Populism in an age of scarcity

A number of candidates who prevailed in the last U.S. election can rightly be called populist in the 19th century "prairie populist" mold, opposing monopolies and concentrated power, championing the rights of the average citizen, and opposing tariffs which hurt farmers and consumers.

Perhaps the senator-elect from Texas, James Talarico, provided the clearest populist message by saying that the real divide in the United States is between the top and bottom of the income and wealth scale. That's a pure populist message.

The solution for a populist, of course, is to redistribute the wealth and power of society in ways that make the lives of average citizens better. That can be done by expanding and subsidizing such services as health care, transportation and education, making them more accessible and affordable. It can be done by increasing taxes on the wealthy, while leaving them unchanged or lowering them for those of middle and lower incomes.

The late 19th century in America was a period of enormous economic growth. Redistribution in this context would come from an ever-growing economic pie in which both "top" and "bottom" could see growth in their respective wealth and opportunities. That can be hard politically, but it does not necessarily require shrinking the wealth of one group to augment the wealth of another. It means that the wealth of one group grows more slowly to accommodate faster growth for another group.

Fast forward to today. What the populists, or progressives as they like to be called, now face is an emerging age of scarcity which will make redistribution of wealth and power more difficult since the economic pie will be growing very slowly or perhaps not at all.

I believe time will demonstrate that the Iran war sped up the arrival of scarcity, but is not its cause. When I say scarcity, I mean scarcity of the physical inputs that make our modern technical society function: energy resources such as fossil fuels; metals, especially copper and rare earth metals so important to the creation of the renewable energy and digital sectors of the economy; agricultural crops; water; and the infrastructure these inputs make possible.

I do not need to convince most readers that the price of ordinary goods has gone up considerably since 2020. The proximate causes are the snarling of supply chains resulting from the COVID pandemic, the Ukraine-Russia war and now the Iran war. But the longer term trends were already in place: climate change, lack of investment in the mining of industrial metals, the rising challenges and costs for farmers and ranchers, water shortages, and the increasing costs of finding and producing fossil fuels. These trends are not going away even if both major wars end tomorrow.

How then do American populist or progressive politicians achieve a redistribution of wealth and power that those who voted for them now expect? In the area of medical care, there is the possibility that 1) cuts to Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low-income individuals and families, will be rescinded, 2) cuts to Medicare will be repealed and 3) generous subsidies for health insurance purchased through Affordable Care Act exchanges will be reinstated.

While this will be welcomed by those affected, it will only fan the flames of medical cost inflation while increasing competition for scarce resources. The American system is the most expensive in the world, but gets worse outcomes than almost all wealthy nations. Simply enabling people to pay for health care in such a system will not give them health. And, health is the outcome we are trying to achieve.

That suggests that in order to deliver health to Americans the idea of health care will have to be redefined so that the current definition—which is essentially illness care—is not at the center. It may sound cliché to say that health begins with proper diet, but I am not referring to the kind of diet promoted by America's dieticians who are trained at institutions funded by Big Food and whose dietary recommendations are actually part of the problem.

I am thinking of something more akin to Robert Lustig's Metabolical, which makes the case that the American diet is responsible for the vast majority of chronic disease and provides research-based recommendations for preventing and reversing those conditions with real foods as opposed to the overprocessed glop that pretends to be food. This, of course, would have broad implications for the food industry if such a healthy diet were ever widely adopted.

When it comes to transportation, we have too long identified the service of transportation with the vehicles, mainly automobiles, that provide it. In an age of scarcity, defining transportation as automobiles will be a fatal mistake. We simply will not have the resources to provide an automobile and the required infrastructure for every inhabitant of Earth who wants one. Even in the United States, maintaining our costly system of automobile transportation in the face of emerging scarcity will be expensive. If we think of the service we get from an automobile, namely, a ride from one place to another, we can focus on helping people obtain that in the most economical and environmentally sustainable way possible.

Regarding education, the wide-ranging meanings of the word make it difficult to figure out what to do. But if we think in terms of the outcome, an educated person, we can see that most of what passes for high school and college education does not produce that. If people mean a person trained for a specific field, then there are certainly some courses of study that aid that outcome.

But an educated person, capable of participating fully and effectively in our civic life in all its meanings including governance, commerce (for example, as an informed and discerning consumer), aesthetic pursuits, and recreation—producing such genuinely educated people will require a complete rethink of education as we currently conceive it. And, it does not necessarily mean vast expansion of physical facilities for education (though in many places the public schools would need to be repaired and upgraded).

The ultimate goal of the populist is to enable the average citizen to have a full life, free from disability and poverty and with opportunities for self-betterment.

I do not have a comprehensive program for this. In fact, I think a lot of experiments will be necessary to find approaches that can succeed in an age of scarcity. Thinking in terms of outcomes and services—rather than simply expanding current processes such as the existing medical system or increasing the number of physical objects such as cars—would be a good way to assess the possibility for success of those experiments.

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.