few positive aspects to the situation. Childcare was almost always available and was usually provided by family members rather than underpaid strangers. Additionally, with so many members of the same family living under one roof, there was almost always someone at home to keep an eye on things. This became especially important when crime rates began to rise following the end of the old Soviet system.

Compare that to what we now face in America. When a person loses their job and can't readily find another, the odds of that person and his or her family losing their home increase dramatically. Even in good economic times, we in the US have a significant homeless population. Economic recessions generally increase the size of that group and a prolonged depression or systemic collapse would be absolutely devastating. Consider how such a situation would increase crimes of desperation, not to mention how increased homelessness could raise the potential for the spread of infectious disease. Those two factors alone could overwhelm public safety and health care systems nationwide.

All of these thoughts, brought to mind by Mr. Orlov's speech left me thinking about something else he mentioned that I've run across occasionally over the years. The idea of a biblical style Jubilee.

I don't pretend to be especially well educated in religious matters, particularly in the realm of Jewish history, but I have seen references to a practice among the ancient Israelites where debts were forgiven, lands redistributed, and slaves freed during the Jubilee, which took place every fifty years.

A quick bit of research led me to a reference at Wikipedia indicating that the tradition may have actually come from the ancient Babylonian kings, "(who)

occasionally issued decrees for the cancellation of debts and/or the return of the people to the lands they had sold. Such "clean slate" decrees were intended to redress the tendency of debtors, in ancient societies, to become hopelessly in debt to their creditors, thus accumulating most of the arable land into the control of a wealthy few. The decrees were issued sporadically. Economist Michael Hudson has maintained that the Biblical legislation of the Jubilee and Sabbatical years addressed the same problems encountered by these Babylonian kings, but the Biblical formulation of the laws presented a significant advance in justice and the rights of the people. This was due to the "clean slates" now being codified into law, rather than relying on the whim of the king. Furthermore, the regular rhythm of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years meant that everyone would know when the next release was due, thereby giving fairness and equity to both creditor and debtor."

Maybe what is needed now in the US is something akin to the Jubilee. Our economic system has certainly concentrated much of the wealth of this nation into the hands of an elite few, and a great many people today are quite simply buried under mountains of debt they have almost no realistic hope of ever repaying - making them, for all intents and purposes, slaves to their creditors.

There's a lot more wrong with the world economic system that needs to be addressed beyond simple debt forgiveness. If other issues such as environmental degradation and resource shortages (peak oil), for instance, aren't also addressed, very little would change and in a short time, we'd all be right back in the same sinking boat, with a few more holes in it, but I see no reason why so many people must be raped and abused under the weight of exorbitant financial burdens and placed into virtual indentured servitude so that a small, elite percentage of the population can amass enormous fortunes.

There has got to be a better way for all of us to live and if we don't figure it out soon, I fear many of us may cease to live at all.

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Peace Y'all