Mariner has leaned heavily on the horse race metaphor. It helps provide direction and simplifies objectives. The element that changes dramatically when HORSE #3 enters the race is the track itself. It has been easy to correlate the requirements for winning with HORSE #1 and #2 – they are owned by the same stable: The United States. The track is identical for both horses. HORSE#3, however, is owned by a different stable: Planet Earth. The track is unfamiliar to the US stable. Given today’s circumstances, to win the race the US stable must run on an unfamiliar track.

There are familiar attributes in HORSE #3. All three horses are focused on consumption of resources; all are concerned about survival; all are concerned about the grand order of things. What distinguishes each horse is the manner in which each horse runs the race.

HORSE #1 runs by modifying legislation, shoring up cultural unity and establishing common purpose.

HORSE #2 runs by investing in financial partners who will comprise an international market/GDP liaison.

HORSE#3 runs by utilizing planetary resources such as atmospheric temperature, biosphere adaptation, weather patterns, tides, volcanoes, earthquakes and similar physical characteristics. (When evaluating HORSE #3, there is a tendency to push measurement to infinity, that is, one feels the urge to jump off the track and frolic in the infield. If one’s thoughts seem to require a consultation with Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein or Harry Emerson Fosdick, the scale is too grand.)

Perhaps not very scientific but the three-horse race is all about the fact that the US stable has been borrowing hay from the Planet Earth stable and not ever paying for it. The cost to run this three-horse race is very, very high; without a good racing strategy, the US stable (and other national stables) could go bankrupt.

Addressing the issues more directly, humans have been releasing carbon dioxide in volumes so huge that they have interrupted the naturally very slow Carbon cycle typical of the Earth’s planetary behavior. Spiking the planet with Carbon Dioxide is like giving someone methamphetamine. Consequently, glaciers are melting, oceans are rising, air is heating, weather is changing dramatically and earthquakes are more active.[1]

֎ The planet is so energized that in the US alone 162 million people — nearly 1 in 2 — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. 1 in 12 Americans in the Southern half of the country will move toward California, the Mountain West or the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences alone.

֎ Eight of the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas — Miami, New York and Boston among them — will be profoundly altered, indirectly affecting some 50 million people.

֎ Ten fastest-sinking coastal cities (2015 to 2020)
Tianjin, China 5.22 cm per year
Semarang, Indonesia 3.96
Jakarta, Indonesia 3.44
Shanghai, China 2.94
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2.81
Hanoi, Vietnam 2.44
Chittagong, Bangladesh 2.35
Kobe, Japan 2.26
Kerala, India 1.96
Houston, USA 1.95

To translate the impact into dollars, the cost of repairing damage from hurricanes, floods, fires and drought in the US has risen. Climate change has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $350 billion over the past decade, according to a report released last year from nonpartisan federal watchdog the Government Accountability Office. By 2050, that figure will be $35 billion per year. Costs include clean up and disaster assistance caused by flooding and storms, which are set to increase under rising temperatures. Not taken into account are the shifts in climate which will severely impact agricultural production.

So entry fees for this three-horse race are exorbitant. They are large enough for every nation on the planet to be forced to reassess budgets. What comes first, war or flooding? What is more important, plutocracy or feeding citizens? What’s more important, space budgets or rebuilding New York City and Miami?

Finally, given the objectives of all three horses, will the US stable win anything?

Ancient Mariner

[1] If the reader wants to have a deeper understanding of the Carbon cycle, check out https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle

There is precedent for a tool designed to develop the integrated marketing schemes that will emerge in the near future:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a proposed trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States. Participants signed the agreement on February 4, 2016.

As written, the TPP had serious flaws that left human rights issues at risk. Congress was not willing to sign the agreement as it stood; renegotiation would be necessary. After taking office, newly elected President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in January, 2017.

The remaining nations signed a reworked agreement called ‘Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (CPA) that went into effect in December, 2018. The eleven signatories have combined economies representing 13.4 percent of Global Domestic Product (GDP).

The issue at hand is the cost and political transition of such agreements. Every member nation must adjust government budgets, labor laws and have a member nation who can underwrite the cost of setting up productivity, legislation and buying off resistance. Without the US, the CPA moves slowly and cannot make competitive changes to the world market. Hence the importance of China, India and the US as anchors for these large international markets.

Using South America as an example, several dictatorships with failing economies must be rescued; several failed nations in Central America, the Gulf and Caribbean (including Cuba) must be propped up with renewed, functioning cultures and economies. This strategy cannot begin until HORSE #1 creates a more caring attitude toward South America and Hispanics in general. Today Congress and the President would rather spend billions on a failed and eternal immigration issue rather than go to the source nations and make them economic partners, thereby eliminating the cause of excessive immigration in the first place. China has a head start –

The race is on.

Ancient Mariner

When HORSE #2 is examined, one discovers that the three horses have more in common than expected and may, in fact, be traced back to the same genetic source. HORSE #1 is about democracy and HORSE #2 is about economics; both are about capitalism. Both are about the democratic ethics of a unified and principled nation leading the world in fair and equitable market management.

At the starting gate, a great deal can be identified about track conditions. China, with its Belt and Road economic strategy, is focused on smaller neighbors along the Pacific Rim and a large swath of Eurasia including several ‘stan’ nations. A sea version loops around India into the Indian Ocean and to the east coast of Africa – 60 nations in all.

India, troubled at the moment by conflicts similar to those in the US, eventually may get it together, displace China’s sea strategy and may even dominate the Middle East economy.

Europe and China are investing heavily in African commerce.

This leaves South America, Pacific alliances including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico and Japan and presumably a greatly enhanced presence in South America as fertile economic ground to be developed by the US.

Coming out of the gate, HORSES #1 and #2 require a common unity of purpose. Winning the race requires compassionate assistance to potential nations; winning requires wise and significant investment in the economics of potential nations; winning requires an air of successful cooperation with fellow partners.

Does current prejudice against Hispanic people and governments help? Does pulling manufacturing back onto US soil help? Does prejudice against Asian nationals help? Does the frozen, nontaxable wealth of the oligarchs help? Frankly, if HORSE #2 has any chance of winning, it will be because HORSE #1 got wise and developed a unified and principled nation.

Mariner calls the big three nations the ‘Sumo League’. Each nation had better come to the tournament healthy, well endowed, and have its internal affairs in order.

Ancient Mariner

[The reader may recall that mariner has decided not to bother with the ongoing drama and iterative accounting of every day, commercially sponsored, viewer-rating-hungry news. Instead he has chosen three critically important issues to review: 1, will democracy survive; 2, will the United States remain a world power in a new global economy; 3, what is the impact of global warming.

As is his wont, mariner has packaged the three issues in a metaphor as a three-horse race. Each horse receives a definition, current circumstances and possible impact on life in the US and around the world. To date, mariner has defined the three-horse metaphor and described the current circumstances of HORSE #1: Will democracy survive?

In this post, mariner looks at possible tools and modifications that may sustain democracy, that is, lead to a win for HORSE #1.]

– – – –

Possible tools for HORSE #1

Mariner cited several social examples that showed it is not the high-standards of ethics and policy in the Constitution that steer the nation. In fact, dozens of local, unabashed selfish cultural standards control the US political world, ignoring both original and modified language in the Constitution.

Over time, Atlantic Magazine has focused on this issue from different directions. One very dramatic idea that may bring behavior of the US more in line with the spirit of the Constitution is to redefine the term ‘Republic’ in the phrase, “The United States is a democratic Federal Republic”. Today, the term ‘republic’ alludes to the independently and publicly ruled states that comprise the United States. Could there be regional ‘states’ that more closely represent the regional cultures that today ignore the Constitution?

֎ Mariner observes that the Indigenous Indian treaties set a precedent for this concept. Would it be better if Dixie had a treaty relationship with the US Constitution that would allow the region to manage its own culture? A good example already underway is abortion, clearly a different ethic depending on the region of the nation.

Regional history for the US is extremely different for different areas. For example, the racist south is steeped in slavery and defensive eras where Indians and Hispanic immigration were perceived as threats. Then there’s the cowboy west, based on cattle economy and scant law enforcement which still is reflected today (Change cattle to oil and one can understand the risk faced by Wyoming Representative Liz Chaney).

Certainly the West Coast has its own idiosyncrasies, much more liberal than the cowboy mountains. How about the plains which even today have a staid agricultural economy with a no frills culture? And of course the ancient Northeast with New York; big business is the standard and money talks.

֎ Another republic model to consider is the European Union. The historical difference is that nations in the EU already existed as independent nations and already ruled their own culture. The new piece was a common money system – the Euro. There have been issues as member nations have suffered economic ups and downs which stretch the financial dependencies between the members. Today, England is considering dropping out of the common euro because of an imbalance in costs and trade agreements. Germany as well complains about supporting the EU more than other members.

An interesting conjecture for the future if the US adopts the EU model: California alone has a GDP rank close to England’s. What if California became disgruntled and decided to leave the US economy and be its own independent country? Further, would the US regions, which differ mightily when it comes to GDP, have the same conflicts the EU has balancing economies? Roughly speaking, the Confederate states lag behind the Union states with 22 percent less GDP.

A political conflict is emerging as several eastern members, the largest is Turkey, are eroding the democracy requirement to be an EU member and introducing autocratic rule. Mariner definitely sees that happening among the red states in the US.

So mariner leaves the regional solution in the hands of the readers for further contemplation. Would allowing regional cultural management, that is, mini-constitutions, save the United States? Anti-abortionists and the Republican Party think so – even to overturning US Constitutional election language and eliminating open election of representatives to the Electoral College.

Next: HORSE #2 at the starting Gate

Ancient Mariner