So we will continue to flail around, trying everything under the sun to resurrect the glory days of the 90s, when the money flowed and the trips to the mall were frequent.  We will shout louder at our government and at each other, as the dreams of McMansions and Playa-hood leech away into the sands of the second Great Depression.  All of this effort to salvage the old goals of full employment, economic growth (no matter how green), maximum consumption, and the atomized social form of One Family/One Dwelling will ultimately prove to be futile.  The new realities in ecology (ecosystem collapse), geology (Peak Oil), and economics (hyper-concentration of capital made possible by globalization and financial technologies) will swamp our old desires, no matter how much we yell about America's greatness. Eventually it will become clear, mostly by sheer necessity, that collective social forms are the future of American life.  Different modes of "we" will emerge. Our near future will be much less painful if we can get out ahead of things and design these new social forms proactively, instead of having them forced on us in more unpleasant guises.

What will these new social forms look like?  As many earlier posts on this blog make clear, I think that groups of 80 to 120 people will be necessary, living in various permutations.  These groups will likely need some manner of income sharing, as quality jobs become scarce. They will need robust systems for providing services internally (child care, elder care, home nursing, meal preparation, etc.), as the mass ability to buy everything in the external marketplace dries up.  They will use the economy of scale to maximize an efficient approach to the marketplace, leveraging the power that comes from "buying in bulk," so to speak.  The wastefulness of buying full sets of stuff for each individual, couple, or family will become increasingly evident, and these groups will find ways to group their purchases, share their resources, and do more functions off the economic grid.  

It bears repeating that I am in no way a hippie, neo-hippie, or a generally earthy-crunchy person.  I am not proposing communes per se, with drum circles, tofu pops, and ample body hair.  I do not currently live in an income-sharing community, nor have I ever.  It just seems obvious to me, when looking at the trajectory of our socioeconomic systems, that communities of the type mentioned above will prove to be the only viable option for the future.  Our current social form just cannot bear the weight of our new realities.  Just consider the gross mismatch right now between people's economic conditions on the ground, and what they are being asked to pay for in the economic system, as currently configured.  First, official unemployment now stands at a 16-year high of 7.2% (due to the shady way in which these stats are produced, the real rate is probably closer to 12%, taking into consideration significant factors like the prison population).  Home foreclosures are surging, retirement accounts have lost half their value, and the number of Americans without health insurance is embarrassing.  Yet despite all of this, regular families are expected to pay for regular living expenses (shelter, clothing, transportation, and food), plus taxes to support local, state, and federal services.  They are also expected to pay for their children's education, for their family's health care -- and also they are supposed to bank lots of money for retirement.  And all of this has to be done on jobs that are either disappearing or stagnating wage-wise, while not racking up large household debt.  It's just not possible -- and people are understandably folding under the anxiety and stress of the whole thing.

Of course, income-sharing communities are not the only way to increase collective power.  There are other candidates for revived forms of "we."  But for various reasons, these other options are either unfeasible or must be considered goals for further out in time.  What are these other options?

• Unions: One of the major problems with our current arrangements is the stagnation of wages.  The American economy has been incredibly productive over the last several decades, but the spoils have been captured by a small group at the top, while regular household income has remained flat or decreased.  This same period has seen a steady decline in unionized jobs, to the point where only about 7.5% of workers in the private sphere are represented by unions.  A union, of course, represents a form of collective power.  So why can't we just beef up union membership, perhaps by legislative fiat, which would bring wages up and create a more secure home base for people?  Well, unions are certainly a positive thing, but overall changes in economic and financial functioning really mitigate against any kind of broad re-unionization of America.  First, the globalization of finance and corporate governance allow companies to move jobs and functions to wherever they can, to get the best deal.  We all know the downsizing, shipping jobs overseas arguments.  To rebuild a protectionist, tariff-based system for America in today's globalized economy would be incredibly difficult if not impossible, even if we considered it to be positive and necessary. Also, changes in technology have rendered huge swaths of the economy essentially non-unionizable.  Even with pro-union legislation, it is very difficult to make non-skilled or low-skilled positions high paying. Computer technology, especially, has forever rendered many classes of jobs obsolete.  What we have seen, then, is a population that is largely overeducated for the jobs that exist.  Many jobs have existed only because of the artificial, self-referential, hallucinated value of building and maintaining sprawl (as we discussed in the last post) -- and now that the housing system is falling apart, those highly provisional jobs are disappearing in droves.  The bottom line is that unionization is really only possible under very specific conditions: low overall unemployment, high-skill job requirements, international competition limited by protectionist laws or the immovability of the work itself, and robust pro-union laws and courts.  None of these conditions exist right now, and I do not believe that they will return in a significant enough way to make labor unions the form of collective power that we need right away.
• Local Communities: This is a tricky one, because the importance of local communities actually is going to increase, whether we like it or not, because of the impending reality of Peak Oil.  As Jim Kunstler points out, the suburban sprawl system is going to atrophy, unable to sustain its self-cannibalizing ways.  People are going to repopulate small cities and towns, as it becomes impossible to travel hundreds of miles by car every week to load up on Pringles and new iPod headphones; especially considering that household income now rests on Dad's part-time gig at Staples and Mom's struggling real estate career (neither of which carries any health insurance).  Local is increasingly seen as good.  Liberals especially encourage popular support of local agriculture and local business.  We all want to think global, act local.  Who doesn't want to see the local, family-owned hardware store thrive?  Who doesn't like interesting, local, non-chain restaurants and bakeries?  Local economic activity has a much greater "multiplier effect," as the money stays in the community longer before being whisked away to a corporate headquarters half a world away.  Buying local increases the number of economic transactions that stay close to home for longer periods of time, which is better for wages overall.  Also, when communities have a strong local business element, it is better for local tax revenues and the resulting services.  Small business owners tend to be members of the communities they service, so they have a stake in paying fair taxes to get good schools, roads, and other amenities, all of which maintain a good environment for their business.  A chain is much more likely to pay a lower tax rate overall, as they keep wages low and use their size to legally exploit loopholes and pro-corporate tax policies.  So yes, increasing the power of the local community is definitely one way of creating a more collective social form.  But even if we find a way to repopulate small towns and cities, and manage to revive local business culture, I still believe that the base social form of One Person-One Job/One Family-One Dwelling will not be able to bear the economic burdens.  Recall that much of our economy over the last few decades was simply devoted to filling up spaces with sprawl and mall, all subsidized by cheap oil.  Once Peak Oil gains real traction, and the suburban system dries up, there is just not enough economic activity left to do to occupy the overall populace.  The jobs that are left will just not carry enough value to purchase the full suite of loot to which we are accustomed, as things are currently arranged.  So while I do see local communities as eventual sources of collective power, I think that will come after, and as a result of, creating a more collective, base social form.  Income-sharing communities of 80 to 120 will be the engines for rebuilding real local productive capacity.  Once these base communities become established, they will use their freed-up time and effort to rehabilitate their wider local communities.  But the reverse cannot happen, as I see it.
• Local and State Governments: There is an old Catholic concept called "subsidiarity," which holds that matters should be handled by the lowest, most local governing authority, and that higher centralized authorities should only handle what cannot be performed at the lower levels.  This is a generally conservative posture, evident any time someone voices opposition to the federal government nosing their way into our schools and bedrooms.  And it's a good idea.  Who is better equipped to understand local conditions that those closest to them?  So in theory, we should be designing our taxation and government policies from the locality on up, through the state, and then up to the national level.  By the time we get to the federal government, we should have only truly national things left to do with our tax money: the armed forces, interstate commerce, international relations, and national legal protection of individuals' Constitutional rights.  The heavy lifting of policy, especially on the economic front, should be handled at the state and local levels, where people really know what to do with their own money.  Again, these are great ideas.  I firmly believe that the federal government should be small, as large organizations of any kind tend to be inflexible and self-perpetuating.  This is not always the case.  For example, Social Security and Medicare are generally run in a much more efficient manner than their private counterparts, as they leverage the power of scale and uniformity.  But other facets of the federal bureaucracy are certainly wasteful and unruly, and a general funneling of tax money downwards to states and localities would be positive.  But while devolution of power to the state and local levels is certainly a worthy goal, the current dire straits of sub-federal budgets really prohibits those being the primary vanguard of collective power in the near future.  Right now, state and local governments are reeling, and their budgets are hemorrhaging money and jobs, as their tax bases erode from the wider economic collapse.  The social forms underneath state and local power really have to be fixed before these levels regain any form of economic health.  
• Activism: I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who donate their time, energy, and money to worthy causes.  Social activism has been crucial in driving epic changes in American history: abolitionism, Civil Rights, Anti-war sentiment, Women's Rights, Gay Rights, etc.  It is our responsibility as citizens to take to the streets and the airwaves when we feel that our government or society is perpetuating injustice or worse -- and I hope that these dedicated people continue their important work.  But while social activism can have a substantial impact on the the law, government policy, and social awareness, its ability to spawn long-term changes in social structure is limited.  And as economic conditions get worse, and as people's extra time and money shrivel up, struggling citizens will grow resentful towards activists who criticize current conditions and demand change.  When people are laid off and getting booted out of their homes, they are not too amenable to fighting global warming.  Again, activism is certainly important, but it will likely prove a luxury in the near future, and we must hope that it becomes rejuvenated as an outgrowth of a more community-centered social form.