The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's vaunted "productivity feast" purportedly tells us everything we need to know about the US economy. In fact, it tells us quite the opposite: that statistical analysis conceals the truth at least as often as it informs us.

"Productivity" is another way of describing efficiency, and efficiency is understood to be an unequivocal social benefit. But the triumph of economic "efficiency" has done more to destroy American communities than anything. WalMart is the best example. Americans love WalMart. Everything you need in life can be found there under one roof at bargain prices. WalMart's ability to move vast quantities of merchandise over huge distances and distribute it around the nation in a "warehouse on wheels" is considered the last word in retail trade efficiency. Their ability to destroy rich and complex networks of social and economic relations has also been remarkably efficient. Everywhere WalMart landed in America small business districts died, and with them died millions of occupational niches and local interdependencies that added up to communities.

American communities at their best were not efficient. Retail trade was a multi-layered system carried out by retailers, wholesalers, warehousers, jobbers, and independent distributors, as well as manufacturers, who were participants in their communities, who employed their neighbors, who owned property locally, and took care of it, and in short composed an important strata of every community's middle class. The quixotic quest for efficiency put them out of business.

This process of corporate colonialism, which has been implacable and insidious, left America socially and civically impoverished and ought to be viewed as a fantastic swindle. Americans were conned into surrendering all the social, civic, and economic infrastructure of daily life just so they could save ninety cents on a giant bag of Cheez Curls. What kind of people would allow this to happen to them?

If one follows the Greenspan view of ever-increasing efficiency, what further bargains await down the line for America? Are we going to surrender due process of law because our failing suburban environments can't support norms of decent behavior? Will we elect maniacs who promise to keep the Happy Motoring experience in operation by conducting military adventures for oil?

The law of diminishing returns casts a dark shadow over our foolish quest for efficiency and Americans sleepwalk in its darkness.