[Newspoetry] The Ends of Times

[DL Emerick]

There was always a serious flaw in the capitalist scheme of things, when it
came to things of nature.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/110807EA.shtml

The flaw could be called external diseconomy (ED).

Under ED, any natural state of affairs is exploitable by the owner of the
land whereupon that state sits.

The ownership creates a rigid boundary between us, as to what is mine and
what is yours.

But, some aspects of matter are common goods.

Air, for instance, is most uncommonly common to us.

When you pollute your air, you will also pollute mine - subject to a
dispersion index.

But, what if you cut down a forest on your land, and stop producing oxygen?

What if erosion from your land fills the streams with sediments and the
skies with dust?

The truth was always ignored, by the reasoning of the flaw:
Whatever happens on your land always has impacts to me on my land, and vice
versa.

It may be impossible to act without repercussions upon others.

But, that is where Atlas' Capitalism always shrugged its shoulders,
indifferently:
Diseconomical economics is the law of land ownership,
externalizing harm to many for the benefit of a few -
on the false and illusory thesis of a fair trade between us,
of a mutually beneficial social contract that never happened, never formed.

The frontiers did close, finally, about a century ago -
And the little air pockets that were left, like those in bubble wrap,
Have been popped one by one -
The limit of the boundary thesis was reached,
showing us most clearly how it greedily overreached reality -
only when the margins were empty did it not appear as it does now,
for the margins said, "There's still room to expand and some space to
exploit..."

Marxists use the term "intensification of contradictions" to refer to a
struggle,
As if the whole matter were somehow governed by unalterable historical laws
-
They were right, in a very small part, and wrong, in a much larger part.

There are always limits and boundaries;
History has been the record of our encounters with boundaries and limits,
And how we have dealt with those that we have met.

The question of human history is how long any process will continue,
inertially, before it changes course,
When a boundary is met and its external diseconomies cause economic
dislocations to become evident.

There is nothing in nature that says we shall fail or succeed -
There is nothing inevitable about history's outcomes -
no pot-o'-gold nor any apocalyptic holocaust is guaranteed at the end of the
rainbow.

So, really, the most fundamental question of this age is a simple issue:
What about ownership ideas is permitting us to poison our planet,
Possibly permitting us to reach the end of human history -
And what is there that we could do to change the prevalent institutions of
ownership?

Such is what the Conscience of a Liberal ought to consider:
Shall Time come to end or do we know how to get to any Future?
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