We need to find a way to live with a lot less, very quickly.

The American standard of living has been maintained by an Empire of the Dollar. As the world industrializes we can not maintain our consumption levels in the face of competition from more productive economies. What is America going to look like with hyperinflation? It is the inevitable outcome of our current course. Eventually no one will want our Dollars anymore. What will we do then? Use our military power to extract resources? Many politicians might see that as an effective use of our very limited oil supplies because it would help their egos. What will the homeland look like? We've been watching the decline for decades.

Walmart is profiteer of this decline. The idealists will say that capitalism gives choice so the best will always win out. In practice the lowest price is what wins out because the human mind does not have enough information for the daily purchase decisions. The primary consideration for everyone is price. Those who have money buy expensive because of assumed value, and most buy one above the worst because they assume it must be the best value. These things are well understood by marketers. We assume prices are set by free market principles, and the marketers base their pricing off of that assumption. This system is disconnected from any impact other then How cheep can I buy it for? and How much can I sell it for? Thus Walmart. With the value of the Dollar declining at a quicker and quicker rate it is no longer possible to pay an American enough to manufacture the goods we think we need. So for many Americans to survive, they need to buy from virtual-slave labor factories overseas that offer a much lower standard of living to their workers. Walmart can have low prices because they are best at hiding the effects of inflation, however their practices only feed into inflation.

The decline of the American standard of living can be seen in virtually all of our consumer goods. Even if the list price has only been going up at 2-3% per year, the quality has plummeted to hide inflation. We put BGH in our milk to hide inflation. We maintain grotesque food quality standards to hide inflation. We fight a war in Iraq to hide inflation. We pay for slave labor to hide inflation. We sold off our our gold to hide inflation. We inflated the housing bubble to hide inflation. We are now in a sovereign debt crisis to hide inflation. We can not continue to hide the inflation. We must learn to adjust to a much lower rate of consumption. This is not merely a question of morality, it is a question of sustainability. The Dollar is no longer sustainable. What is America without the Dollar?

The way capitalism is practiced must be changed or abolished because it is not working in the best interest for Americans or humanity. It works in the apparent interest of the major interest holders, but only temporarily. Game theory has shown that everyone is better off when everyone is better off. However, our human tendency is to be happy only when we are better off then everyone else. We feel we must compete, but there are much more productive ways to compete then the consumption of resources.

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”

We must remake our culture in the face of a new world. We need local sustainability. We need the economic security of lower means. We need to find a way to live with a lot less, very quickly.