The Economy & Security

As the economy continues to, how shall we say it politely, "adjust," people are scrambling to try to maintain their level of income. On a world-wide basis, the stronger the economies of the world, the less tension and risk of a war for scarcer resources.

What we're seeing is a leveling of the economic levels of peoples around the world. For years the U.S. has enjoyed the advantage of many economic activities of the world based on the dollar. When a certain Iraqi leader suddenly announced it was taking its oil production off the dollar standard, we suddenly found ourselves being told by our government that they were producing nuclear weapons and we took out that country and its leader. More than eight years later we never found any such weapons of mass destruction.

Actually, the weapon of mass destruction was an economic one. We did not want the oil producing nations to go off the dollar standard, and our leader at the time feared the ability of their leader to promote an agenda that would bring economic consequences to us we didn't want.

This leveling process is one of adjusting the worth of various countries to their actual economic contributions to the world economy. It is a painful process, and the downside of it is, that change very often harms the weakest in the society first. Those who don't have a voice in the government or the economy find themselves the first to be affected by these changes.

The big problem is, we can produce goods cheaply - but at the same time demand can not be created to meet that demand, as labor is less and less a part of this process. Behind all of the problems is the root problem. The growth of populations competing for fewer and fewer resources will continue to be a large part of the problem. The religious cry to "Go forth and multiply!" needs to be changed to one based on the available resources of a society. Society needs to look at the overall picture. We have this much land, this many resources, our ability to produce energy is this, we are increased our ability to produce energy at this rate, we need to come to terms with how to deal with pollution - all these concerns weigh into the problem of security. To the degree that a country or people can meet these often conflicting problems, that sets their level of security.