On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:26:33 -0500, Day Brown <daybrown@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>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.
Reflecting on your writings, I find the most terrifying aspects
in the present situation, are the stupidity, incompetence,
corruption, and apparent insanity of the managing or ruling
elites, or elites to be.
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