Krugman laid it out succinctly last week: Raeganomics is to blame for the dergulation and subsequent collapse of the economy. In fact, pretty much every economist, at least on the Left, has said the same thing. But what none of them adequately explore is the human motivation to create such a crisis.

Most would say greed, but greed implies that a person knows he has enough, and still wants more. I would like to propose that since the mid Twentieth Century -- certainly by the 80s -- the powers that be, and at least on a subconscious level, the general public, did not know they had enough; that, at the root of this economics crisis the fear -- a fear based in reality -- that we absolutely do not have enough to sustain our way of life, and that like the escpapist fantasy literature of the 1930s we have spun economic fantasy after economic fantasy (read: bubble) to perpetuate our unsustainable economic system. 

An urgent question has been posed to us: Can we limit consumption to the point that we are ecologically sustainable (and where we don't use up all our oil)? A less urgent but more pressing question has been simultaneously posed: Can we manipulate consumer confidence so that consumption is increased and the economy recovers? Meanwhile, others are asking: Can we teach Americans to save again?

I would argue that on some level -- perhaps when we reckoned with the finite supply of oil; perhaps when we learned how atrciously sweatshop workers are treated; perhaps after detonating the atomic bomb; perhaps when we first learned that polar ice is melting -- we have been aware of the fantastical nature of the contemporary economy. The true numbers of people truly supported by this system have always been relatively small, and even for those few the long-term outlook has never been good. To compensate, we have created imaginary wealth -- think a combination of bribes and a pyramid scheme -- to keep everyone complacent. This has, in economic terms, been a series of bubles. 

The fact is, an economy premised on consumption of inessential goods was always destined to fail, especially so when environmental constraints would dictate the opposite behavior. This is common sense. It's also common sense that the economy must take a back seat to the environment, because, as Bill McKibben points out in the most recent New York Review of Books, "Chemistry and Physics don't negotiate." 

It's perplexing, then, that the U.S. Government is still treating this crisis as a human negotiation. I appreciate Obama's moderate approach to politics, but if a meteor is on a collision course with Earth, you cannot waste time convincing doubters that the meteor exists, and then trying to lobby them for the funds to build a rocket to blow up the missile. 

One clear example of this is our discussion of the American debt to China (and the devaluation of Chinese currency thanks to their investment in the US). We act as if this is a numbers problem -- as if China doesn't have manpower, a military, and the willingness to become insular. It's not too hard to imagine a mercantlist Asia, or an agressive Asia. A nation -- that is, the physical country itself -- can ignore debt and all other mechanations of the global economy if it so chooses, even if this means the suffering of its own people. 

The most egregious example, however, of our ignorance of the physical underpinnings of the economic crisis, is the government's negotiations with the auto industry. I appreciate the potential loss of jobs if GM or Ford goes under, but cars, generally speaking, are one of the most obvious causes of our problems: economic, health, and environmental (cars are an inefficient, costly means of transportation; tens of thousands die in accidents; they pollute). Even Krugman and co don't suggest we begin to largely phase out autos, at least in urban areas, or that  jobs would be created to create this infrastructure, and that these would necessarily be American jobs. And yet, our dealings with the auto industry suggest a wholely short-term outlook -- save jobs/an American tradition. Avoid a paradigm-shift at all costs. Perhaps such a solution is too concerete for most? Should we adjust some interest rates instead? 

But we need a paradigm shift. Obviously, not just with our relationship to the automobile, but to the economy and social services as a whole. I'll go out with an example of the kind of thinking that will doom us all. The Week, for those of you who don't know, is a fluffy round-up of the blogosphere mailed to Salon.com subscribers. In the most recent issue, they write-up a new 4,000 lb. Bently sportster. The thing can do 20o mph and ways as much as a tank, but, according to the write-up, because it burns an ethanol/gas mixture, you can drive with a clean conscience. 

We've truly gone mad if we think that on any level a partially ethanol-fueled race-tank is going to dig us out of this crisis.