The Way of the Rocket

©Laurence B. Winn

Feb 1, 2001

Growth is a prerequisite of free enterprise for two reasons.

* Only economic expansion, driven by an increase in numbers of consumers, creates new markets for existing global business.

* New entrepreneurial opportunities come only from the exploitation of previously untapped resources or from meeting the local needs of new consumers of such commonplace comforts as fast food and entertainment.

In other words, to work capitalism requires expanding markets and an expanding resource base. If the so-called "free world" does not ensure that such expansion occurs, it will become enslaved, inasmuch as free enterprise and other freedoms are inextricably linked.

Frontier theory takes the position, supported by historical evidence and animal research, that the only meaningful growth is territorial expansion. For human beings in the 21st century, that means large-scale extraterrestrial presence.

It can't come too quickly. Enclosure, the consequence of attempting to create an equilibrium society which neither grows nor decays, engenders horrific individual and group animosity. For example, we now have the opportunity to examine at first hand mortal combat between generations.

Members of the American generation born between 1946 and 1964 are called "baby boomers". They belong to a demographic bulge that has been moving through American society like a meal through a python. When they were young, their shear numbers made everything they did significant, even when what they did was foolish to the point of embarrassment. The arts catered to them. Politicians gave them whatever they wanted. After having lapped up concessions at every turn, after having gotten away with making excuses for everything from permissive parenting to greed, the boomers are in trouble.

The number of persons over 65 will double to 65 million by 2030. Younger workers, their ambitions thwarted by a surfeit of experienced labor, will demand that their elders retire. But it will be hard. The preceding generation financed its retirement with corporate pensions and home equity. Most of the boomers are expected to have 10 employers before retirement. They won't spend enough time with any one of them to become vested. Houses are not likely to be paid for by retirement time. Mortgage rates are higher. The driving forces - restructurings, plant shutdowns and shifting markets - are all symptoms of enclosure.

But they'll still have Social Security.

Or will they?

The political clout of the nation's senior citizens makes Social Security politically untouchable for budget-cutting. Even so, the government's universal retirement plan is an enormous financial drain.

In fiscal 1990, the Feds spent $246 billion on Social Security, a sum second only to the $297 billion defense budget. Social Security spending is expected to grow at 6% to 7% annually, making it one of the fastest-growing parts of the budget.

As the age distribution in the American population changes, Social Security is likely to be perceived as the tyranny of senescent, white middle class perpetrated against a young, predominantly poor workforce. Future events become even less certain if the workforce is also largely non-white. At that point, government may have to terminate Social Security payments in order to preserve public order. Either way, zero-sum rules will produce a class of embittered losers seeking revenge.

Nor will there be lots of great jobs to support the boomers and their progeny.

"The American myth about being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps - it doesn't exist anymore," says Barbara Otto of 9-to-5 National Association of Working Women, an advocacy group for secretarial and clerical workers.

Government unemployment figures, which tend to be optimistic for reasons of job security, do not give an accurate picture of developments. Even when unemployment figures are low, economists say it is because laid-off workers have taken lower-paying part-time jobs.

According to a Bureau of Labor study of displaced workers, a third of those who lost their jobs in the mid-to-late '80s took pay cuts of 20 percent or more when they returned to work.

The rise of part-time employment is not just part of the usual economic cycle, economists say, but a structural change caused by America's decaying position in the world economy. As one economist put it, "Americans can't have the expectations they had in the 1950s for a better way of life. Things are definitely getting worse."

We can argue that, once the boomers are gone, everything will be fine. Setting aside the psychological consequences of patricide, we are still faced with other forms of social pathology. In addition to intergenerational warfare, enclosure is bringing us interracial conflict as Americans of European descent compete against African and Hispanic minorities for space in a shrinking economic pond.

A former Ku Klux Klan leader (David Duke) won a significant number of votes in Louisiana in November, 1991, in part by blaming middle class economic hardship on "the rising welfare underclass".

A curfew was imposed on parts of Washington D.C. in May of 1992 after racial tension exploded into large-scale rioting between blacks and hispanics. In August, a New York City traffic accident triggered violence between blacks and Jews.

A year later, racial violence erupted in Los Angeles.

These are zero-sum behaviors.

In the wild, when a predator attacks another predator of the same species, it is not for food. Biologists call it "interference competition". Ideally, it drives one of the animals to increase its range in the search of a living. If that is not possible, one of the beasts dies, or they go on battering one another until, weakened by combat and hunger, they both perish.

Where is the real economic expansion to prevent human interference competition going to come from, the deluded, make-believe world of Wall Street and Washington D.C., or the way of the rocket?