One archeological theory about the collapse of the Maya is based on evidence that they had perfected a bureaucracy of corn. Exhaustive rules governed how corn was grown, distributed and consumed. A rigid hierarchy defined every individual's social position and allotment of corn, and this cultural arrangement lasted almost 700 years.
But when drought and declining soil fertility reduced the corn supply, established procedures no longer worked. One city after another fell until nothing was left but jungle-covered pyramids and toppled stone calendars. On the hillsides above the ruins, small villages grew tiny amounts of corn that allowed lives that were nasty, brutish and short.
The Bush administration's attempts to solve the current American financial crisis have parallels in the throne rooms of Mayan city-states.
"We need more corn," chief financial ministers said to cacao-addled Mayan kings. "Unemployed tortilla makers are rioting in the ball courts. The people on the bottom of our hierarchy aren't getting any corn at all."
"No problem," the kings said. "We'll borrow corn from our Mayan brothers in the other city-states. Look at Chichen Itza. They've got corn. We've sent them tons of corn to pay for the jade jaguar statues and giant stone calendars that their slaves make."
"Chichen Itza won't lend us any more corn until we pay back the corn they've already lent us. Besides, they've got so many slaves that they're eating the huge corn surplus they've built up."
"Then our own slaves must work harder," the kings said, "for less corn. That will bring efficiency into our agricultural economy."
"We tried that," the ministers said. "They keep dying."
"Then we will form an alliance with Tikal and Palenque and march on Chichen Itza and take their hoarded corn away before their slaves eat it all."
"That could work," the ministers said. "We'll equip all our unemployed tortilla-makers with spears, and attack those greedy Chichen-Itzans and get our corn back."
The Mayans must have all had the same idea at the same time, because continuous wars between city-states put impossible demands on an already struggling corn economy. The slaves who grew the corn refused to give it up to government tax collectors and had to be killed. Armies trampled the Mayan cornfields to dust.
The Mayan population crashed. Human sacrifice went from being religious ritual to protein source. Bad things happened to kings whose unemployed tortilla makers were defeated by another king's unemployed tortilla-makers.
Through all of the collapse, kings were still kings. High priests still prayed to Jaguar gods, who were still gods. Bureaucrats still begat bureaucrats. Deep patterns of cultural behavior persisted until death and beyond. If a minister of taxation was killed by angry corn growers, another minister of taxation miraculously took his place.
Mayan history suggests that America has perfected a bureaucracy of money, and that the financial structures that have resulted from this bureaucracy will persist long after the money's gone. There will be a Federal Reserve even when there is no reserve, and not much federal. Bailouts will happen even when there's nothing left to bail. More and more unemployed will be sent to fight more and more wars. The people on the bottom of the hierarchy will be squeezed so normal life can go on for those at the top.
Through it all, there will be a relentless reduction in the supply of wealth. The future archeologists that ponder the ruins of small city-states in the desert of North America will know that even as the increasing price of oil siphoned money out of the American financial system, its cultural rituals survived far longer than they should have. Completed but unused airports will be seen as the expensive monuments of a quasi-religious cargo cult. Ruined amphitheaters and sports complexes will be identified as sites of human sacrifice, where high priests of losing financial-services companies had their hearts torn out and eaten by the high priests of winning financial-services companies. Money will have remained a god even in its absence.
Those future archaeologists will move sand, not jungle, to uncover the works of the Americans. Our drought will have been longer and more severe, aided by the CO2 created by burning the last remaining fossil fuels. Our extensive canal system will have been buried under dunes. Here and there, shifting sands will reveal objects of ancient worship: BMWs, Mercedes and the occasional Jaguar.
