Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [128]
And yet more and more people believe that we should pay virtually no taxes at all. Capital “L” libertarianism, as well as its milder forms, is gaining credibility in the political marketplace because it somehow seems reasonable to people that the government is there only to protect our property from internal and external threats. Certainly ours is one of the first generations that could even countenance such a thought without blushing. During the building of the roads, the air and rail transportation systems, the power grid, the cities and the telecommunications networks it was obvious that government had the crucial role in the projects on which our society as we know it depends. Now that we have the temporary illusion that these projects are completed, it is possible to suggest to a gullible and debt-ridden public that they should keep more of “their” money to spend on themselves (and to keep the economy humming). But this ignores the need for upkeep and expansion, which are becoming especially acute as demand and usage grow. The corporate need for growth, however, needs money in the consumers’ hands instead of in the hands of the highway maintenance department, and so the freem clarion call is sounded from every media outlet.
… And the Truth Shall Set You Freem?
The freemers in the government sit idly by while the gospel of prosperity they preach leads to skyrocketing oil prices, the sub-prime (and more) mortgage lending crisis and an overall depleted economy, all the while getting amens from their corner in the form of promised technological relief. This promised relief comes not from any lowering of demand for energy from the public—that would put the “do” back into freem—but with illusory clean-coal technology, biofuels and increased investment in nuclear power. Never mind the fact that each of these proposals further concentrates wealth in the hands of the wealthy. Give us tax cuts and we’re happy, even while food and gas prices continue to rise, basic governmental services are slashed, and the public infrastructure collapses faster than a Minneapolis interstate bridge.
And this market worship eventually calls its own shots. When Stephen Colbert says “Global warming is real because Al Gore’s movie made money—the market has spoken,” it is not really a joke. Every large corporation is busy hiring PR firms and executives to shape the green policies that are currently being adopted. So long as there’s a market for taking global warming seriously, the corporations will try to appear to do so. The nature of markets abhors a vacuum created by unmet demand and quickly provides product to fill it. At the moment, the demand is met with commercials about the viability of biofuels, the plausibility of the hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell car and the allegation that there is a clean way to burn coal to make electricity. As these claims are more completely put to the test and found wanting, either another shiny object will become the apple of the buying public’s eye (maybe a holographic iPod?) or some replacement product bearing the appearance of greenness will be trotted out.
Could demand for real greenness be met, if it were to surface in a sustained way? Not likely. What is needed is a dramatic adjustment of our level of consumption. Peter Singer, in How Are We to Live?, points out that consumption is rising at a disastrous and amazing rate:
The global economy now produces as much in seventeen days as the economy of our grandparents, around the turn of the century, produced in a year. We assume the expansion can go on without limit, but the economy we have built depends on using up our inheritance. Since the middle of the [last] century the world has doubled its per capita use of energy, steel copper and wood. Consumption of meat has doubled in the same period and car ownership has quadrupled … Since 1940, Americans alone