"The central misconception of Peak Oil -- that it’s not about “running
out of oil,” it’s about running out of cheap, easy-to-access oil -- can
also be applied to Peak Government: It’s not about government
disappearing, it’s about government shrinking. Central government -- the Central State -- has been in the expansion
mode for so long that the process of contracting government is
completely alien to the nation, to those who work for the State, and to
those who are dependent on the State. Thus we have little recent
historical experience of Peak Government and few if any conceptual
guideposts to help us understand this contraction ... The twin peaks of oil and government are causally linked: central government's great era of expansion has been fueled by abundant, cheap liquid fuels. As economies powered by abundant cheap energy expanded, so did tax revenues ... Not only have Central States benefited from the higher tax revenues
generated by speculative bubbles, they now depend on debt to finance
their annual spending ... The State has only one mode of being, expansion. It has no concept of, or mechanisms for, contraction ... There are plenty of models of State expansion -- democracy, socialism,
communism, theocracy, and so on -- and none for State contraction. This
suggests that the down slope of Peak Government will be disorderly and
rife with unintended consequences ... We can now see that the Central State faces an impossible contradiction:
to pursue its primary purpose of protecting the citizenry from
predation, it is granted powers that enable it to evade its own
self-limiting mechanisms."
Ein Artikel von Charles Hugh Smith über das Konzept von Peak Government und die Unmöglichkeit für den Staat, in Anbetracht von Peak Oil und dem Ende des billigen Treibstoffs, einer alternden und von staatlicher Hilfe abhängigen Bevölkerung, hoher Staatsverschuldung und unausgeglichener Staatshaushalte sowie einer wachsenden Ungerechtigkeit beim Schutz finanzieller Eliten vor Verlusten, weiterhin zu wachsen - gleichzeitig Wachstum für jene systemische Stabilität aber unerläßlich ist. Erschienen auf Peak Prosperity (14. Mai 2012).
