"Alongside Night" is a book by J. Neil Schulman about a not-so-distant future that predicted (from the standpoint of 1979) the collapse of the United States government. A lot of people are talking about this book because of the predictions and ideas offered by the author.
I think it is far more useful to explore what Schulman could not have predicted. This is not a criticism in the slightest. To explore what he could not predict is a useful venture because it helps us realize how much worse things really are for the US, economically.
A few key things he did not predict was the importance of the IMF and the World Bank. They existed in 1979, but I believe their importance to the US strategic interests were missed by the author.
The IMF and the World Bank organizations have allowed the US government to effectively export its inflation over to third world nations. Failing to predict this is not an indictment of Schulman's other prediction. But it does serve to increase the time frame in ways he perhaps didn't expect.
The exact mechanism the IMF and the World Bank use to export inflation is simple. They allow the Federal Reserve to monetize foreign debt obligations. Do this in enough countries, and the aggregate volume of dollars is absorbed by them, which allows the US to benefit. As the dollar's use expands beyond the borders of the US, demand continues to rise. The net effect is to keep inflation at bay while it wrecks the economies of nations that accept the excess dollars. That is so sick, if you really sit down and think about it.
Without the IMF and the World Bank, it would have been more difficult for the US to enforce its hegemony across the world. This is another aspect to our future Schulman failed to predict. US hegemony is basically the idea that US interests trump the interest of other nations. It is backed by the US military and enforced by threats of war.
The role of US hegemony is a very simple concept too. It means that what the US says goes. If a country decides to buck the system, they get put in the corner (e.g. Cuba or North Korea). What does it mean to buck the system? Well, for one, it means not dealing in dollars. The primary way to get on the bad side of US foreign policy is to either A) not buy debt from the US or B) not accept US credit.
Hyperinflation was a key thematic element in Alongside Night. It was the reason people used "New Dollars" in the book. As a back-story, some time before the events in the book, there is a currency crisis that forces the government to issue a new currency, hence, New Dollars. The New Dollars are apparently blue instead of green.
There is also a stable currency in the book, issued by what is essentially the EU. Schulman's fictional version of the Euro is a gold backed currency, while in real life, the Euro is only partially backed by gold (for the time being).
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McKenzie,
ReplyDeleteYou're right on target about the IMF and the U.S. hegemony exporting inflation to other countries as a means of extending its dominance. It's a classic Ponzi scheme which depends on a supply of new victims.
But eventually this Ponzi scheme, like all others, runs out of victims, and collapses. We're fast approaching that point now, and the way you can tell is that the federal debt on the books is greater than the tax revenue that can be taken in to service that debt. So the debt has to be monetized and the U.S. is running out of foreigners to holds its devalued currency. That's the moment my novel starts.
Although the first publisher in 1979 insisted on putting a year on the book cover, it was not my idea and I never identified a "when" in the text of the novel itself. But I did know I wanted my book still to be relevant after the first publisher's chosen date -- 1999 -- and I turned out to be right.
Cheers!
J. Neil Schulman
P.S. Anyone can download a PDF edition of Alongside Night for free at http://www.alongsidenight.net.
Wow, thank you for posting your thoughts to my blog, Mr. Schulman. I showed your comments to teacher and got an automatic A as result. :D
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