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The Choice Is Yours
Tom Wilson 27.08.04

Today, our fates are ruled by the global economy. Your job almost certainly depends upon transactions that are taking place right now, thousands of miles away. The rules that govern this global free-market are known to everyone - low taxes; low government spending; national borders open to external competition. Having been given an air of unshakable legitimacy by global institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, these laws of the market are seen by many as being set in stone. People forget that it's an ideology that is less than 15 years old. This new global orthodoxy didn't begin with Adam Smith, or with Ronald Reagan, but was only truly cemented with the enthusiastic pursuit of the creed by the former communist bloc countries.

It's usually sensible to avoid people waving placards reading 'The End Is Nigh'. Journalists especially love spreading tales of impending doom, whether it's about nuclear holocaust or food scares. However, there's no escaping one tremendously worrying fact. The golden age of prosperity that we live in today is a historical anomaly. It's a blip in the course of human history. So too is the ideology that rules it, that of the global free market. In my lifetime, it will come to be seen as obsolete as the alchemy of the Dark-Ages.

Do I really expect anyone to believe these pessimistic predictions? Perhaps it's best to listen to the oil baron T. Boone Pickens. Last week he made an announcement: "Never again will we pump more than 82m barrels a day." In short, global oil production has peaked. It will only go down. Oil, the primary motor behind global economic growth, is something that we are going to have to learn to live without. And without it, modern life is going to look very, very different.

The second threat to the ruling ideology is closely linked to our insatiable lust for fossil fuels - global warming. The fact that much of Romania spent this summer under water should be a wake-up call for anyone who wants to pretend global warming isn't already happening. Earth is warming faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years. As Sir David King, the British government's chief scientific adviser has warned, we're now facing the very real prospect of cities like London and New York finding themselves underwater. And it's not all hippy environmentalists, either; in June, the Chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, shocked the oil industry by admitting that the threat of climate change made him "really very worried for the planet". He went on to say that without huge technological breakthroughs, there is "very little hope for the world".

The result is that human society will quickly be returning to face a once-vanquished, age-old problem - genuine scarcity. It's a prospect that the current free-market orthodoxy can't handle. Barriers will come up; countries will quickly resort to protectionism; and people my age are going to have to learn to forfeit the very thing that our current ideology is based around - choice.

Choice is the central idea driving our market-driven ideology. It's also probably the single most over-rated dogma of our time. No other period in the history of the world has offered us so many choices. However, as scarcity takes hold, choice will be the first thing to disappear. And it might not be a too much of a bad thing.

We've all been in that difficult situation where we find ourselves simply unable to make a decision. Maybe it's the choice between a car or a house; between a quiet evening in or a heady night out. Either way, when responsibility for choice is removed from us it can sometimes be incredibly liberating. Look at the vast number of customs, traditions and social norms that so much constrain our freedom - things we voluntarily allow ourselves to be governed by, and even openly embrace.

Absolute free choice has led to an increasing sense of purposelessness. When everything can be re-negotiated, when we're told that there are no constants on our lives, we can find ourselves floating without anchor. It's no surprise that the West basically survives on a diet of anti-depressants. There's so much Prozac being passed through the bodies of people in Britain that it's just been discovered that it's now continually present in the water supply. Absolute free choice makes us feel personally responsible each time we feel the tug of that obvious constant of the human condition - dissatisfaction. Depression is the inevitable result.

Speaking out against unrestricted free choice is the last thing that most people who lived under communism want to hear. Anyone who remembers Ceausescu understands the importance of individual liberty. However, in the egoistic form in which it has been embraced, unlimited freedom has led us to abuse the resources entrusted to us in an orgy of consumption. The ideology of choice has germinated the seeds of its own destruction. It is no longer a question of 'if'. It's a question of 'when'.

Political philosophers are currently expending much ink over the way society will adapt to survive the inevitable changes on the horizon. Faced with global shortages, a self-sufficient lifestyle that doesn't depend upon wasteful consumption or the transportation of our basics requirements over large distances looks set to be part of the solution. Visions for sustainable development are starting to look more and more like that of a peasant community in Maramures.

Choice might be the very thing that the peasant lifestyle lacks, an existence which is regulated by the demands of absolute necessity and the rhythm of the seasons. However, it might just become the blueprint for future social arrangements. Instead of chastising them for their inefficiencies, perhaps its time for us, like Sadoveanu, to rediscovered the virtues of the Romanian peasant. You might think it sounds like a hopelessly romantic, outdated ideal. But it's doesn't sound anywhere as near as daft as our current frenzied worship of the free-market will, fifty years down the line.