The Passenger Pigeon and the Coming Economic Crash

There was a time when there were millions upon millions of passenger pigeons in North America, now there is none. Hunters shot them in the second half of the nineteenth centaury. It seems crazy that people kept on hunting them to extension.

One wonders how they could keep on hunting them while their numbers declined? It seems as if people had a personal grudge against these pigeons, but reality is rather different:
 

[T]he population of the passenger pigeon, which was present in the United States in vast numbers until late in the nineteenth century. It was heavily hunted for food and for sport, and consequently its numbers were drastically reduced by the 1880s. Unfortunately, the passenger pigeon could apparently breed successfully only when present in a large concentration, corresponding to a relatively high threshold. Although a reasonably large number of individual birds remained alive in the late 1880s, there were not enough in any one place to permit successful breeding, and the population rapidly declined to extinction. The last survivor died in 1914. The precipitous decline in the passenger pigeon population from huge numbers to extinction in scarcely more than three decades was one of the early factors contributing to concern for conservation in this country.

Boyce & DiPrima, §2.6 Population Dynamic and Some Related Problems.

A Critical Threshold

 
Many commentators believe that the US is facing an economic depression as bad or even worse than that of the thirties and it may last as long as did then. They also believe that just like then the US will eventually recover from such an economic depression. I don’t share their, unfounded, optimism.

I, instead, make the following assertion: The coming economic depression is going to take the US economy under a critical threshold resulting in terminal decline.

This ‘critical threshold’ is not a quantitative threshold, but rather a qualitative one; it’s not a decline of a certain number (GDP, house prices, etc) but rather the decline in the quality of the economy as an economy-as a system of physical reproduction and propagation.

To understand why in the thirties recovery was possible while now it is impossible we review the differences between ‘now’ and ‘then’:

• Then the US had the world’s biggest industrial base, now it has a small and declining industrial base.
• Then the US dollar was backed by gold, now it is a fiat currency in free fall.
• Then the US did not have to engage in constant warfare to protect its stronghold on the world’s oil reserves, now it has its army bogged in Iraq.
• Then the US did not have a defence department costing it a sixth of its annual budget and debt servicing taking up another sixth, now it has both and they are both bound to grow.
• Then the US main competition were the declining European powers, now the US’s main competition is everyone.
• Then the US society had a fairly educated professional class (doctors, engineers, etc.), now it depends on third world countries to provide it with skilled labour (contrast that with the emigration from a declining Europe in the 30s).
• Then the US society structure was well defined with white Christians in commanding position, now the society is fractured and non-homogenous. [The analysis of Pat Buchanan of this point is excellent and should be looked up by those interested; his problem, of course, is that he view it as a ‘sickness' that should be treated instead of a natural decay that should be adapted to.]
• Then the US had a reserve of untapped natural resources (e.g. oil, land, water, etc.), now it is all tapped out.
• Then the US was not dependent on the world for economic functionality, now it can’t survive without world commerce (which it dominates but can very easily lose, hence the unending wars for control of the oil resources).
• Then the US dominated it adjoining neighbours in all spheres, now it is dependent on oil from the North and labour from the south [The ascendancy of Mexico in North America is going to be the main event of the 21^st centaury].

The above examples are just what occurred to me while I was writing and it is meant to be demonstrative rather than exhaustive; I am sure the reader can supply further examples of structural decline.

The world, also, has changed between ‘then’ and ‘now’ no better example for that change than China, which was then divided, occupied and dominated; while now it is ready to host the Olympics as a coming out party for the world’s latest power (of course I am expecting a rude awakening for the Chinese in few years, but that is a subject for another post).

The lesson one must learn from the passenger pigeon is summed up in the following sentence: “Although a reasonably large number of individual birds remained alive in the late 1880s, there were not enough in any one place to permit successful breeding, and the population rapidly declined to extinction.”

One can paraphrase this sentence and assert: Although a reasonably large number of economic elements remained strong in the US, there were not enough interconnection between them to permit successful economic reproduction, and the economy rapidly declined to ruin.