about it. In the 1990s a Ministry of Ecology was created, María Julia Alsogaray was named minister, and a huge budget was allocated. The first and most important charge of this ministry was to clean up the Riachuelo. Fast forward to the time of this writing in 2016, and the river is as polluted as ever. The minister, however, acquired an opulent lifestyle and numerous luxury properties. She was indicted, but wound up never being convicted. She gave some, but not all of what she took, back to the government. Any Argentine will tell you that the entire episode is typical of what goes on down there. I include this historical tidbit to make clear that I am quite aware that the US is not the only country with severe ecological problems that are not being addressed because of faith in the business model for everything and greed. As a matter of fact, I realize that none of the problems arising from the themes of US culture I discuss is unique to the US. Please bear this in mind in the following sections.
One of the great privileges of being from a missionary family has been the opportunity to travel. Three times I traveled from the US to Buenos Aires by ship. I was too small to remember the first voyage now, aside from two or three hazy scenes. It left from New York City. The other times we embarked in New Orleans. The last time I was about to turn fifteen years old. I retain a vivid memory of spending the first afternoon and part of the evening after dark sitting to starboard and watching the endless marshlands go by as we floated gently down the Mississippi toward the Gulf of Mexico. Out of the blackness, from time to time, a light emerged: people lived there.
Those marshlands are currently receding at an alarming rate. Since the 70s I have read in National Geographic stories, heard on radio, and seen on television news about the disappearance of the delta. Those spits of land are built up by silt deposited by the mighty river as it slows upon meeting the Gulf. They are home to an astounding variety of plant and animal life and essential to the survival of numerous species, especially avian. It is one of the country’s most important ecosystems. There are two reasons for the progressive and rapid loss of these essential land masses. First, the Corps of Army Engineers put in some canals and levies to change the course of the river at a number of points, ostensibly to protect New Orleans from flooding and to facilitate ocean liner traffic. The river runs much faster in the canals and does not deposit its life-giving load of silt to replenish what is washed away by the action of the waves of the Gulf. In addition, the state has allowed extensive drilling for petroleum all up and down those lands and the building of pipelines to carry the oil. The crisscrossing pipelines also disturb the silt deposition. The result is an ecological disaster of major proportions. Not only is there disruption of the biological balance, but the real protection of New Orleans from hurricanes has been removed. When Katrina hit, if there had been no canals or pipelines, the marshes, which would have reached far beyond where they are now, would have absorbed most of the wave surge and the city would have been relatively spared.
New Orleans was devastated by a combination of short-sighted engineering and greed which cared not for what happened to anyone as a result of all the oil-drilling activity. Of course a government of the people, by the people, and for the people could well set limits to petroleum extraction and achieve a balance between commerce and nature. However, since we believe that business is essentially good, not enough Americans question what is being done. Those who question are accused of being naive and anti-business. For more on the effects of oil exploitation in southern Louisiana, see Grisham (256-7). The story, of course, is fictional, but Grisham’s description of the Mississippi delta and what has happened to it is not.
In Argentina, the inability to deal with the excess power dealt by the wealthy, who then skim money for themselves from the top, has to do with its very different colonial past. When Spain reconquered the last Moorish stronghold in the late fifteenth century, they finally were able to set up a feudal society and economy at the very time the feudal system was collapsing in the rest of western Europe because the world as it was no longer matched the medieval world view. Spain was having nothing of it. As it moved to conquer the New World, it set up viceroyalties to represent the crown over large areas (New Spain, Peru, the River Plate, and so on). The viceroys had governors under them, who in turn were above the landholders. The landholders had slaves in some areas, native peoples in encomiendas in others, and semi-serfs yet in others. The positions of viceroy and governor were awarded to the highest bidder and were granted to them and their families in perpetuity. As the “Catholic King and Queen” of Spain squeezed whatever money they could by selling important offices, it was understood all around that the purpose of holding office was to garner as much money as possible, legally through taxes and illegally through other means to the benefit of office holders and their families for as long as possible. This is a cultural theme of Latin America. The people hope their leaders will be ethical and wise, but the leaders and the people expect them in reality to siphon as much money off the system as they can get away with (Michener). That explains why the Riachuelo did not get cleaned out but the Ministry of Ecology did.
In the US, it is the cultural theme of business being good and that taxing it and regulating it are bad which keeps us from dealing with the excesses practiced by certain corporations and wealthy individuals. The two countries have similar effects resulting from different cultural themes and assumptions.
I heard a recent president offer the following bit of non-logic on the radio: “America has the most modern factories and American workers are the most productive in the world; so all countries should have free markets.” No one questioned him, in spite of the fact that he adduced two highly questionable premises, provided no middle term, and slipped in a non-sequitur for a conclusion. It just sounds pro-business so it must be right. Now, Adam Smith had a lot to say about free markets, but his free market was a recurring event in which people gathered to bring their animals, farm produce, and manufactured (meaning hand-made, not industrial) goods to sell. The potential buyers haggled for a price, finally settling on a sum agreeable to them and the sellers. In such a situation, supply and demand establish a reasonable price. Americans, however, have lost the will to haggle over prices. In every commercial establishment, the prices are preset and you take them or leave them. That is not a free market. Having a lot of competing businesses selling a product helps, as the buyer can find where to get the best price. On the other hand, when you have only two major booksellers, for example, one on line and one in physical stores plus on line, the need for the companies to offer low prices on books is much reduced. The same is true for office products, art supplies, food, and so on.
Smith was rightly concerned with showing that the free markets of his time (the 18th century) were superior to mercantilism, which was the widely practiced control of commerce by the Crown, which determined who could produce what, where the products could be sold, and at what price. This system obligated, in the English colonies, that all products of the colonies go to England, and not be sold to any other country. In the Spanish colonies, all the goods, especially mineral, produced, say, by the Viceroyalty of the River Plate (now Argentina and Uruguay) were required to go by land to Peru, then by ship to Mexico, and finally from Mexico (after traveling over land) shipped to Spain. Buenos Aires was so far from Spain as to make the system impractical.
In fact, in the British colonies of North America, it was taxation of tea without representation in Parliament and the requirement that all North American colonial products and commodities be sold to England and nowhere else, added to the intransigence and petulance of the king, that pushed the colonists to rebellion. This means that neither current financial markets nor the self-styled “Tea Party Movement” of 21st century US politics has anything to do with the issues Adam Smith wrote about or with the grievances of British subjects in the colonies. If we do not know our history, we are prey to manipulation by Wall Street, by politicians, and by advertising. That is why I am writing this book.
Financial markets are something else altogether. Such markets offer no products, only potential profits for speculative investors. They have a legitimate place when operating properly, but turn to speculation if not regulated. Doing the will of the corporations which got them elected, our politicians sing the praises of free financial markets. They will self-regulate, they said, if not interfered with. The result of course was the great crash of 2008, which came close to sending us into another Great Depression. What is forgotten in all the propaganda is that the Constitution gives the Federal Government the responsibility to regulate interstate commerce, which most commerce at present is.
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