Nick Reding -- Methland: the death and life of an American small town
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It's a book about the hardship and problems that are becoming more
prevalent in rural and small town America.

And, it contains very personal stories about a small number of
individuals whose lives are connected with and influenced by those
hardships and the struggle against illegal drugs in a small town.

Those hardships circle around (1) illegal drugs, their production,
and their use; and (2) around employment, poor wages, loss of jobs,
and harsh working conditions.

We are going to be faced with a choice between two conflicting
approaches to the changes overtaking the economies in small towns in
the U.S. and changes in employment and work in general: (1) We can
encourage corporations and thereby stimulate the economy producing
more jobs but jobs that pay low wages and have punitive working
conditions.  Or, (2) we can push for better pay and better working
conditions, at the possible expense of economic growth and at the
risk of encouraging corporations to reduce their number of employees
through off-shoring or automation.  Neither of these two options
seems appealing.  What makes this especially galling is that
corporations can use this issue as a ploy to get tax breaks and
other benefits in exchange for not making things worse for workers.
Even workers know that; even they know or at least believe that we
have to allow corporations to use cheap immigrant labor or their
jobs will disappear.

Until recently, we seemed to be mostly allowing corporations to have
their way with respect to wages and regulation.  Now, with the
election of Donald Trump for President of the U.S., we've apparently
decided that this wasn't enough and that we should give corporations
even more of an advantage over workers.

"Methland" can be read as an explanation of why rural small town
America voted for Donald Trump.  There are two ways of looking at
this: (1) They were fed up with the status quo and voted for
effective change.  Or, (2) they voted for someone who will
dramatically increase the power of corporations and they will be
much worse off as a result.  After all, corporations, left to
themselves and unimpeded will do everything they can to reduce labor
costs, to off-shore production, to reduce benefits for workers, and
more.  I'm wondering whether rural, small town America is going to
regret their reckless behavior in this election.

With respect to illegal drugs, Reding gives us lots of information
in several areas: (1) He describes some of the causes of the drug
use and the problems that drug use and drug production causes in a
small, mid-western town.  In part it's because of how difficult it
is to make a living, and how some of the local working conditions,
particularly at the local chicken processing plant, are close to
abusive.  (2) Reding describes some of the local Meth labs, the
horrid conditions they create, and some of the attempts to dismantle
them.  And, (3) there is what Reding calls the DTOs (the drug
trafficking organizations), and his account of how production has
shifted from areas in South America to Mexico, and how the
availability of some of the materials needed to produce drugs has
changed so as to enable production and smuggling on a large scale,
and how the DTOs control entry of drugs across the U.S.-Mexican
border, and more.

This book gives stories that describe the one-man meth labs and the
struggle to combat them and the problems they cause.  But, there is
also a good deal of description of the illegal drug *industry*,
especially that controlled from Mexico.

From "Methland", you get a small glimpse of what has happened to
work in the U.S. for many.  It's a picture where corporations have
an unbalanced amount of power and workers, now that labor unions are
no longer there to protect them, are at the mercy of their
employers.  (And, those corporations have very little mercy.)  We
hear so much about off-shoring and about sending jobs outside the
U.S., but even more important is how automation has eliminated so
many jobs.  And, even more depressing is the understanding that
workers have that if something is done to improve wages and benefits
and working conditions, even to reduce the number of immigrants
willing to work for low wages, it will drive plants and employment
away.

Is it any wonder that there is sufficient hopelessness to drive many
to drug use and addiction.

Reding gives a bit of understanding of the large farm corporations
and the power they have over the supply chain and the influence they
have in the U.S. Federal government.  It's a picture of how to
efficiently produce lots and lots of goods, but it gives us no clue
about how to improve working conditions and wages.  You come away
from reading "Methland" suspecting that big Ag, huge agricultural
corporations are the problem in small, rural towns.

One solution for individuals is to move away from small depressed
towns to larger cities.  But, that means that small towns are left
with fewer people, likely loosing the more capable people, and will
have less and less resources to help those who remain.  And,
besides, big cities have their own problems, especially when they
are flooded with on in-migration from rural areas.

"Methland" is not a happy book, but it is fascinating and
informative.

If you are interested in "Methland", then you might also be
interested in the following: (1) "Strangers in their own land: Anger
and Mourning on the American Right", by Arlie Russell Hochschild;
(2) "Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War",
by Joe Bageant; (3) "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and
Culture in Crisis", by J. D. Vance; and (4) "The New Mind of the
South", by Tracy Thompson.

01/03/2017

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