The Supermarket End Is Near

This is the original piece submitted to a local newspaper in early Summer 2006; and referred to in the 12/6/08 posting.


The supermarket phenomenon is unsustainable and possesses a point-certain for collapse. Its fate is directly tied to crude oil and natural gas reserves and the growing worldwide resistance to U.S. militarism and economic hegemony. The supermarket is at every level of operation, from corporate agriculture, transportation, facility construction and maintenance, totally dependent upon(and wildly wasteful of)vast amounts of energy. As reserves diminish, rising energy costs will bring an end to the supermarket extravaganza! It is patterned after the "post exchange"(PX)outlets on military bases during World War II, serving the needs of millions of personnel stationed worldwide. The first supermarket in my boyhood hometown was called "PX Market", and was probably owned by returned GIs. To this day, the supermarket still owes its existence to U.S. hegemony that took hold when the nation emerged victoriously from the war as the leading neocolonial power. In an earlier era, the modus operandi for exploitation of so-called "undeveloped" countries(with their peoples of color)for cheap labor and the plunder of their markets and natural resources was called colonialism--the direct physical occupation of a nation. The former British system in India was the classic model. Today, the "developing" nations are indirectly occupied through financial means and military intimidation. Loan debt and structural adjustments imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank destroy national sovereignty, create and perpetuate poverty and hunger. Coercive "Free Trade" agreements support American corporate interests, purely and simply. Threats of trade sanctions,regime change and pre-emptive wars keep these countries under the U.S. thumb, and facilitates the steady supply of food stuffs from around the Empire " to supermarket shelves. Perhaps the supermarket inventory, the ill-gotten cornucopia from hither and yon, is a pay-off, part of the Quid Pro Quo, for our support of U.S. foreign policy and ignoring its concomitant crudities. In large part, what we find on market shelves could be called "booty" because its procurement is made possible by U.S. domination and perpetual wars against alternative economic and political systems. But, it should be remembered that all empires eventually come to an end. U.S. power is already well into its decline. The U.S. dollar is over-valued because a long-standing agreement ensures that Saudi crude oil sales are in that currency. When the House of Saud falls, and it will, the new regime will conduct sales in Eurodollars. This will instantly devalue the U.S. dollar and bring Wall Street down, for keeps. Because the United States is now a debtor nation, the government will not be able to bailout Wall Street, as it did in the Great Depression. With such an event, most everyone will be standing in soup lines, and supermarkets will have already gone out of business. One of the great movements of our time aims to create sustainable lifestyles by minimizing dependency on non-renewable resources, such as fossil fuels, and by making as small a human footprint upon the environment, "the earth-entire", as possible. I am thinking of the intiguing Gaia Hypothesis(or Theory),that the earth in its totality is very much a living entity. Any negative impact in one area can endanger the whole, the globe's fragile equilibrium. Since the supermarket is by every measure unsustainable and with its close connections to U.S. neocolonialism and militarism, why should we continue our patronage, of what is largely an absurd corporate scheme? Is it not time to objectively evaluate our grocery shopping and eating habits? If we do not take the initiative now, decisions will be made for us when the supermarket phenomenon comes to an ignoble end.