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This Is How Empires Collapse
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
This is how empires collapse: one complicit participant at a time.
Before an empire collapses, it first erodes from within. The collapse may appear sudden, but the processes of internal rot hollowed out the resilience, resolve, purpose and vitality of the empire long before its final implosion.
What are these processes of internal rot? Here are a few of the most pervasive and destructive forces of internal corrosion:
1. Each institution within the system loses sight of its original purpose of serving the populace and becomes self-serving. This erosion of common purpose serving the common good is so gradual that participants forget there was a time when the focus wasn't on gaming the system to avoid work and accountability but serving the common good.
2. The corrupt Status Quo corrupts every individual who works within the system.Once an institution loses its original purpose and becomes self-serving, everyone within either seeks to maximize their own personal share of the swag and minimize their accountability, or they are forced out as a potentially dangerous uncorrupted insider.
The justification is always the same: everybody else is getting away with it, why shouldn't I? Empires decline one corruptible individual at a time.
3. Self-serving institutions select sociopathic leaders whose skills are not competency or leadership but conning others into believing the institution is functioning optimally when in reality it is faltering/failing.
The late Roman Empire offers a fine example: entire Army legions in the hinterlands were listed as full-strength on the official rolls in Rome and payroll was issued accordingly, but the legions only existed on paper: corrupt officials pocketed the payroll for phantom legions.
Self-serving institutions reward con-artists in leadership roles because only con-artists can mask the internal rot with happy-story PR and get away with it.
4. The institutional memory rewards conserving the existing Status Quo and punishes innovation. Innovation necessarily entails risk, and those busy feathering their own nests (i.e. accepting money for phantom work, phantom legions, etc.) have no desire to place their share of the swag at risk just to improve sagging output and accountability.
So reforms and innovations that might salvage the institution are shelved or buried.
5. As the sunk costs of the subsystems increase, the institutional resistance to new technologies and processes increases accordingly. Those manufacturing steam locomotives in the early 20th century had an enormous amount of capital and institutional knowledge sunk in their factories. Tossing all of that out to invest in building diesel-electric locomotives that were much more efficient than the old-tech steam locomotives made little sense to those looking at sunk costs.
As a result, the steam locomotive manufacturers clung to the old ways and went out of business. The sunk costs of empire are enormous, as is the internal resistance to change.
6. Institutional memory and knowledge support "doing more of what worked in the past" even when it is clearly failing. I refer to this institutional risk-avoidance and lack of imagination as doing more of what has failed spectacularly.
Inept leadership keeps doing more of what once worked, even when it is clearly failing, in effect ignoring real-world feedback in favor of magical-thinking. The Federal Reserve is an excellent example.
7. These dynamics of eroding accountability, effectiveness and purpose lead to systemic diminishing returns. Each failing institution now needs more money to sustain its operations, as inefficiencies, corruption and incompetence reduce output while dramatically raising costs (phantom legions still get paid).
8. Incompetence is rewarded and competence punished. The classic example of this was "Good job, Brownie:" cronies and con-artists are elevated to leadership roles to reward loyalty and the ability to mask the rot with good PR. Serving the common good is set aside as sychophancy (obedient flattery) to incompetent leaders is rewarded and real competence is punished as a threat to the self-serving leadership.
9. As returns diminish and costs rise, systemic fragility increases. This can be illustrated as a rising wedge: as output declines and costs rise, the break-even point keeps edging higher, until even a modest reduction of input (revenue, energy, etc.) causes the system to break down:
A modern-day example is oil-exporting states that have bought the complicity of their citizenry with generous welfare benefits and subsidies. As their populations and welfare benefits keep rising, the revenues they need to keep the system going require an ever-higher price of oil. Should the price of oil decline, these regimes will be unable to fund their welfare. With the social contract broken, there is nothing left to stem the tide of revolt.
10. Economies of scale no longer generate returns. In the good old days, stretching out supply lines to reach lower-cost suppliers and digitizing management reaped huge gains in productivity. Now that the scale of enterprise is global, the gains from economies of scale have faltered and the high overhead costs of maintaining this vast managerial infrastructure have become a drain.
11. Redundancy is sacrificed to preserve a corrupt and failing core. Rather than demand sacrifices of the Roman Elites and the entertainment-addicted bread-and-circus masses to maintain the forces protecting the Imperial borders, late-Roman Empire leaders eliminated defense-in-depth (redundancy). This left the borders thinly defended. With no legions in reserve, an invasion could no longer be stopped without mobilizing the entire border defense, in effect leaving huge swaths of the border undefended to push back the invaders.
Phantom legions line the pockets of insiders and cronies while creating a useful illusion of stability and strength.
12. The feedback from those tasked with doing the real work of the Empire is ignored as Elites and vested interests dominate decision-making. As I noted yesterday in The Political Poison of Vested Interests, when this bottoms-up feedback is tossed out, ignored or marginalized, all decisions are necessarily unwise because they are no longer grounded in the consequences experienced by the 95% doing the real work.
This lack of feedback from the bottom 95% is captured by the expression "Let them eat cake." (Though attributed to Marie Antoinette, there is no evidence that she actually said Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.)
The point is that decisions made with no feedback from the real-world of the bottom 95%, that is, decisions made solely in response to the demands of cronies, vested interests and various elites, are intrinsically unsound and doomed to fail catastrophically.
How does an Empire end up with phantom legions? The same way the U.S. ended up with ObamaCare/Affordable Care Act. The payroll is being paid but there is no real-world feedback, no accountability, no purpose other than private profit/gain and no common good being served.
That's how empires collapse: one corrupted, self-serving individual at a time, gaming one corrupted, self-serving institution or another; it no longer matters which one because they're all equally compromised. It's not just the border legions that are phantom; the entire stability and strength of the empire is phantom. The uncorruptible and competent are banished or punished, and the corrupt, self-serving and inept are lavished with treasure.
This is how empires collapse: one complicit participant at a time.
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The Romans had phantom legions. The Greeks of today had gardeners assigned to hospitals that had no gardens. The USA had a phantom airplane crash into the pentagon. Fort Knox has the biggest pile of phantom gold in the world. The USA has the largest phantom number of terrorists amongst its people judging by the way they spy on them. Empires come to an end because all complex things do so when corruption sets in.
This sounds like a bunch of terra-ist talk right here. Pointing out reality is a political crime.
US is done....like next year! Wait...No.The year after that! I'm pretty sure. I predict in the future the U.S. will not be the most powerful country the world has everwitnessed...It's gonna happen! Let's reminensce on the gold/silver standard that helped the world run so smoothly in the 17th century! Holy fuck this place has gone downhill.
Downvote away doomsdayers but now you are slurping the kool-aid.
WTF would anyone bother to tell you WHEN? (and, really, WTF are you here reading about it if you don't believe it?)
Because something has not happened yet it won't happen? If one has never had cancer then that means they never will?
See my link below to Glubb's paper. Fairly exhaustive work on researching why ALL empires collapse.
Math and logic provides all the certainty necessary. For the simple math part one need only state that perpetual growth on a finite planet is not possible: flat-earthers just never seem to get this. Your "logic" has already been demonstrated (above) to be flat-earth-thinking...
THe problem I have with the authors predication is that it's so fucking ambigious it has no value. Of course the U.S. some day in the future, maybe even this century will not be the most powerful country in the world but if you have any actual grasp on geopolitical, military and econmic development you'd see that it's quite far off, probably not in your life time.That is why i'm calling the 'article' junk, it's soothsayer tarot level predicitions. I know this place hates the Fed and hates fiat currency. I get it, but that doesn't mean this place needs to upvote dribble. If you do the math, as fucked up as our system is, nobody is economically or military within miles of us. I'm just saying think a bit deeper about this, sorry I wasn't so diplomatic with my first post.
I only threw in the gold/silver piece because I knew it would ire fanboys.
funny stuff. you remind me of the people who laughed at me when i told them in 2003 that a realestate bubble was forming when house prices exceeded the historical income to value ratio. you were the guy in 2005 who was screaming about the great american real estate market making everyone rich because real estate values never go down. you were the guy in 2008 holding the bag whining about how other people caused your stupidity. you are the guy today who will be begging me for food in a coupla years while you blame .gov for your misery.
the cycle of history is unavoidable. none of us who know something bad is about to happen know when it will happen. we can only prepare for it. one way is an investment in lead to keep rabid hungry losers like you from getting at my stash.
Your anecdotal is pretty much the same as mine.
I have a sister who got pissed at my constant warmings. Saving grace is that she and her husband are reasonably proficient at living off the land: they still, however, think that a big corporate pension is going to always be there for them.
My brother, who had/has a real estate license (side work), told me that real estate prices wouldn't come down. I held out... and bought after they did. Never did want to engage him in my reasoning for why I saw property taxes dropping as well: taxes for both my sister and myself dropped, though they crept back up to where they are almost what they were 3 years ago (I've got Ag land, so my taxes are low to start with).
Best to look at things not as "good" or "bad," but just "what will be." If a Bad System fails is That bad? Those applying labels are only demonstrating that they're locking in their options: I didn't get to where I am by being inflexible/close-minded.
Agreed, but what amazes me is how it's kept going so long. In 2009 I told everyone that the system has only a few years to go so PREPARE. As they remind me all the time, it didn't happen.
Thanks for the recap, now tell me what's the next market you god damn savant?
I never said that markets don't boom & bust or that empires last forever. I simply stated that the author didn't make an actual prediction when this would occur, which is the point of forecasting.
forecasting the timing is for fools or the market can remain irrational a lot longer than you can be solvent. yes, i am politely calling you a fool....again.
When hard work is punished, instead of rewarded...check.
The breakdown begins with a few leaders who recognize there is potential for personal gain in powers beholden to those who have been chosen to build and maintain the well being of the state. This catalyst behaviour can be pinpointed in many fallen nations, for instance Mark Anthony, Augustus and Nero in Rome in the first century AD. Certainly the US is no different. However, a few men acting in self interest does not take down a nation. So then what does take down a nation? Well a few men in key positions can corrupt a process. Once the process becomes corrupted the cancer is able to spread. It is key to note that the process is being corrupted strategically and not randomly. That is to say there are thinking beings designing a corrupted process so as to prolong their ability to further corrupt the process. Their goal being self interest and thus the longer they can maintain a position providing the means to act in self interest the more personal gain they can accumulate.
I have seen directly how corruption is analogous to cancer. Once heretofore honest people in an organization see others prospering via corruption (in the broadest meaning of the term) their attitude transforms into 'I'm going to get mine'. It's a terrible thing to see and can occur very quickly.
No doubt about it. I think it always occurs fairly quickly. Within two short generations the consensus mass orientation in this country has become completely different; complteley foreign to what was once. The society and the mentality, the consensus reality that formed the population of the US during WW11 simply doesn't exist; it has disappeared into history. Gone.
Charles, the supposed "efficiencies" were possible because of plentiful resources. And with regard to what is to become of "efficiences" look up Jevons Paradox.
Economies of scale in reverse.
It has more to do with the MODEL that we're basing everything on (perpetual growth on a finite planet) than it does with managerial bumblings (those these provide for populist targetings- distraction).
Squeezing ever-increasing production out of an environment requires increasing specialization and complexity. Increasing specialization and complexity reaches a point of dimishing returns on investment. Continuing on this path necessarily leads to a lack of societal resiliancy and ultimately, will result in overshoot and/or collapse.
See Bartlett, Tainter, et al.
We'd get along fine! :-)
Jevons Paradox works pretty well to explain a lot as well.
Glad to hear it Seer!
=]
Folks who farm/homestead seem to have a more intuitive understanding that all "production," in its most basic form, is just energy management -and that there's no free lunch.
I agree that Jeavon's observation is another critical puzzle piece (or gut-punch as the case may be). Throw in a globally increasing population (well into overshoot already) and no revolution in low-EROEI energy on the horizon - and we've got the fixins for quite a rough patch sometime soon.
but using our collective intelligence to act, we also have the power to address the root causes of the problems and evolve this thing called life.
collectivist
so edgy of you!
;-)
Population, population, population, population. It's all 100% over population; and nothing else. Nothing. It's exactly what you've been taught not to comment on or notice. It's over population. (for Citxmex)
Old New England, Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong. .piles of places known for low material resources but for thrift, hard work . Prospered.
The breakdown begins with a few leaders who recognize there is potential for personal gain in powers beholden to those who have been chosen to build and maintain the well being of the state. This catalyst behaviour can be pinpointed in many fallen nations, for instance Mark Anthony, Augustus and Nero in Rome in the first century AD. Certainly the US is no different. However, a few men acting in self interest does not take down a nation. So then what does take down a nation? Well a few men in key positions can corrupt a process. Once the process becomes corrupted the cancer is able to spread. It is key to note that the process is being corrupted strategically and not randomly. That is to say there are thinking beings designing a corrupted process so as to prolong their ability to further corrupt the process. Their goal being self interest and thus the longer they can maintain a position providing the means to act in self interest the more personal gain they can accumulate.
Today it is difficult to pinpoint any legislation that is not done out of some particular micro interests. The result of such wide spread legislative corruption is a breakdown. That is to say as legislation ignores the well being of the state over time the state degrades. Legislation or laws and policies governing the state are the foundation of the state. When they no longer address the state for the good of the state but for the good of a few the foundation begins to show cracks and eventually crumbles.
BIHM: Good post; good read. Milestones
For a more "professional" look into why empires collapse read Sir John Glubb's The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival (http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf)
i like pages 23-24. brings it all together.
Thank you; a good reference.
The breakdown begins with a few leaders who recognize there is potential for personal gain in powers beholden to those who have been chosen to build and maintain the well being of the state. This catalyst behaviour can be pinpointed in many fallen nations, for instance Mark Anthony, Augustus and Nero in Rome in the first century AD. Certainly the US is no different. However, a few men acting in self interest does not take down a nation. So then what does take down a nation? Well a few men in key positions can corrupt a process. Once the process becomes corrupted the cancer is able to spread. It is key to note that the process is being corrupted strategically and not randomly. That is to say there are thinking beings designing a corrupted process so as to prolong their ability to further corrupt the process. Their goal being self interest and thus the longer they can maintain a position providing the means to act in self interest the more personal gain they can accumulate.
Today it is difficult to pinpoint any legislation that is not done out of some particular micro interests. The result of such wide spread legislative corruption is a breakdown. That is to say as legislation ignores the well being of the state over time the state degrades. Legislation or laws and policies governing the state are the foundation of the state. When they no longer address the state for the good of the state but for the good of a few the foundation begins to show cracks and eventually crumbles.
Jesus/God isn't doing hands-on work here, so we're pretty much stuck with humans and human nature. ANY system that is predicated on perpetual growth on a finite system is going to FAIL. That System is what creates the corruptive forces, as the humans in the various positions have to eventually turn to lying in order to cover for the flawed premise (that perpetual growth is possible on a finite planet).
When scarcity appears is when humans' exceptionalism in deception becomes more widely practiced.
Empires collapse when the marginal return on Bunga bunga plays are outweighed by the incremental return on Spartacus rage.
Simple as that, in terms of the battle of primal urges; hubrsitic sex and champagne vs plebian survival rage.
where do we go from here?
6000 crosses along the Appian Way with Cliven Bundy in the title role, also starring Harry Reid as Crassus?
NerObama, the right dicktator, at the right time, in the right place.
Phantom Legions.
The United States has 1.7 million men and women in uniform but when war is declared on an essentially defenseless country like Iraq, the U.S. cannot muster 150,000 to fight. The system is forced to call up the national guard - essentially state militias.
Is the united states capable of fighting a conventional war against a capable opponent such has Russia or China?
I have my doubts.
(Regular army volunteer back in 1969)
"Is the united states capable of fighting a conventional war against a capable opponent such has Russia or China?"
That's an incomplete question.
If you're a person familiar with military history/tactics then you should understand that supply lines and battle locations are everything.
As someone who served in the USMC I tend to place less emphasis on pure numbers: quality can overcome quantity (up to fairly lopsided ratios).
Tactical nuclear weapons, deployed in-theater, change everything. The US in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't trip over that. But in a conflict with Russia or China the US will without question trigger an in-theater nuclear exchange.
WW3 will end very differently than WW2. Nothing you think you know about conflict pertains when the heavies go at it.
I mean nothing.
Another key difference is that when up against a capable opponent, once hit, the medics and medivac choppers are't going to be able to reach you.
Volunteers of America, you will be on your own.
Luckily, nobody is that desperate. . . yet.
I suppose that we're also lucky that the Bankers haven't' found a way to profit from abject desolation and nuclear winter.
The fact that any nuclear exchange by majors, against majors, will result in an eventual stalemate or mutually assured destruction, leads me to believe that any nuclear "event" would have to be accompanied by plausible deniability of the highest order by the perpetrators. There also may be secret deals that encourage all majors to police the minor players (see Israel's "Sampson Option").
Accordingly, I'm still predicting spreading proxy resource-wars that bankrupt all players more or less equally - and then a consolidation into sphere's of influence.
Desperation is not the motivator in this case. Winning is. And in-theater nuclear weapons won't have nearly the impacts globally that you describe. In some ways the bombs that were set off in Japan at the end of WW2 were just a bit over "tactical" in size. That will be the model.
So ask yourself now who really really wants to win. When you do, you will know who has the balls to go first.
But what equals "winning?" Is it command of the resources or territory in question? I can see China, the US and Russia willing to nuke third party pawns in a regional conflict - maybe. But then what happens to the worth of the target? It's not like a nuke can go off in Nigeria flattening their oil production capability on news of some coup leading to a new export treaty without it being pretty obvious who pulled the trigger - and if a US carrier group get's nuked somewhere - I can't see us "backing down" without drawing major blood.
You and I cannot possibly understand "winning" the way these fucks understand it.
But here, I'll try:
Obama: Winning is the Democrats keeping the Whitehouse in 2016. No matter what it takes.
NeoCons: Winning is God avenging the decline of Western morality. At any price by any means.
Putin: Winning is making the West look like corrupted swine and enshrining himself in history as the last standing bad-ass.
China: Winning is finding a new use for all the steel and labor they've amassed at great expense.
Cougar: Winning is feeding people I don't like to a tiger: http://fedtoatiger.blogspot.com/2014/04/hello-now-prepare-to-die.html
That's just silly. Democrats & Republicans have the same masters, same funders, same agenda, just different advertising.
It's a one-party Goldman Sachs government.
Which is why I'm figuring that it's not likely to come down to this. With large oceans separating the US from Russia and China it need not engage in WWIII. The US has no choice but to let the folks "over there" learn to get along with themselves. I suspect that it/US is just struggling with how to wind down this big show: MIC and oil being hard habits to break, but in the end they WILL be broken.
I am very much in agreement. The US will have fewer boots on the ground and more drones in the air.
NATO will be fighting this one, the US M/IC will take the treasure, and after the dust is settled Vladimir will end up with exactly what he wanted. My only suggestion is that part of Ukraine will have become radioactive but honestly after Chernobyl how is anyone going to notice.
Our stated position for a generation vis a vis S. Korea was a thinly deployed garrison acting as a nuclear "tripwire."
"quality can overcome quantity (up to fairly lopsided ratios." True and precisely my point. We have about 180,000 marines, special forces and navy seals. The rest appear to be a net cost. And, of course, surface naval vessels are floating coffins, a close analogy to the horse cavalry that Pershing kept alive at Fort Jackson up until the beginning of WWII. A welfare state jobs program will inevitably lose a war to a real army.
Hey, you have to realize the Guard's new enemy is its own veterans and all civilians.
They must defend our Queen and her Realm.
Point number 5 is slightly incorrect.
The American Locomotive Company (ALCO) built many diesel electric locomotives, some of which are still in use to this very day. It started out building steam locomotives, but built the first commerically successful diesel electric locomotive in 1924 in collaboration with General Electric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Locomotive_Company
Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) and Lima Locomotives, on the other hand, never quite got it right, when they attempted to build diesels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_Locomotive_Works#Diesel-electric_l...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima_Locomotive_Works
Even some of the smaller diesel locomotive manufactures, such as Fairbanks Morse, had some stiff competition from GE, EMD, and ALCO but made some notable diesel locomotives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks-Morse#Railroad_locomotives
An Empire does not collapse.
An Empire simply moves it Capital.
The Empire's Capital is moving to _________ ?
A: Oblivion
Western "civilization" is evaporating right before our eyes.
So the Empire's Capital moves to the East!
Right before our eyes.
Colorado after a fleshripping false flag or worse. The military COG Jason CFR NSA Stazi state kicks in. The lists are compiled of who's been bad or good. Sorry to say most ZeroHeads will be "detained". You all are too disgrundled to be compliant, or trusted. Tow the line or hang from it.
"But Daddy didn't the people do anything when they saw it coming...."
Another thing happens in falling empires, where the individual workers start plundering the spoils -- which causes the government to place many addiitonal rules and regulations and monitoring requirements on what the various individual workers are doing -- all in the name of protecting the taxpayers. Instead, the additional rules simply make the worker's even less productive meaning that more workers are needed in order to provide the same level of services -- and more managers are needed to supervise the additional workers, and more overseers are needed to check on both the workers and mangers -- paid for with even more tax dollars. But the new overseers are only permitted to go after the little guys -- there can be no going after the cronies of the government.
Hmmm, this sounds like a government rather nearby....
It's the result of EVERY govt., which is why I laugh at the "small govt" notion/people.
8. Incompetence is rewarded and competence punished. The classic example of this was "Good job, Brownie:" cronies and con-artists are elevated to leadership roles to reward loyalty and the ability to mask the rot with good PR. Serving the common good (or building the best product the most efficiently) is set aside as sychophancy (obedient flattery) (ass kissing, theft covering, kickback paying) to incompetent leaders is rewarded and real competence is punished as a threat to the self-serving leadership.
This one rang a bell. Cronyism is alive and well, and not just in government positions.
And since the empire became global, the collapse will be global too.
I think that peoples sense of reality is going to be a big factor in the decline of this empire.
There is a little revolution going on now, people are getting smarter, better informed and more interested in their own fate.
I suppose you could call this a revolution of evolution, made possible by easier access to information and plenty of alternative news media to compare to the mainstream.
The predictable scenario going forward would be that when the people start seeing through the rot and corruption and the empire starts to cruble, then we get economic collapses and war.
Thats the way it has always been. When its over, and if there is anything left, some hero will emerge, talking about freedom, prosperity, fututre and all the words you want to hear and people will work, almost for free to rebuild from the ruins to make the promises come true for those who would folllow, children etc.
Then the wheel has been spun again, and not much later we see a familiar chain of events.
I suppose the one way to move forward would be to write a constitution who defends democracy so fiercely that the democracy would be isolated from flaws of human nature, so the system would be beyond corruption.
It would probably be sensible to make the constitution so simple that it would be impossible to understand it in any other way than originally intended and extremely difficult to change.
It would take a genius to write something that simple :). This is rather unlikely to ever happen though, to say the very least.
Its interesting how people are ready to believe that entire economies can be built out of fairy dust and unicorn farts and be perfectly solid and sustainable, but the same people will absolutely not believe in anything supernatural, like God for example.
"I suppose the one way to move forward would be to write a constitution who defends democracy so fiercely that the democracy would be isolated from flaws of human nature, so the system would be beyond corruption."
That "human nature" has amassed enough nukes to kill everyone 10x over! I'm not thinking that we have the power to kick this monkey through "intelligent" means.
As long as a System, whether it be of "God" (go forth and multiply?) or other, is predicated on perpetual growth on a finite planet it WILL FAIL! There is nothing complicated for why things collapse: it's EVERYWHERE in nature- humans, with their hubris, with their gods and ALL, refuse to understand this (because we cannot accept that we're animals and therefor subject to what all other animals are subject to). No matter how well-sounding the words, no matter how well written, and no matter how serious people may be about them they can NOT overcome the physical limitations of this planet.
Sometimes there is a window of opportunity to do something new after a major disaster of some sort, like war for example.
When i think of possible solutions the word impossible sometimes comes to mind, but impossible things seem to happen from time to time.
Like this guy, Reynir Leoson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nucS5rIjt5c
He could lift trucks, rip apart chains and handcuffs.
In this video he explains how he got this strong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmyNbuvGIAI
Apparently Jesus came to him and gave him superhuman strength.
In this one he escapes from a NATO prison cell in Keflavik by smashing down some concrete walls with his fists and then going trough a window. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N0BGA7mdQk
Reynir was taken into foster for a while by my grandparents on their farm when he was 15-16 year old, he was said to be a troublemaker and difficult to have around. That turned out to be wrong, he was no trouble at all.
He could rip apart ropes that held a few tons with no effort.
All of this is quite interesting, its great to be able to smash down walls with your fists, but you can also tear down walls with words, And that is a supernatural power all human beings have, something animals cant do.
So don't sell us human beings short ;)
Smarter? People R demanding Moar Electrolytes to Mutilate their Thirst.
Obama is mentally incompentant and unable to comprehend the world in which he lives. He has misunderstood the massive poiitiical and financial backing for the sake of maintaining the stats quo as personal approval bordering on religious following. The operative word for his presidency will be disconnected. He was born and raised in a vacuum that always blamed someone else for anything that went wrong and was actually able to survive and do well in a society that bought into that drivel. That window is closing, and leaving our king exposed and horribly naked as the simpleton he is. It's time to move on, work for less government and most importantly more responsible government as well as all the institutions this goverhment has infected with it's devisive strategy. If he were truly honest he would do the right thing for our country and just go.
Down-arrow for being stuck at level 1- that the POTUS has magical powers...
It's a world-wide fuck-up, ALL traceable to declining resources and increasing populations. Good luck figuring out what the "solution" should be...
So what you are saying is that nature abhors a vacuum, but not politics and economics??? You got less government leading up to, and now past, the 2008 financial depression. While you got less government, the big banks and the financial services industry got more government and $23 trillion of your money. Actually, they just purchased the tool which is government. They used that tool to beat the hell out of the middle class.
This bullshit, fantastical notion of " less government" is our undoing. Nothing in nature is static, that includes politics and economics. If there is a void, that void will always be filled.
Of course politics survives on a vacuum-force.
Ask yourself how many blowjobs take place in Washington DC just to drive an agenda.
Hmm, actually, he is a Queen, and he is also a puppet. A crooked puppet.
“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
- Edward Gibbon - The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Every country on the planet is in the same debit boat. It's stupid to just say it's just a USA problem or a Western problem. The East is just as much in Debit as the West. And the emerging economies will collapse just like the rest. In the end all the debit will be written off, but in the meantime, prepare to pay high taxes and high prices in energy. People need to stop undermining the hand that feeds them and understand things a little better.
But, but... it's so much easier to just blame it on some figure-head! </sarc>
Thank you for trying to pull this toward fundamentals. Math. Logic. Physical world/physics. The "answer" is pretty obvious (when one isn't hung up in an ideological mindset).
e.g. ObamaCare website cost $600 million plus for 70% completed barely functioning, whereas in the commercial sector it would have cost only $20 million tops and fully functioning. They then spent another $100 million to stop the glitches but still didn't finish the back end.
Never mind that the insurance industry said they would create the site for FREE at their cost. The government spent, I mean paid its cronies $700 million for a free website.
The end is nigh!
Yeah, I seem to recall that it was Obamacare that also took down Spain...
Meanwhile the MIC spends $1 trillion per year, and the bankers were getting $60 billion/month. Yeah, fucking Obamacare took it ALL down!
Fucking Party Pussy idiots...
ACA was implemented to finish the job.
Designed 100% Not To Work, and wipe out the rest of the Peoples' monies.
My fear is in 10 years, eating beans with my brother on the land we're sharecorpping, and he says, "Hey, do you still think America will collapse one day?" as he smiles wryly at me..
rot is rot. no need to overdo it.
Lots of intelligent comments on this!
My view is that the rise and fall of the empire is due to the same unitary mechanisms, which were the successes of backing up lies with violence. The empire rises as organized systems of lies, operating robberies. However, after a long enough period of time based on that foundation, the longer term consequences become everything listed in the 12 points in this article, as what also causes that empire to fall. The fundamental unitary mechanism of ENFORCED FRAUDS never makes those frauds become true, but rather, the ability to back up legalized lies with legalized violence results in the society as a whole being driven more psychotically insane. Every one of those 12 points can be seen as the expression of the paradox of final failure from too much success based on enforcing frauds, as the basis of everything else that controls civilization.
The empire was built on the basis of being able to operate organized lies and robberies, and was able to be maintained on that basis. However, it was built into those social structures that those 12 steps would inevitably come to pass, due to the inherent paradoxes of controlling civilization with Huge Lies, backed with Lots of Violence, which Violence never makes those Lies become true, but only drives every aspect of that civilization to become crazier and crazier, taking those 12 steps towards the decline and fall of a globalized system of electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs.
Superior resolutions of these problems would take more radical truth about those unitary mechanisms, which were the basis for how and why the progress in science and technology enabled to there to be built weapons of mass destruction and mass surveillance, which have amplified the SIZE of the problems of the globalized empire to become trillions of times bigger than those of any previous empire.
Human realities are always organized systems of lies, operating robberies. Paradoxically, the empire was able to grow by being able to promote the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories about itself, and then, the empire begins to decline and fall due to the longer term consequences of each successful short-term increment of the success of those bullies' bullshit stories, eventually driving society to become madly insane, and so, self-destructive. In the terms of this article, the feedback loops should be understood as the social system being a toroidal vortex, rather than pyramid shaped:
"The point is that decisions made with no feedback from the real-world of the bottom 95%, that is, decisions made solely in response to the demands of cronies, vested interests and various elites, are intrinsically unsound and doomed to fail catastrophically."
However, as always, I find Charles Hugh-Smith to be a reactionary revolutionary, who tends to follow relatively good analysis by implying "solutions" which are still based on false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals. My point is that everything he wrote should be seen from the perspective of the same unitary mechanisms, and therefore, any better resolutions to these problems should be based upon the same unitary mechanisms.
The two most important background conditions to the rise and fall of the globalized empire that dominates the world now was exponential progress in science and technology, enabling exponential strip-mining of the planet. Those were the two most important aspects of everything else whereby human beings and human activities developed at exponential rates. The most important real limit is that strip-mining the planet at an exponentially accelerating rate has real limits. The current systems of making "money" out of nothing as debt to finance strip-mining the planet have real limits related to the FACT that the planet is finite. To deal with that FACT, theoretically, human beings ought to develop better human and industrial ecologies, which can be integrated within natural ecologies. However, in practice, everything outlined in this article is about how the triumphant systems of enforced frauds have apparently created an overall civilization that became too completely corrupt and crazy to be able to save itself.
IF enough survives through those collapses into crazy chaos, because there was enough done to prepare or mitigate those collapses, so that those collapses were not as bad as they might have otherwise been, or still more able to recover from afterwards, THEN IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE THE UNDERSTANDING OF UNITARY MECHANISMS WHICH IS THE BASIS OF EVOLVING BETTER HUMAN AND INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGIES IN THE FUTURE.
Understanding the unitary mechanisms of enforced frauds provides the superior way for each individual who became trapped within those systems to comprehend their real context: "empires collapse one complicit participant at a time," because they were originally built on the benefits that individuals obtained from operating within those systems of organized lies and robberies. The original functioning of the systems, and the apparent corruption of those systems, are BOTH expressions of the same unitary mechanisms operating. Therefore, any better resolutions of those problems should be based upon evolutionary ecologies which comprehend those unitary mechanisms better.
If this dope stopped smoking dope, he might be able to make a sensibnle, worthwhile post.
Graft and Thievery, it's a growth industry
Some people look at a glass half empty.
Government will not stop until it is the only industry. Those rare businesses left to "private industry" will get government contracts.
We're almost there...
it ain't a pretty picture.
.
Alex Jones speaks with Naomi Prins about her new book
https://soundcloud.com/eddieleakscom/alex-jones-talks-to-naomi-prins-abo...
.
end the fed and their money system and mutant parasitical progeny.
by law money systems have a deadly, usurious, always unpublicised and nasty, edge.
freedom at the end of the barrel of a gun type con.
.
http://grooveshark.com/#!/artist/Kim+Richey/14541
.
or christmas in prison. that says it pretty well.
John Prine's Christmas in Prison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMqPlnskk9Y
.
"
Christmas In Prison
©John Prine
It was Christmas in prison
and the food was real good
we had turkey and pistols
carved out of wood
and I dream of her always
even when I don't dream
her name's on my tongue
and her blood's in my stream.
Chorus:
Wait awhile eternity
old mother nature's got nothing on me
come to me
run to me
come to me, now
we're rolling
my sweetheart
we're flowing
by God!
She reminds me of a chess game
with someone I admire
or a picnic in the rain
after a prairie fire
her heart is as big
as this whole goddamn jail
and she's sweeter than saccharine
at a drug store sale.
Chorus:
The search light in the big yard
swings round with the gun
and the spotlights are snowflakes
like the dust in the sun
it's Christmas in prison
there'll be music tonight
I'll probably get homesick
I love you. Goodnight.
Chorus:
" j.p.
.
bonus !!!
Tom Clunie Folk Band~Love Songs(2)-3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1W6OHzmF5Q
"or they are forced out as a potentially dangerous uncorrupted insider."
story of my (corporate) life
Shh dont tell anyone, a global concesus is forming. Among many beautiful minds.
+10. This is not your Daddy's revolution.
Disagree with points 1, 6 & 7.
Most empires don't start with idealistic intent; rather they are gathered like barnacles on a ship's hull.
Repetition is not limited to empires and accontability is rarely an isse.
I think the author of this post is glib and shallow of thought.
If this dope stopped smoking dope, he might be able to make a sensibnle, worthwhile post.
I agree with his argument. We had the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism. We lost them all and yet we keep fighting with the same old worn out policies, the only thing that gets bigger are the budgets.
Government is self serving, they fund a department to fight a problem. The problem never gets solved because the people working there like their jobs when they do not have to produce results.
If the problem is solved, they fear they will have to get a real job.
You forgot the War on Cancer. They do not fund a department to fight a problem. They fund a department to spend more other peoples money and increase the scope and depth of their authority.
Much like every organization to eliminate (fill in the blank) They have no motivation to eliminate, eraticate or cure shit, if they did they would be out on the street walking their dog. The whole purpose of any oganization is to perpetuate their existence and solving the problem is the last thing they want to do.
Duplicate
If America put an American is as President who had integrity, foresight, knew how to make money, knew how to rebuild wealth in the middle class and was not interested in any social welfare, and did away with this group of freaks at the Federal Reserve it could turn around but, it will not because the system of allowing people who contribute nothing to vote is a failed policy. This is why the founders only allowed land owners who have a vested interest to vote. Lastly, we need to have these folks like the bankers who have destroyed the banking system lose all their money when they return it to the treasury when entering prison!
Instead the American people elected a man with no integrity, no vision, no work ethic, and who never had a real job in his life and this is where we are!! As raw as Donald Trump may come across, he is exactly what America needs with Rand Paul as his Vice President. We need to get a handle on this Congress, this Senante and the Suopreme Court. There jobs are definded, we do not need justices involved in our commerce.
If an American president actually tried to do the job for real instead of a cover-story for bankster puppets he'd be shot.
As the Everest climbers recently discovered, what appears to be stable may prove to be not so...and the revelation is too swift to run from.
Excellent.
It's a matter of time.
Remember: when considered in terms of History, a couple of generations is short time.
The System is, indeed, corrupted to the core.
"The justification is always the same: everybody else is getting away with it, why shouldn't I? Empires decline one corruptible individual at a time."
Mouseketeer roll call...
Clapper.
Feinstein.
Rogers.
Holder.
Reid.
GOLFER!
A war on Charles Smith would once and for all end this mindless ABC media dribble, but 'wait', we have a kunstler report coming soon, just wait AIPAC has a message about how to count all the way to 21, followed by 39 courtesy of Simon Black. I'm starting to miss the old BITCOIN bullshit.
I also notice that Ron Paul stock has virtually collapsed here.
>>>
The problem with AmeriKKKa is 'LAWYERS', its a nation of lawyers, who are all BAR lawyers ran through the AIPAC gauntlet, they have filled their own in all branches of USA government, and liquidated all real assets and made the FIAT worthless. There said it, +99% of all USA politicians are Lawyers and AIPAC member's.
But keep up the narrative and feed the mushrooms shit, ...
The reason that the USA now sucks is the same reason that Palestine sucks, one only look in the direction of Tel Aviv to understand the cause.
When a country reaches a mental stage, where bad corruption is only the one you cannot participate, you are running a Soviet style economy with same adverse effects and outcome..
" it first erodes from within"
Already in progress.
Umm, probably already about 100% eroded now...
Next will be regional powers, not one empire. Russia/China dominate Asia, Iran dominates Mideast, USA dominates N/S America, Germany dominates EU. Undeveloped countries or 3 billion people have nothing.
12 months ago my family invested $1.5million into a little business. All 6 of us have been working on it, with 2 of us working more than full time on the business. In those 12 months the business earned about zero net profit. Yet if we had bought FB we would be up $3million in the same time frame...
Aren't we the dumb slaves.
Yes. Speculate it's the easy way to retire early. buy low and sell high.
Can we use fractal dimensionality to pinpoint the collaspe?
We seem to be in the lower range....between 2 and 3, closer to 2 and the fd should approach 3 as the collaspe becomes iminent.
"Those manufacturing steam locomotives in the early 20th century had an enormous amount of capital and institutional knowledge sunk in their factories. Tossing all of that out to invest in building diesel-electric locomotives that were much more efficient than the old-tech steam locomotives made little sense to those looking at sunk costs."
This is not exactly true.
Nobody "manufactures" steam locomotives, they build them, custom-designed batches. And yes, I used the present tense. There have been several built in the last few years.
Baldwin and Lima hung on to steam, not because they didn't understand the efficiency of diesel electric locomotives, but because they didn't understand it's versatility and attempted to produce diesels the same way they built steam-small batches, custom designed, instead of capitalizing on the versatility and producing a limited number of offerings with minimal customization and exploiting the learning curve.
Alco did see the future, and attempted to develop competence with the new technology and hung on until 1969, and was eclipsed by GE, a former partner who figured out the electrical components were the critical technology, not the diesel.
Until fuel prices changed and that means heat re-capture is critical again. Or, as the Prius does, rather than even generating excess heat from braking, the mechanical energy is re-captured and put to the battery. With a fuel-only vehicle if only there was a way to re-capture heat and turn it into stored mechancial energy. Some designs actually pre-heat fuel heading for combustion which in theory can reduce the energy needed to liberate the stored chemical energy but... I don't know enough about this to know if it's very efficient.
When Post-industrial societies on their way to a technotronic society start calling themselves Empires.
But... Rome didn't collapse. Don't let the imposed document blackout 400-750 AD fool you. Note all the deliberate mythmaking that came out of that same period- Arthur, Serbo, Attila, Meroveus and all the rest.
Rome didn't die at all, it deliberately altered its nature from secular to religious and from concrete to mystical. It's the first empire to go virtual in the modern epoch. And it worked. It's all still there now, in the cloud, ready to de-virtualise when the time is right.
Want to read something really really funny.
Try this from Barry.s personal fluffer in the UK one Ambrose Evans fucking a Pilchard
Just a taster
"Claims that President Barack Obama is bankrupting America with a lurch towards hard-Left statism are for tabloid consumption only. Outlays have fallen from 24.4pc to 20.6pc of GDP in five years."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10783568/America-has-conquered-its-debt-crisis-with-incredible-speed.html
Someone please deconstruct this BS for Mr Pilchard and infom him of his gross delusions
Great article
It follows what I have been saying all along.
Your enemy, your true enemy is the bureaucrat. It does not matter what level, but from the top to the bottom from K street to the city halls to the percolating all the way down to the teachers in the lowest grade schools will ultimately be conscripted to spy on you report you with promises that if they only do so they can keep their jobs and their pensions and benefits.
The fat bankers and corporate managers, corrupt as they may be will be the least of your worries.
But that fucking friendly old lady teaching 5 year olds at grade school will spy and inform on you in a second if she thought her pension could be jeopardized by you evading a tax or breaking another fucking regulation designed to rape you or shear you of income from fines or abject complicity to the elites demands.
Remember that when the time comes.
These are the bastards you need to put utter abject terror into their souls, They need to so so terrified of being butchered if they so much as squeak out of place when the time comes.
Control the civil servants and you win the war.
When the breakdown comes, you have to act quickly and decisively, butcher them and their families, at least enough to send out the message loud and very clear.
When they fear you more than the NSA and losing their pensions they will be onside and you win.
Don't know about you guys but my town is becoming more like Potter's Ville every day.
Well, I think I have finally found a way to deal with government. Mrs. M accused me of being childish while she was laughing. Of course I am childish, we have two of those terrorist children what did you think was going to happen to me? Why are you laughing then I asked her?
Whatever "state block grant" got tabled for the moment as the committee went into recess.
I have hever tried this tactic before at a meeting but it appears to work pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJQoxdSFTJ0
At least it is only an empire of Globalists and not an empire of real men.
Due to the ratchet effect the organization only knows how to grow
Is this not the perfect description of modern day China?
China will fall. It's just of marginal interest if before or after the US, or EU. The system are corrupt to the bones. That's the sad but true fact. It's as simple as looking at the "currencies" there is no no fiat-currency anywhere world-wide. That's a thing we just lost to the state monopolies. I always hoped it will not have to be paid back in blood, but I'm to history aware that my hope vanishes like snow in the sun.
We're screwed and the corruption will take it's very heavy toll....
Bullshit easy just one rule he whos got the gold makes the rules to them nothing else matters.
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
"Italy will be instrumental in the fallout which will trigger the involvement of global powers in a war – all these events are inevitable, but prayer can ease suffering. Pray, My daughter, that people will turn to Me and ask Me for help and guidance through these times of turmoil."
http://www.thewarningsecondcoming.com/arab-uprising-spark-global-unrest-...
Just so ya know Mother Nature doesent care what they think.
Personally I believe the Society or Business is Most Profitable just before Collapse. The Rentier Economy of 19th Century England seeking 5% by investing in US railroads or Brazil or Russia or Argentina as fast-growing emerging economies rather than improving processes and efficiency inside Britain were the seeds of destruction.
The Liquidation Strategy of high dividend payouts and the search for yield by overseas investments in trendy new businesses - Railway Boom in England 19850s, then Cable with Globe Investment Trust, then wider empire.....brought Britain an investment incomeof £5 billion ($25 billion) by 1914 = £300 billion today - all dissipated in fighting Germany to keep market share against a technological rival expanding into the Middle East via the Berlin-Baghdad Railway and into Russia as a growth market.
Germany itself was frightened of French Revival after 1871 defeat and the emergence of industrial Russia so planned on a take-out war which the British used to bring down Germany.
Think of the supernormal gains on Facebook paper and the concentration of wealth and search for yield and the US plan to try take down China and Russia and think back to 1914.
This game will not stop Russia and China and Brazil emerging but it will bring increasing Authoritarianism to hold the Us populace in check as Europe breaks out of the US Empire......it is starting at grass-roots level, the political elites just have not realised yet
Sometimes bad people get away with it. When they get away with it long enough that isn't the decline of an empire, that's the foundation of an empire. To see it go sour later is merely a consequence of what it always was. The "nice stuff" was always window dressing. The cover story. The lie people told themselves to sleep at night. That's how they built up from city-state to territory to nation to empire.
An honest society not bent on raping resources can't form an empire. An empire has no purpose but to be a leveraging vehicle to rape resources.
I recognise many of those points. But I'm not sure they only apply to a "collapsing empire". They can equally apply to a country, a large/small corporation, NGO and any other organisation. Of course the specifics will vary in each case.
They represent, what is virtually, an unavoidable natural cycle.