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April 15, 2009
Somali Piracy and Mexican Cartels
At first glance, the disturbing news from two widely separated parts of the world may not seem that closely related; but both are, in fact, good examples of why crime is becoming the world’s most successful business model, one with the power to drag our overheating and overpopulated planet into a high-tech reprise of the Dark Ages from which emergence will be difficult at best and certainly can’t be assured.The US is widely acknowledged to be both the richest, and militarily, most powerful nation on earth; yet many of our most successful corporations are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, we are squabbling over an ad-hoc “bail out” with dubious prospects of success, and pundits from both extremes of the political spectrum are finding it difficult to avoid the D word.
While our European colleagues may blame us for many of their own woes, the more responsible ones are forced to admit a degree of complicity and the others have to admit to another harsh reality: their own prosperity is unlikely in a world dominated by American economic failure.
How does crime fit into all this? Economic hard times favor it and the pirates have just discovering a secret drug traffickers exploited with increasing success throughout the entire Twentieth Century: Law Enforcement simply can’t win. The reasons are multiple, complex, and will certainly be disputed, but, in the end, it comes down to the competition for survival first articulated by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859 and has most to do with the function of the human brain, which is clearly our principal survival organ and the source of all our aggregated culture.
One way of stating my admittedly unwelcome conclusion would be to phrase it in terms of the just-discovered (by me) concept of Path Dependence: the sun total of human culture cannot change (or be changed) quickly enough to avoid several looming catastrophes. In more colloquial terms, we have simply painted ourselves into a corner we are unlikely to escape from.
Both Mexico and Somalia represent failed states in which criminal gangs are ascendant. The lawlessness is further advanced in Somalia, but that’s only because it’s much further from the US and surrounded by other poor nations in the process of failing. Is there any historical example of a successful wall between neighboring states? Do we really think it would be possible to distinguish impoverished job seekers from drug smugglers, or that our overstretched military would be capable of shooting to kill at civilians while also resisting the temptation to sell out?
The truth may not be that palatable, but the time for denial is over: we’re not likely to escape the consequences of our own past history.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at April 15, 2009 04:56 PM