War as a method to dispose excess wealth

We all live in a system that needs to grow to survive.
A big company motto is "go big or go home". Another similar motto is "Get big or die trying".
We all "need" the bigger, better, newer thing. We buy a new car, we buy a new computer, a new cellphone.
We buy new clothes and shoes, not because the old ones have holes in them but because "fashion" changes every season.
And all this is OK. We live within a consumer driven economy, so we play by its rules. We need to consume so that the economy grows and we can keep living in "our way of life".
But what happens when the economy cannot grow anymore, cannot find new markets or there just isn't enough money to go around?
What happens when everyone already has one, two or three cars, computers, cellphones?
What happens when for political or philosophical or moral or whatever reasons we as a society decide to consume less?
Disaster! Growth stops. Company earnings diminish. Stock value falls. The economy "cools down". Companies bankrupt. Factories close down, people get fired. The number of unemployed grows.
Now, less people can afford to buy and sustain the economy. More companies, smaller ones, close. We enter a financial crisis.

Do you know what we do if we have a production of a bunch of stuff that nobody wants?
Do we give it up for free? no, because this would drive the prices down.
Do we store the stuff in a box and get it out whenever someone will want it? no, because of the cost of storing and because when people will need it, it may be spoiled, broken or outdated.
What we do with such stuff is DESTROY IT. If it is perishable, we bury it, if not we burn it. If we can "recycle" it then we scrap it.

And now, after reading all this... maybe you have an idea of how to destroy huge quantities of stuff... burn whole cities of stuff, demolish whole infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, airports, factories etc) of a country, so we can build it again. Not yet?

OK... another idea. What if we create a whole new category of stuff and label it "this is stuff to destroy". Build factories to make stuff for it to be destroyed, make big companies that sell this stuff. Make this stuff REALLY EXPENSIVE, so that this kind of companies keep growing.
And make this stuff easy to destroy. Build huge piles of this stuff and then press a button and BANG! it is gone!

Well, this industry exists. It is called DEFENSE industry. And the self-destructing stuff is called WEAPONS. And the method of destroying cities and infrastructure is called WAR.

So, as you see, we are already using all this, as a method to keep the economy growing without ever stopping.

Crisis by design

this "crisis" we are facing is a crisis by design.
It was designed in a higher level and was implemented by mechanisms designed to do just that.
Did the crisis came out of control? no, of course not.
Is the crisis achieving whatever it was designed for? not yet!
What can we do about it? nothing really, as long as we play within the rules of the current economy. The players are too strong.
But lets take it all step by step, so we can understand it. I will not go deep in this post but I will provide ideas throughout this blog and as long as I can keep posting.
Carl Marx wrote in "Das Kapital" (Volume III, Chapter 15) about crisis and how it is really a part of the capitalist system. Although I don't really agree, I know that the people in charge of the global economy have studied Marx and most of them believe that it is so. A crisis is a time for great profits and also it is a time to "correct" errors that accumulate in the system and it works like a system restart for the economy. While this may be true, the impact of a "system restart" on the lives of the people who live in the economy is huge.
We really don't care if some company in another country closes down and some rich people lose some money on worthless stock, but we care if there is no food available in the stores or if we lose rights we thought that we had granted (schools, public transportation, pensions, healthcare etc)
During my lifetime I see a crisis hitting every decade more or less, and before its impact is through, the next crisis comes. I still remember in the early 70's the dark cities that had to shut down public lights because of the "oil crisis". I remember the hordes of unemployed people in Thatcherite England, Punk music and Hooligans. I remember Wall Street meltdown and "Black Monday". I even remember the local (Greek) stock market breakdown. So, crisis is nothing new.

The new thing about "this" crisis is that it is Global. Why? because the economy is global.