The economics of empire are fairly well understood. Persia for example, conquered the surrounding people, because it meant those people paid tribute to Persia. The cost of conquest was covered by the initial booty, at least in theory. Tribute was calculated on the ability to pay and the cost of defending the new land. While ego certainly played a major role in empire building, the economics were also a factor. In agrarian society, land was the store of wealth, so acquiring new lands was how a people got rich.
This is the reason empires preferred to negotiate with potential new vassals, rather than just invade. It made the math predictable. The initial conquests were all about the warrior spirit or maybe old grudges, but as an empire matured, it was about economics. If a city-state on the Aegean, for example, was willing to submit to Persia without a fight, the cost of conquest was easy to calculate. Not only that, it lowered the cost of maintaining the relationship, as the new vassal would be cooperative.
This has been the rule of empire since the first empire. The Romans conquered the Italian peninsula because of age old conflicts with the neighboring people. They conquered the Mediterranean because it made them rich. The British Empire was a purely financial empire, as were all of the colonial empires. There were rivalries between the European powers, for sure, but their main motivation was economic. Conquering the New World and Africa was all about enriching the conquerors.
There has always been another element to the economics of empire and that is the nature of rule. Empires have always been defined by personal rule. A ruling family or maybe a ruling tribe, sat atop the system. They owned lands themselves and treated their conquests as personal property, even if they were not defined so legally. When new lands were acquired, the emperor or king got his cut first. Then the rest was distributed to his lieutenants and supporters down to the soldiers themselves.
Personal rule means personal responsibility. Darius, the Persian emperor, had a personal stake in the welfare of his vassals. To simply loot them would be like a shepherd skinning his flock, rather than shearing them. The economics of empire have always been the same as the economics of monarchy. The people at the top must treat their vassal states as they would treat their own property, which means they have a stake in their prosperity and therefore a motivation to preserve the value of the conquest.
America is the first democratic empire. The British Empire had democratic elements, like a parliament and limited suffrage, but it was a long way from liberal democracy, as we currently define it. By the time liberal democracy swept the West in the first half of the last century, the British Empire was in steep decline. That process was the result of America rising to dominate the West and eventually become the global hegemon. America elected to conquer the world in order to spread democracy.
Democracy, of course, turns the ruling class of a country into renters. Unlike an owner, a monarch for example, the office holders in a democracy are in it for short term profit. The next election could find them back in the dreaded private sector. In order to hedge against that eventuality, they must convert as much private property into public property, in order to distribute it to friends of government. Democracy is just a formalized version of tragedy of the commons, that always ends in it murdering itself.
The question then is how a democratic empire can survive, when the ruling elite of that empire are motivated to loot the empire. In the Cold War, this was not a consideration, because the other side was a similar empire build around communism, which is just the material implementation of democracy. The natural inclination of both systems to loot themselves was checked by the very real threat of nuclear annihilation. The commies invested in territorial integrity, while the West invested in their economies.
The collapse of the Soviet Empire is something that gets little attention, as it is just assume to have been inevitable. Communism, however, shares something with liberal democracy. The people at the top have no incentive to invest in society. The Soviets did not develop their social and human capital. Instead, it ruthlessly exploited it, along with the natural resources of the territory. The Soviet system was like a renter using the furniture for firewood. When the energy markets collapsed, the Soviets collapsed.
Liberal democratic empire, rather than strip mine natural resources from the land, monetizes social capital through cost shifting. For example, business brings in foreign workers to suppress wages, but then dumps those workers into the surrounding community. Their cost of support consumes the social capital of that community through corruption of local institutions, increases in crime and social alienation. In other words, the cost of cheap goods is the loss of community and local control.
Another aspect of the exploitative economics of liberal democratic empire is how America strip mines foreign lands of their human capital. Silicon Valley, for example, is majority non-white. The best minds from around the world are recruited to the economic centers of the empire. Spend time around the Imperial Capital and it is not only a foreign country, it is an alien country. It is nothing like the rest of the empire. That’s because it is a collection point for foreign elites serving the empire.
What collapsed the Soviet system was the same as with any economic enterprise. The cost of maintaining it exceeded the benefits of maintaining it. The Soviets ran out of cash to pay their bills and went bankrupt. The Soviets had to subsidize the vassal states in order for the local elites to remain in power. They also had to spend on security forces to keep those local elites from getting any ideas. The cost of doing those things eventually exceeded the proceeds of natural resource extraction.
In the American empire, a different crisis is brewing. The destruction of social capital has reached a point where the middle class is collapsing. Inequality has never been higher, but it promises to soar as the Baby Boom generation ages off and their assets are consumed by the state. The proliferation of private debt to provide the illusion of prosperity and mask the loss of social capital, has beggared the young. The next generation is guaranteed to have a lower standard of living than their parents.
The collapse of social capital is surely one cause of the decline in entrepreneurship. To start a business is to take a risk. Having social support not only mitigates the cost of failure, it encourages risk taking. As capital, social and human, has been collected into the control of an increasingly narrow elite, entrepreneurship has declined while overall leverage has grown. The rentier system of liberal democracy, has turned the ruling elites into renters, using up resources without replacing them.
The Russian implementation of democratic communism in an empire became unstable when the proceeds from energy sales could not cover the cost of empire. Like a business with a negative cash flow, it simply ran out of money and collapsed. It’s tempting to think something similar happens in America. After all, government debt at all levels is staggering and is accelerating. That’s a mistake, however, as the state is no longer in control of the empire. Control now rests in private hands.
Proof of that is the inability of the empire to control the borders. Across the West, the voters want to sharply reduce legal immigration and end all illegal migration. Yet, supposedly sovereign governments are unable to do it. In America, the President is stymied at every turn by a system largely controlled by forces that exist outside the government. The reason there can be no border wall is the managerial elite that benefits from and is in charge of the empire, will never permit it.
The more likely source of instability will come from the cannibalization of social capital that has been the fuel of the “new economy” for decades. The loss of social capital has reduced social trust, which in turn has resulted in a decline in trust of national civic institutions. Why would people put faith in their institutions when it is clear that their office holders are powerless? That is a lesson rocketing around Europe. It explains the “yellow vest” protests and the rise of right-wing populism.
In America, only a fool believes the ruling class. People are becoming increasingly alarmed by what’s happening in the administrative state and its private partners in the technology and financial class. This loss in trust will inevitably lead people to look for alternative sources of legitimacy, authority and collective security. Identity politics is just a preview. As America becomes majority-minority, politics becomes a winner take all proposition, which will foster a rise of tribal politics.
The traditional empire always stagnated when it stopped expanding. What followed was a long period of decline. In a democratic empire, the economics that naturally flow from democracy hollow out the empire, by converting its social capital into power and status of a detached ruling elite. The global rulers of today see themselves as detached from those over whom they rule. Their subjects are just resources to be utilized and discarded.
The question to be answered is what happens to the American empire when the social capital is gone? Is it possible for a tiny alien elite to maintain control of a continent-wide population entirely dependent on the system for order and stability? Can the culture of the penitentiary scale up in such a way that the inmates still believe they are in charge of the institution? No one knows, because there has never been a democratic empire, but that is the task facing the ruling class of the American empire.
I guess I am a pessimist, but I hope it all holds together long enough for me to die peacefully in my home. I am 75, so time might be on my side, to quote a song. But Peter Turchin is predicting wide scale and intense political conflict in the 2020’s so I am not sure. The next Presidential election promises to be a doozie. It is hard to see how the Ruling Class can hold together a multiethnic empire in which the ethnies are mutually hostile. Some sort of disintegration into mutual hostile polities seems inevitable. The current ongoing… Read more »
Well gee, lasting until you die, that’s quite a boomer take on things. Oddly, from a non boomer. Stereotypes aren’t holding like they should.
Anywho, great post. God knows what the next few years holds. Hopefully many bloody walls , but not our blood.
I’m Gen X and I’d like it to last till I die. Of course, I don’t have any children. I seem to be able to handle the idea of my life turning to hell with a degree of equanimity but I don’t feel the same about people I care about and if I had white children running around I’d probably be in a panic
The whole generations thing is yet another area it seems that is constantly in flux. I was born in 64, and have always considered myself GenX – as I was squarely in that class way back when I first started seeing the gen this or gen that stuff being used back in the 80’s. I don’t feel I have much in common with Boomers – and the date ranges that have gotten used seem to constantly changed. That being said – I’ve thought for quite some time now – probably at least 15-20 years, that the wheels were going to… Read more »
I hope it holds together for your infant also. It must be terrifying
I’m not terrified. I’m tired. Tired of dealing with this shit. I’ve always been a “do it yourself” type. I fix my own cars (up to and including the new ones with the computers) , largely built my own house, fix my own computers, mow my own lawn….. etc. All of this in suburban MA – where this type of behavior is rare as hell – to the point where I’ve literally had people argue with me that what I claim to have done is impossible. My take on “society” is that it doesn’t help me single stinking goddamn bit.… Read more »
My daughter got sucked into the globohomo void. Had a brief contretemp this Christmas when I explained I was done reusing plastic or any bags at the store (I’m in Cal). To hell with chancing on e coli or salmonella or any other damn thing because more bacteria and crap is collecting in the damn things. I’ll pay the damn extra 10 cents if I have to and throw the damn bags away. Oh, but my plastic or whatever is polluting the oceans. I pointed out 95% of all the crap being poured into the ocean is from the third… Read more »
Read the chapter on solid waste in The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. This isn’t a problem. At all.
They simply have too much time on their hands.
I am with you, calsdad. I was born in 1960, wife in 1962. Neither of us feel any commonality with Boomers. We both have just always worked our butts off. Unlike you, I farm most stuff out, because of TIME. My practice eats up 80-100 hours per week, and I am not a kid anymore. But I know I will never retire, because after funding my first life (ex and 3 educations) I am going to have to work to eat. My profession is essentially under constant attack and soon, I predict, will be absorbed by the government’s inevitable maw… Read more »
So, you have, at 54 years old, a newborn?
Agreed. Boomer here. How does one die “peacefully” knowing what one knows and watching this “train wreck” unfold in slow motion? Is one so devoid of friends, relatives, and progeny that there is no link/responsibility to others that outlive you?
Another Boomer here. Peace is great, but you have to prepare for war. If there is war, then I want a piece of the action. Just took my 23-year-old nephew shooting for first time. He’s a natural: consistent shots on center of mass and in the apricot at 7 meters with Glock 17. I am damn proud.
I have a dream of a million armed man march on Washington where we stop in front of congress, the Supreme Court and White House and unleash one volley of lead at the buildings. I dream of being in that march at my now 66 or older. I want it to be my Lex and Concord. Think that might shake up some people?
I’m 66. I’d love to see how all this turns out. Big changes, some crazy changes (and violent ones, no doubt) are coming. I’d like to see how my daughter and husband experience being white in the coming future.
Z Man’s insight on the the diff between former empires and our democratic one is new to me and trenchant. I’ve noted the mining of the Amer mid class for it’s wealth for some time, the looting by the elites, but this puts it into better perspective.
No, Compsci, I worry about my kids and grandkids. But I know the best I can do is redpill them as much as I can (I have) and teach them the at least APPRECIATE the problem before them, and prepare.
Sadly this is Plan A for just about everybody: just stick it out until you die. It’s always easier to move one town over to escape diversity than it is to face it head on, especially if your boring but steady white collar job would be put on the line.
Do the math,Bob was born in 1943, not a boomer.
I hope it collapses sooner rather than later. It may be my chance for a war bride! The longer ZOG can kick the can down the road the worse the correction. People who talk about “more time to organize”—I don’t know what they are thinking. I’d rather it happen when we still have a majority. I don’t see much organizing in this supposed window of time Trump has given us. It’s just made the “muh Constitution” crowd complacent, and the lunatic left more determined to squash us than ever. Hush Bimbo likes to criticize Obama for trying to manage the… Read more »
Nothing’s stopping you from hurrying up the dying.
The sad thing is if whites acted in a collective manner we don’t need for the system to blow up. Problem is most whites are so f**king self absorbed they’ll be partying and puffing on $400 a oz pot until they get pulled from their homes by rioting ethnics and going “WTF!!??” as they get hacked to death. That said when the system goes down it will be a bloodbath on a mass scale. If you’re not young, healthy and provisioned you’re probably going to die. The chronically ill and elderly will be the first to go by the millions… Read more »
I hope it comes apart soon enough that my grandkids (not born yet) can live in a stable aftermath where we start to rebuild.
The rest of the world is for the most part not our problem so long as they stay away.
One hopes that this doesn’t go to “burn all the universities” mode though I could blame anyone for it too much . Its a natural tendency to want to cauterize poison.
You Boomer this and Boomer that commenters did not pay any attention to what Zman stated: the elite few rule over the rest of us and have done so from before WWII: go look at your birth certificate; we are cattle traded on the stock market; out lives and labor are the collateral behind the national debt; those persons born after 1933 have been the property of the DC colonial power since their birth. Boomers were not able to stop squat.
As a Boomer. I tend to agree—thanks. What I’d like to add (obviously in my defense) is that many folk in my cohort (as I see it) were raised in a fog that blinded us to the reality of government, politicians, and who was really running the show. That—more than selfishness—really guided my contribution to the current situation. Once those blinders were removed all became increasingly clear. Perhaps too late unfortunately.
Americans have traditionally not been politically minded. Politics has been viewed as a necessary evil. America has also had a high trust culture.
Combine those and Americans were sitting ducks for the tribe.
Social media changed much of that by letting bad whites see behind the media lies and understand just how much the good whites hate then.
This boomer saw it coming a long time ago. And quite frankly, I welcome whatever denouement may be upon us. The filthy establishment rakes have had their chance, and now it’s time to pay the piper. The idiots who get their news from the MSM will deserve the deep depression into which they will fall once they finally see the lies. I have prepared myself for this as well as I can, and I hope all of you have, as well. But one final thought: I don’t think what you’re seeing now is the Big Bang. The Fed may be… Read more »
The USA is becoming the Saudi Arabia of expertise. What do I mean? The Saudis do very little work themselves. Most of the labour is is imported and paid with oil revenues and the idle population is kept in check with lavish bribes and tyranny. The education system has been demolished, and fixing it would be difficult. Its hard to educate a horde of low IQ violent Diversity that has been carefully trained to regard education with disdain. Whats the solution? Be like Saudi Arabia, and import. Its soooo much easier to use money looted from the white middle class… Read more »
Imported class has little organic connection? Well, when the newcomers see the multigenerational white middle class having little connection to the land or its ethos or their fellow citizens, they assume that such is the way of doing things in their new home and behave accordingly. How many white middle class suburbanites have any emotional attachment to the US? Very few. As long as the hedge is trimmed and their picket fence is pained the color the local HOA tyrant decrees appropriate, they do not care. In fact many of the white suburbanite cucks and their harpies voted Rat cause… Read more »
Correction: “on the shop floor or in the kitchen”…or back in their home countries
(Bloody excellent comment, Dirtnapninja, kudos;
Zman, you’re hitting epic levels here. Zman for Earth Czar!)
Saudi Arabia and Gulf States are time bombs. The imported labor is angry like hell and waiting the right moment to rise up and take over. Saudis and Gulf States will end up like Haiti.
Look at the bright side. Every time a formerly normal and prosperous White, Midwestern town goes belly-up due to (((arbitrage))) and (((diversity))), that just frees up some more cheap real estate for yet another Holocaust Museum. When are we going to quit the charade and just start calling those things what they really are, which is victory steles? Arbitrage Macht Frei! During the Age of Exploration, the British and assorted other Euro empire-builders justified to themselves the conquest and annexation of the Americas, Africa, and Australia by telling themselves that it was okay because the locals were “savages”. Now it’s… Read more »
Based on the numbers of books on the shelves which excludes checked out books, the neighborhood branch of my local library has more books about the holocaust than the civil war.
First of all, Merry Christmas to the Zman and all his readers. The next few years will be fascinating to watch, although the it does seem that the parasite would be more satisfied to kill the host than to simply die on its own. There is a viciousness to our enemies that we need to be aware of. I also believe that this system is incredibly fragile right now. The destruction of small communities and attack on the traditional family over the past 30+ years means that Americans’ ability to hunker down and take care of their own is far… Read more »
The system’s real risk is what happens when the pensions go under, beginning in some areas in the 2020s, and on paper to hit every developed country by 2040. The system’s salvation is AI and automation, to buy off enough people with Amazon GO and Uber. I’ve had skeptical reactions to this from posters with technical backgrounds, so I defer to their judgement. But I cannot imagine that business won’t do everything possible to eliminate labor, witness how big-box retail has already cut its headcount by redesigning packaging and self-checkouts.
We never had a worker shortage, we had too many people in cubicles and university when they should’ve been on the shop floor or in the kitchen.
You can have a wage based society with a lot of workers or efficiency not both Hell this problem is quite old, the 40 hour work week, an end to child labor (even the beneficial kind) and back in the day pushing women into homemaking was how we coped with a surplus of labor from earlier automation The madness of the current system is we deal with the labor shortage not by raising wages but by arbitraging them down with mass immigration to create a temporary labor glut This is crazy as it depletes social capital to the degree that… Read more »
I have been watching our neighborhood closely over the decades. It is a California suburban McMansion deal, built in the ‘90s. All of us originally moving in were families of car dealers and financial types. At least, we earned our keep, saved our money, and turned it into a home. In the last ten years or so, everyone moving into the neighborhood has been paying the freight through inheritance. In the last few months, the Chinese have started buying. A microcosm of what is going on out there, and parallels Z’s observations nicely. A consumption of accumulated capital, and now… Read more »
The US is a laggard when it comes to imposing taxes on foreign home buyers. All of the Anglo Four have some variant of this tax. My suspicions is that the real estate lobby would use the “Japanese Internment” argument to hedge off this tax ever being imposed. We only charge 500K (never adjusted to inflation) for the EB-5 visa (Chinese crooks laundering money via Kushner Cos.), while the UK chages 2 million GBP for its equivalent.
The current price for an investor’s visa into Australia is at least 5 million (about 4 million USD). Given various available scams and falsifications, the USA’s equivalent is functionally more on the order of $200,000.
Of course, for Latin Americans and “refugees”, entry into the USA is not only free, but subsidized.
Heritage Americans are not only fucked, but deliberated fucked (but all here pretty much know that).
“Heritage Americans are not only fucked, but deliberated fucked (but all here pretty much know that)”
Heritage Americans are Johns. They pay to be fucked
American imperialism: All of the downsides of having an empire with none of the benefits!
Good post!! Anent the cost-shifting of social capital, we have ObamaCare. Long-in-the-tooth readers will recall that both the “Big Three” (pre-bankruptcy) and the Silicon Valley crowd made concerted overtures to the Imperial Capital to institute national health-care. Sure enough, ObamaCare emerged. While ‘blame’ for its enactment rests with Democrats (the Silicon Valley allies), its continuation rests on the Republicans (traditionally Big Three allies.) It was really just a toss of the coin as to who stabbed the population vs. who twisted the knife. What ObozoCare does is ‘socialize’ the cost of health-care. And under its current regulations, it also allows… Read more »
Meh, employers should not be providing health insurance for their employees. The only reason they started doing so was they got a massive tax break for doing so, back in 1980s I believe. An actual individual market for health insurance—and healthcare where you are quoted a price before all non-emergency procedures—would be superior. Healthcare did not used to be so expensive, or so lucrative for the providers and insurance companies. I’m not saying physicians should be poor or that insurance companies should have to run on a loss, but the costs have ramped up beyond reason. Getting back on topic,… Read more »
USA will collapse like Soviet Union and for the very same reason. Government becomes so dysfunctional that desperate local people take the things in their own hand, then parallel structures appear until complete breakup.
In the Soviet Union, first borders were so called “economic regions” . The reason was that some regions were better supplied than others and the point of border was to keep buyers from other regions away. Then the border guards started to keep known criminals out, then just economic migrants out and so on.
I think this is a perspective that needs more attention.
When democratic empires decay to the point of collapse we should be expecting extremes. Excluding France and Russia, when old monarchical systems collapsed the internal chaos and violence was often manageable. The elite in those societies was largely a “natural” elite so they had deep roots in the welfare of those societies. If you look at warfare from 1000 A. D, up to the Napoleonic Era, most of it was Duke A vs. Duke B. A few skirmishes, a few deaths and then someone’s daughter married someone else’s son and things calmed down for a decade or two. The 30… Read more »
The Thirty Years War started out as a religious conflict. But it did not end that way. By the late 1630s, the war had evolved into a dynastic struggle between France, Spain, and the Austrians. The French Catholics were actually backing the Dutch Protestants in order to remove the Spanish threat from their northern borders.
Ethnic and dynastic considerations are more determinative even today. Look at the Bushes and Clintons. They contend amongst each other but when someone else steps into the fray they defend each other like they were brothers.
Social Capital is not fungible like ‘money.’ In fact, one country’s social capital might even serve to ‘poison’ another country’s social capital. Furthermore, it could take an awfully long time to regenerate squandered social capital.
The term ‘social capital’ is–obviously–a confection which identifies ‘national wealth’ as “money”, thus “social” = “national” and “capital” = “money”.
It’s not hard to figure that out.
Homeland Security says returning vets are Americas biggest threat. Translated means young white males in highly trained units returning home are the biggest threat. Blows my mind when white people hear this stuff and still pull the Democratic lever come voting time. Then again lefties don’t join the military and openly mock the young men that go to fight their stupid wars. Sure, you’ve got cucks like John Kerry but the swift boat guys outed that fraud. The globalist will continue to suck the social capital of this planet dry. Until we break out the torches and pitchforks the beatings… Read more »
Yes, making reasoned forecasts about the future is a vital survival trait. The decline will be very slow until it becomes very fast. Chaos will erupt in the major metropolitan areas, largely driven by roving gangs acting in violent panic. LEOs will collapse almost immediately, and martial law will be implemented in their wake. Aspiring tyrants will begin competing for power, and the most ruthless will rise to the top. Over half the population will whine and beg for crumbs and thereafter willingly volunteer for subjugation. But there is way to win, even in this darkest scenario.
Martial law? Enforced how and by whom and with whom? It *might* be enforceable in a few major city centers. *Might.* Otherwise not. And I mean not at all. This country is vast. These so-called “elites” don’t have unlimited manpower or money. There will be no martial law because there *can* be no martial law. Maybe around DC and Georgetown. Otherwise not.
Perhaps the Russian who foresaw the USA breaking up into several regions was right. I might trust my regional government in Charlotte or Atlanta over the very distant DC.
The loss of social capital is the saddest thing I have seen in my 50 years.
“In America, only a fool believes the ruling class.” There are a lot of fools and their numbers are growing daily both through immigration and educated whites joining the side of good whites against the bad. All status rests with the ruling class. They control the culture. It is becoming nearly impossible to have status and be a bad white. During the election, the upper middle class and wealthy whites knew which way the wind was blowing and supported Hillary. Now middle class suburbanites are joining them. This won’t change until the economy either collapses or the wealthy move to… Read more »
The tribe wisely filled America with a new populace from shit hole countries. Our replacements have no memory of when the US was really a great country. Their comparison is the shit hole their family fled. The US is going to have to get a lot worse for them to be worried. They aren’t hated by our rulers and are used to even more incompetent ones. Young whites also have no memory of what America was like before we had a ruling clad that disposed us and viewed the white population as a threat. They just know it was bad… Read more »
“In America, the President is stymied at every turn by a system largely controlled by forces that exist outside the government.” This is a tad disingenuous. Anyone paying attention to the national politics can see the federal behemoth operating independently of the executive or the will of the people. The fact that they have their own political agendas and work in concert with a loose corporatocracy doesn’t make them dark “external” forces. Our “empire”, if it so desired, could control those borders immediately with the force of arms. The fact that it doesn’t isn’t because it is unable to. Much… Read more »
It was not a group of selfish people who lobbied for decades for what became the 1965 Immigration Act. Many of the people whom you characterize as selfish are quite dedicated to a cause larger than themselves. Corporate desire for cheap labor is of course a factor, but it is less than half the story.
My entry into this thing of ours was simply asking, over and over, why we can’t enforce our borders and immigration laws. Selfish people and short sighted corporations play a secondary role.
Democracy just does not work. Dumb mass is ignorant until it is too late. Look at the latest elections in Europe. French and Swedish people voted for open borders only because they wanted to feel good alone in the ballot cabin.
Huge topic that would make for a good panel discussion/symposium at Amren. I think the Athenian Empire was the first democratic empire, and many aspects of it mirror what we see in the USA today. Many modern historians talk about the older rulers of Athens as an aristocracy, but Aristotle rightly refers to the hoplite class as the middle class. Max Weber, in his posthumously published work, The City, actually refers to the hoplites as “burghers”. In my opinion much of the error in the writings of many, many people finds its origins in the mislabeling of various classes, but… Read more »
It is a big topic. I also thought about the differences between the Athenian empire and the Peloponnesian League. Even though I’m not a materialist, I think the economic arrangements within Sparta made them uniquely able to deal with the Athens.
In South Africa, 8 out of the 9 provincial Governors are black ANC, one of them is white. Guess which Governor attracts virulent criticism, while ANC Governors have been accused of running death squads. Each Governor has little power on their own, so much that the lone white Governor spends a considerable amount of her time being a troll. The comparison here is whether or not the ANC will get greedy or offer up a token white to serve as a Governor to mollify minority concerns.
I agree with the renting versus owning analogy of our ruling class. One way to offend people moaning about slavery – ask them which they treat better – a car they rent, lease, or own?
Excellent post. Very thought provoking and irrefutable.
Mr Z. You’re sounding an awful lot like Hans Herman Hoppe! Well stated.
Atlantic NATO-Zionist empire
Pacific Sino-Zionist empire
Carpetbagger CoDominium
My understanding is that people in the East had stopped believing in the Soviet system while oil prices were still moving *higher*. This was at least ten years before any sort of fall was even on the horizon.
That said, I wonder how long the Soviets could have maintained themselves if the oil glut had never become a thing.
The oil glut was deliberately created by the Reagan administration precisely to bring the USSR down. This was documented in a book “Victory” by Peter Schweizer. This was done at the cost of a severe depression in the US petroleum industry in the 1980s.
The same strategy is being used today using natural gas which is behind the drive to export US natural gas to wean europe off of Russian supplies.
Great post! And happy Kwanzaa all!
Re: Econ. Ineq. & Std. Of living: Before blaming the overall system, I’d like to know the behavioral variables, specifically in terms of how the younger generations define and choose what constitute necessities and luxuries.
For example, at least in the aspirational middle-class, it’s extremely easy even for those of modest means to burn through piles of money unnecessarily by doing things like insisting on living in one’s own apartment instead of with parents, owning the latest technology and clothing fashion, and eating/drinking out regularly.
Very nicely summarizes the plight of the US. Missing are the casualty figures from the next War Between the States.
“Is it possible for a tiny alien elite to maintain control of a continent-wide population entirely dependent on the system for order and stability?”
It is certainly easier with a fractionated multicultural population that can be bought off and played against each other.
What happens when you can’t buy them off.
May be the best Zman post to date.
Brilliant post. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Z Man!
Excellent post, one of your best.
Z Mans best post to date.
All empires collapse after about 10 generations. Time’s up for this one. Somebody linked this here a while back.
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
I tend to doubt the significance of democracy or its pretense. The US is Ottoman.
White Kampuchea is looking better by the moment. In any case a lot of people on every end of the political spectrum are predicting a civil war in the next decade and a half This seems a pretty probable outcome. The results of such will certainly be unpleasant for everyone though ironically nations across the world, at least those the Chinese eye is not on will heave a sigh of relief after the troubles pass If I had to hazard a guess I’d figure some kind of new nations will replace the US. Now we have creeping state nullification and… Read more »