I wrote this a couple of years back - as the sovereign debt crisis got full tilt. Just riffing with ideas really... enjoy
Over the last few years it has been noted as it has all unravelled:
a) Commodity costs and financing- Bear (o my) little relation to the goods
b) Size of investment banks- Bears (oh my) little relation to the available capital
c) Consumer debt- Bears (oh my) little relation to earnings
d) Corporate Share Value- Bears (oh my) little relation to debt free profit
e) Finance of sovereign nations- direct and indirect exposure to a.b.c.d.
In short the model upon which capitalism depends has little to do with productivity and everything to with debt and credit, which no-one can afford to pay back and which some can’t afford to write off, and few can afford to do without.
We, the people, are all Dorothies.
We are at that point where Dorothy is peeking behind the curtain- but in this version there are no ruby slippers. She is really pissed. “You said you were a cntng wizard you fckr”
But there is no hot air balloon and no deus ex machina either. In fact with peak oil fast approaching after-burn Dorothy soon won’t be able to afford a long haul flight out. She is stuck in Oz forever. Oz, a war torn hell-hole shorn of the magic and lustre of yester-year. Civil war, repression, and economic fallout has left it in the grip of technocratic munchkin kings. The very trees themselves, nature, will revolt in case of deforestation. Local populations, so called woodmen, have seized up under the rigours of industrialisation. Exploitation of the poppy fields is strictly off limits, winged monkeys enforce terror from the skies in the war on drugs and terror. The witches may well be dead but the infrastructure was not designed for an age like this. The yellow brick road stretches from one side of the world to the other, whooping in celluloid all the way to the horizon- yet all tillable land is already at maximum production. The agricultural classes themselves are socially and literally immobile at roadsides, clinging to a living. Veritable scarecrows. What price free trade?
There is no room for alternatives at the margins, spatial limits of the city perform an ideological function. Police and agents of a creaking state patrol the margins, blood and data is spilled, coward hearts oppose resistance and creativity. Lions, tigers, bears. Oh my breaking heart.
Dorothy is condemned to remain. An orphan of fantasy and cataclysm borne of climate change. There is no place like home. Welcome to the Emerald City. So she must make this Oz her paradise. As must we.