There is much discussion over the environmental implications of the BP disaster. Rightly so, the blowout holds rank among the worst industrial disasters in environmental history. However, there is little discussion on how such disasters, all across the globe, continue to occur. In the wake of such disasters, there appears to be a rift between the state and big capital. The public often looks to regulators for habitat protection, biodiversity conservation and to levy punishment on the corporate sector. Industrial disasters do create conflict between these institutions, but it is latent. The state-corporate apparatus has ensured big industry will maintain a lock on the energy market. Because of this, the national economy is dependent on large corporate institutions and the conflict is short-lived. The real story is how big capital and state power produce quiescence and uncertainty within the public arena during and after disasters.

What happened in the Gulf is another unfortunate portrayal of glaring inequality. Most coastal communities in the deep south, especially in Louisiana, exhibit a domination of an elite over the non-elite. Local markets are dependent on healthy coastal ecosystems for resource (fisheries) harvesting and beneficial ecosystem services such as flood mitigation, water purification, storm buffering and more. Big oil maintains a strong presence in coastal communities as well, however, creating numerous problems for locals. From “Cancer Alley” to coastal erosion via dredging, big oil wrecks local economies.

So where’s the rebellion? Why is it that such social deprivation and threats to public/environmental health have failed to yield democratic participation? Perhaps it is the existence of a positive feedback loop between power, capital and quiescence.

Quiescence is often used to portray the legitimacy of systems of power and domination. The state seeks social and economic stability and utilizes power to ensure such stability. Because of this, systems of power and domination are maintained not because of their legitimacy, but because of quiescence itself. This is the very nature of power: Maintain the existing order by further centralization. Sociologist John Gaventa, in his book Power and Powerlessness, discusses this phenomenon:

Power is exercised not just upon participants within the decision-making process but also towards the exclusion of certain participants and issues altogether… The most effective and insidious use of power is to prevent such conflict from arising in the first place.

In regards to natural disasters, the prevention of conflict is achieved by the production of uncertainty. This is important, because it is in discourse over ones own socio-economic environment that the true character of a power system is revealed. Anthropologist and disaster expert Gregory Button, in his book Disaster Culture, notes we live in a highly professionalized culture where public debate is pushed aside by privileged arguments. Button writes:

Lay questions, objections and attempts to resolve uncertainty are often dismissed as uninformed, lacking in scientific vigor, irrational, and at times, almost hysteric. One woman whose life had been changed by the TVA ash spill recalled an exchange with a TVA official who avoided answering her questions and dismissed her reasoning. In response, she said, “Why do you treat us as stupid, why do you reject our arguments while upholding yours as the only reasonable ones?” This frustration typifies the kind of rejection and frustration many disaster victims suffer in contesting official versions of reality.

The tools of uncertainty manufacture consent. From disasters such as the TVA ash spill, the BP Horizon incident, or any industrial disaster, the public arena is dismissed while government/industry scientists, state agencies and the corporate sector dominate the discussion. This allows systems of power and domination, as explained by Button, to both define and control the distribution and interpretation of knowledge, while community members are made to feel as if they are arbitrators of uncertainty. Furthermore, Sociologist Max Weber notes that power systems wish to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping knowledge and intention a secret. This allows the elite to hide knowledge and keep their actions protected from criticism. The control of the discussion governs what is understood about disasters — manufactured uncertainty produces quiescence.

As for the BP Horizon blowout, the facts and uncertainties surrounding the disaster reflect these methods. The actual size of the spill is still unknown and until the PNAS publication we did not know the fate of the sequestered crude. The ecological impact of the spill, especially on rare species, such as migratory sea turtles, is now extended to the ocean dwelling habitat. If public discourse of the study ensues, however, some BP spokesperson will talk about how large spills like this are uncommon or pull out the big guns and call the spill “unprecedented.” There will be an ad campaign managed by BP that will discuss all the money and all the good they have done in the wake of the spill. The Environmental Protection Agency will boast a record of strict oversight. Even though the oil was thought to be in the deep ocean, the public will be ensured, by both state and corporate bureaucrats, that environmental contamination will be mitigated and public health will be protected. The same old song and dance that has occurred for the last four years, even though locals have continuously raised concerns over the official narrative. Of course, all of this ignores that oil spills are a very common occurrence and each raise public and environmental health concerns in their own right. Nevertheless, quiescence will remain because of the production of uncertainty.

There is much discussion in political circles, libertarian and otherwise, over the rise of freed markets and alternatives to fossil fuels. These are good discussions to have, and they are important to thrust into the public arena. It is important to keep the market as liberated as possible — this allows new technology and alternative institutions to develop. It is important to remember that recent shifts to adaptive governance and collaborative models for resource use/extraction are an option for local communities. There is much to be said about decentralization these days, and this is a good thing. It reminds us that social power is still in the fight, chipping away at systems of power and domination. It is equally important to know how entrenched authority manufactures consent and works to suppress social progress. On the road to the decentralized society we must understand power and its hurdles to transition.

Social power is the rebellion: it will lead to the end of uncertainty and thus the end of quiescence.

As I left home here in Pernambuco’s capital, Recife, the prevailing sensation was that nothing had changed. Pernambuco is one of the most violent states in the country, and Recife is the 39th most dangerous city in the world, with 36.82 homicides per 100,000 people. When the police function normally, we are in constant peril. Without them, was it actually more dangerous or had little changed?

What actually changed was people’s perceptions. They thought no one could be punished for crimes anymore. People took the streets and plundered. Big retail stores moved their merchandise and were able to protect themselves, but many small businesses lost everything. The situation seemed to have gotten out of control, but government decided to exercise its monopoly of violence radically and put army tanks on the streets. I imagine they hoped to blast some people who were getting away with stolen TV sets — the World Cup is less than a month away, TVs are valuable right now.

But the perception that there weren’t any police was much stronger than reality: The truth is that Pernambuco never actually has a police force. When it does, it’s seen as a threat, not as protection, by 80% of the population. In our everyday lives, we hardly ever feel protected by the police and nothing had changed in that regard on Thursday. If, on any given day, people decided to do the same they did then, they would be able to and would go unpunished. They just haven’t realized their power yet, but the police are nothing but a small group of people, incapable of dealing with a much larger number of people who are not willing to obey them.

The fact that the police stopped working and everything came crashing down so quickly was supposed to show us how essential the police really are, but the message seems to be the very opposite. In Recife, 1,416 people died in 2013 — almost 4 each day. On the 15th, when anomy and anormality supposedly reigned, there were 7 deaths. The police strike should make stop and think for a moment that, ultimately, the Military Police are an exercise in futility, an institution that survives on stated purpose rather than results.

Order only survives when people believe it will survive; if people believe that it is government’s enforcement branch that keeps order, this order will only subsist while government does. Thus, order is not sustained by force, but by culture — and the same goes for rulers. If people, collectively, stop thinking that the police are needed, there will be order and freedom without looting, depredation or deaths. Power is just a public fiction, something that does exist, but which can disappear with a simple change in public opinion.

Ayn Rand would say that power only exists by the sanction of the victim. La Boétie asks us which power our rulers have, if not those we give them. David Hume concludes that power is sustained by little more than opinion; while Gramsci knows that any order is created and maintained by a cultural system that legitimizes it. And, as Lord Varys puts it, on Game of Thrones, “Power resides where men believe it resides.”

On Thursday, people took the power they always had and used it for evil. And, by the end of the day, they decided to hand it over to the police, that announced the end of their strike — but if the people didn’t want to hand power back over, what could the police do? When cops announce their next strike, maybe the people will realize they don’t really need them and will keep on living normally. Because order exists where people believe it exists.

Let us quote from Solomon’s piece:

As the largest Web retailer in the world, Amazon has built its business model on the secure accumulation and analysis of massive personal data. The firm’s Amazon Web Services division gained the CIA contract amid fervent hopes that the collaboration will open up vast new vistas for the further melding of surveillance and warfare.

We can see that corporations can suck up our data in a manner analogous to the government. It’s no surprise that the CIA has found an affinity with Amazon. There is clearly an interwining of state and corporate power here. One that needs to be opposed for the sake of liberty. It isn’t a choice between corporate or state domination. We can and should reject them both.

To quote Solomon again:

A free and independent press is crucial for confronting such dire trends. But structural factors of corporate power continue to undermine the potential of journalism. The Washington Post is a grim case in point.

Six months ago, Jeff Bezos — the CEO and main stakeholder of Amazon — bought the Post. But the newspaper’s ongoing CIA-related coverage does not inform readers that the CIA’s big contract with Amazon is adding to the personal wealth of the Post’s sole owner.

This refusal to make such conflict-of-interest disclosures is much more than journalistic evasion for the sake of appearances. It’s a marker for more consolidation of corporate mega-media power with government power. The leverage from such convergence is becoming ever-less acknowledged or conspicuous as it becomes ever-more routine and dominant.

A free society is harmed by this convergence of state and corporate power. If people are not free to publish damaging things about either institution, both are left off the hook for bad behavior. The punitive potential of both of these institutions is vast and needs to be opposed. People should be free of the power of either. This is a necessary aspect of total freedom. Let us work at making it a reality.

The January 9 industrial disaster that struck West Virginia should raise such reflection in the mountains.

The extractive resource industry has a firm hold on the wild, wonderful, but wounded Appalachians.  The use of eminent domain and compulsory pooling has robbed communities of their cultural and natural heritage. Capital is the authority of the Appalachian coalfields, and has created systemic poverty and mono economies. Instead of prosperity in the commons, the mechanism of authority has spawned tragedy.

Property is theft in Appalachia. The current system is concerned with the well-being of the politically connected corporati instead of the common good — Appalachian communities. This system exists because legal privilege is granted to industry. The development of this socio-economic order is political, as opposed to free and participatory. The current authority in the coalfields, the corporate state, is illegitimate. It is far past time we transition to society free of it.

Appalachia is a region plauged with ecological destruction, where labor is on the decline and persistent class struggle exists. Appalachia is also a place of community, a place where the commons work against these problems. Given the chance a mutual political economy would thrive in Appalachia.

Appalachian life is enriched by common land. Communal areas to this day are still shared for livestock, hunting, root digging, recreation and more. The growth of industry in the region, however, and its subsequent property monopoly has made these traditions difficult to practice. Even family cemeteries are now industrial property — folks need permission to pay their respects to the dead. Common property ownership is now manifesting itself in the form of community land trusts and conservation easements. Common natural resources — water, air, land, and biodiversity — are under direct threat from industry in Appalachia. Such vital natural resources are a public good. They should be neither rivalrous nor excludable. In Appalachia, however, clean air and water are subject to exploitation. It is a privilege to have access to these resources. The coal town of Bud West, Virginia, for example, has not had clean water in over five months.

Reclaiming the commons in Appalachia will allow new markets to develop. Numerous institutions and networks will emerge. In the commons, social power will build anew within the shell of the old. This cannot happen under centralized authority. States and big business are guided by self-interest. The commons are guided by co-operation and mutualism — the natural, biological tendencies of human beings.

Luckily, the transition to a brighter future has already begun.

Small scale, decentralized markets are rising in the Appalachian coalfields. In West Virginia, coal miners who lost their jobs to the mechanization of the industry have started developing environmental markets. Worker coalitions are helping communities save money via efficiency programs. Social movements are working to protect mountain ecology and alleviate poverty. Appalachia is speaking truth to power. Economic transition, solidarity economies, restoration ecology and even more regeneration is coming to the gentle mountains. This regeneration will be fully actualized when property and power are once again where they belong — with the people.