On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:58:15 -0700, Sir Frederick
<mmcneill@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>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.
Indeed so. Like the old saying says: "power corrupts" and apparently
it also causes many "leaders" to go completely mad, it would seem.
Under a "democracy" such as we currently are taught we have, I see the
same behaviors with the "voters". For instance, I see that madness
with the sup****ters of the mostly likely candidate to win in November
2008, that being Mr. Obama, of course.
To read what many democrats seem to believe here on the "internets",
he is the savior of us all, as if he can make cheap energy appear out
of nowhere, bring well paying American jobs back home from Communist
China and elsewhere and boost the economy back to what it was in the
late 1990's.
Needless to say that is not going to happen, but no one ever said
most people had the intelligence to figure simple matters like that
out in advance.
IMO, it's only by our continual breeding of more humans, thus
leading to the overpopulation of this planet, and many of the
problem we currently have that stem from that, that mankind
is still here and still making life hell for each other, like always.
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