I sympathize Hardpan. Reading Jared Diamond's latest, "Collapse" I
notice that when the resource base is maxed, the power elites, rather
than cutting back to buy time to look for solutions, increase their
exploitation of all lower cl***** so as to keep increasing the perks
and luxury they've enjoyed to give the illusion that "progress" continues.
Course, there is the unintended effect on increasing stress on the
middle class- the workers who maintain the infrastructure you refer to.
They work longer hours for less pay because of the power elite
exploitation.
Machiavelli and Gibbon picked up on this. They saw that the aristocracy
encouraged immigration to Rome from tribes that lacked strong republican
traditions to flood the market with workers to drive wages down. They
also funded the campaigns of demagogues pandering to ethnicity and
religion, promising one thing to them in their own language, but saying
something else in Latin to the Romans.
Meanwhile the senate reduced the taxes on the rich and increased them on
everyone else. Mach saw this a lot, noting how, since a republic cannot
tax the rich, and the lower cl***** are soon bankrupt, that they then
borrow the money from the rich to run the government. Which works until
some creditor sees the tax base will no longer the interest, much less
pay off the loans. Somebody either no longer has the money to lend, or
refuses, and that crashes the whole system.
There's no money to pay the military. Food prices rise, there are riots
in the streets, and the proverbial schitt hits the fan. When this came
down in Rome, Caesar had just finished looting Gaul, so he had the money
to pay his own troops and took over. Mach notes how some demagogue will
arise from among the people to take over, the military seeing where the
follower****p is and going along.
Either way, the new leader seizes the assets of the rich to gratify the
instinct for revenge from the lower cl***** trying to rebalance the
books. Which dont work all that well because while the rich provide a
very high cost of management, no management at all produces famine.
The recent "stimulus package" is an attempt by the power elite to return
some of the money they've extracted from the lower cl*****. Machiavelli
says corrupt republics always respond to crisis too little, too late. We
will see. The US economy has been lucky and endured stress before.
But we may see the dismantling of the Untied States of Denial such as we
see so often in the collapse of empire. "Constant Battles" says that the
dissolution breaks down in different degrees in different areas. Jared
Diamond, in "Collapse" shows how those areas that have minorities tend
to have demagogues arise scapegoating, whereas those with homogeneous
populations, lacking an easy target, pull together to find solutions.
Thus, when the USSR collapsed, the Southern multi-ethnic Red states who
were so dependent on contracts from an obsolete military industrial
complex and factory farms (agribusiness) saw demagogry, genocide, and
famine. But the homogeneous NW Coast Blue Baltic States threw out the
Soviet bureaucrats, and the lights in Riga, Tallin, and Vilna didnt even
blink. In both cases the high cost of management was eliminated, but in
the latter, local management effectively replaced the power elite.
If the US economy does not get dynamic visionary leader****p that sees
the problems you refer to, then the system is likely to fragment; the
only vote you have which counts is that you make with your feet, or a
U-haul. Some states and communities have more rational populations, as
seen in the crime and education statistics, and will be far more likely
to figure out how to manage their own resource base and infrastructure.
Some do not, and you can expect street gangs to turn into goon squads
that terrorize under the charismatic leader****p of an aggressive alpha
male. Unless you are that male, you dont wanna be there.
|
