Submitted by Charlkes Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Rome didn't fall so much as erode away. That's the template for collapse.
Here are the nine dynamics of decay that lead to collapse:
1. complacency and intellectual laziness
2. profound political disunity
3. rise of unproductive complexity
4. those bearing the sacrifices opt out/quit
5. decay of effective leadership
6. rise of bread and circuses social welfare and entertainment to distract/placate restive citizenry
7. decline of wealth-producing capacity--status quo living off financial trickery
8. sclerosis--status quo controlled by vested interests
9. resource depletion/environmental damage
All of these dynamics are currently in play around the globe.
Michael Grant touched on many of these dynamics in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.
If our idea of intellectual rigor is Paul Krugman dancing around the Neo-Keynesian Cargo Cult campfire waving dead chickens and spewing nonsensical claims of grand success, we're doomed. Placing our faith in failed monetary-legerdemain and policies of the past is the height of hubris and complacency. There is a cost to complacency and it's called collapse.
A lengthier book on the same subject by Adrian Goldsworthy, How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower, found that a key driver of decline was the constant political struggle for power drained resources and led to ineffective leadership.
This profound political disunity is not the usual staged battles of the Demopublicans vs. the Republicrats. The real disunity is between a doomed Status Quo and those willing to deal with reality. Right now those willing to deal with reality are few, but they have the distinct advantage of reality on their side, while the Status Quo has only propaganda, artifice, phony political theater and empty promises.
Another dynamic of decay is expansive, sclerotic bureaucracies that lose sight of their purpose while piling on unproductive complexity. The top leadership abandons the pursuit of the common good for personal gain, wealth and power, and this rot at the top soon spreads down the chain of command to infect and corrupt the entire institutional culture.
Grant describes how key classes of productive citizens opt out as their sacrifices are squandered on propping up rapacious elites. Those making the sacrifices look around at what they've sacrificed to maintain and decide it's no longer worth it. So they opt out or quit, draining the status quo of talent, drive and wealth-producing assets.
As the masses become debt-serfs or dependents on the state, the costs of providing bread and circuses becomes unsustainable. The state and central banks are currently papering over this mismatch by printing or borrowing money in the trillions of dollars. But financial trickery is no substitute for actual wealth creation: printing money is not the same as printing real-world wealth.
As for resource depletion and environmental damage--look no further than aquifer depletion, soil erosion, the stripmining of the seas and the poisoning of our air/water/soil on a grand scale.
Rome didn't fall so much as erode away, its many strengths squandered on in-fighting, mismanagement of resources, complacency and personal aggrandizement/ corruption. That's the template for collapse, and you see it in every status quo globally.
I think the strange lifestyles had a part of it too.....only so many orgies you can go to......
Rome's problem was they let a small group of people gain undue influence in the media/communications sector, and the finance sector.
Oh wait, no, thats America.
They also debased a shitload of their money and put the squeeze on the plebs with insane taxes.
Or is that the USA too?
We haven't had the true dictatorship of the Romans yet though. That will come when the president receives enough power through either a national emergency or contin uous handing over of power from the legilative branch. Very wealthy people will start disappearing or be convicted of crimes by which their assets will be seized by the state to pay for debts and public placation while more power is centralized in a very select few. History will repeat itself with the slaugter of millions in the name of a better society. Basically, North Korea on a global scale. Millions will be cheering it on, as well.
I'm pretty sure we have a functional fascist dictatorship at this point hidden under the false-cloak of a socialist democracy.
Since both socialism and fascism support the idea that the state knows best, and the state has the authority to order the lives of its citizens, then it is hard to tell when socialism ends and fascism begins.
The Roman 'Senate' was there til the end as well but was nothing more than a bunch of rich dudes tryng to curry favor with the Emperors post-Caesar.
Although the rise of the praetorian guard over time may have been the real power behind the throne.
Oh..You must mean the Pentagoons and the MIC?
Same as it ever was and ever will be....except this time with Nukes.
That sounds about right, Mssrs. Boehner, Reid and McConnell!
MOSTLY IT IS RULE BY EXECUTIVE ORDER AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW. WAKE THE FUCK UP.
You dummies need to look up and see what a true dictatorship is. I am awake, you're just dreaming in goofball land.
And the Army crossed the Rubicon, to enter the City proper ... which is a delicious analogy for a militarized police-force.
And today? DSK arranges soirees for IMF grandees that include teenage prostitutes who end up being brutally ass-fucked. What's different?
This is exacly why all the employed blacks of the DC-based OPM (Office of Personnel Management) let the Chinese hack 14 million personnel records.
D.C. = "District of the Coloreds"
I had my fill dealing with the affirmative action lower level 'civil servants' in DC.
Third world level capacity but with AC in the offices.Took me three months to find one that knew
what he was doing, and he was an Asst. Secretary at State.
Reminded me of my visits to the Soviet Union.
My last post fellow zhers. This was my last online presence and its time to go dark. I'll still be lurking but won't log in. Time is short now . And I'll not feed the mega data beast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoJdb1TLLJQ
Do your patriotic duty and turn your property into a Bermuda Triangle for reinforced Fedcoat platoons.
Good luck and give 'em hell..!!
See you tomorrow.
Hey Stant, Best of Luck whatever your grand plan is.
;-D
I came out of the dark to agree. It is the only way now. In time I believe things will normalize. Unfortunatelly, there is much pain between now and when things will improve. The people seem to be sleepwalking and happily ignorant. Only when they wake up and understand what has transpired will things improve. That day I fear, will not be pretty. Hunker down and be patient. Time to hibernate.
I think Amerika is at peak 'gimmiedat'. We're literally conjuring fiat to fund free shit for people who are highly reproductive, but aren't interesting in being productive. Soon, .gov will have to begin cutting the benefits. That's when times will get REALLY interesting. I cant wait. Tick, tock Fedcoats.
If you had the power to save America (Financially)....
What would you do?
A) Keep the Power for yourself?
B) Take the Power to another country & get rich off of it?
C) Give America your Power?
I would send a great Flood to wash away the filth and work with a faithful remnant to rebuild . . . elsewhere.
The illusion can only be maintained for so long in each stage. But it is an illusion at every stage. Was there "greater" freedom in the past? of course. But the entire paradigm is a laughable show. That is the truth that is just too much for most people to accept. It has always been the way. http://www.thetruthaboutthelaw.com/they-tell-big-lies-about-our-supposed...
Shit that would have gotten a chuckle and a slap on the wrist when I was a teenager would quite literally get me labled as a terrorist these days.
The difference between Rome and now is we communicate a lot farther, faster. Information is power and we've given the power to the village idiots. Rome took a long time to fully rot away, but now the implosion will happen in weeks to months and bread and circuses has been replaced by the free shit army... May you live in interesting times.......
Second Law of "Thermo"dynamics: The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
Delta-S >= 0
And applying it to societal collapse is not appropriate for anything other than a metaphor. Our industrial society increases entropy much, much faster than a collapsed agrarian society ever could.
Yep, humans are the only living creatures to actively fight against entropy, but it's a continuous battle and the special snowflakes not only don't fight it but do their best to increase it. Of course your a racist homophobe if you point that out.....
we have thousands of Billionaires now...we never had that 10 years ago....with all the printing of fiat..we will soon have trillionaires.....and so it goes....until they lose the faith of the paper....just like the Romans who cut the gold out of the coins in the end....and then it was worthless....same here...when that paper you have in your wallet does not matter anymore...it will end...
... cut the gold out of the coins ...
NO, it was Ag (clipping coins and also reducing the silver content) for the most part.
details...details...details....but that is why you are the proofreder...lol
You don't think the 1% has their gold already?
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/18/technology/obamaphone-lifeline-fcc-broad...
Moar free shit!
We're pretty much collapsed here in the United States ain't it about time to remove the dangerous and dying government and replace it with open source software?
Yes, I get that ... and yet, there has been a multigenerational and consistent march by the powers behind the country governments toward a global government.
This is the power that Kennedy and Disraeli (as well as many others have mentioned, it is the power that Wilson talked about people mentioning only in whispers) talked about.
One has to question whether the destruction of nation states and the transference of power around the world is all part of this greater plan.
I don't think they are marching towards anything. They come up with escape fantasies and excuses in the last hour. But they plan nothing beyond what can be stolen today. The history of government, bankers, and human organizations is long list of stupidity and delusion. In the end, they all disappear. They have a fantasy about global communism as an escape route? That is great. They can tell whomever they meet in the afterlife about how it was supposed to be if only everyone had just given up their humanity to them.
It is not decay, it is cancer.
Decay is where something dead is broken down into its constituent parts by various agents.
Cancer is part of the body gone rogue and then devouring the rest from the inside.
A cancer is what ails us. The cancer of Zion and their plunder; their grifting banksters, and the tyranny of their violence-puppets', government.
The cancer must be cut out and consumed in Liberty's fire.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
Paul Krugman would be embarassed if he could objectively imagine what a pathetic footnote he would deserve in the collapse of the second empire.
Paul Krugman would be embarassed if he could objectively ANYTHING.
Yet they fight like cats and dogs over unimportant bullshit and over who has the power. The Ds and the Rs are competing crime families. They are often going to do the same things because that's where the profits are, then turn around and bitch at each other for, well, doing the same things.
What's more telling is that when the issue turns to what benefits the fat cats, the silent unity of both parties is deafening.
Party loyalty is the only sacrament of the DemPublicans. Doesn't that remind one of other societies of recent history? That's why Senator Cruz is so reviled along with the TP sympathizers in general.
That's my point about them being competing crime families. Which fat cat is willing to support which congress critter is analagous to turf where some goon extorts businesses for "protection." Who has control of the turf? Who pays whom in Washington DC?
Two more must-Reads ...
The Fourth Turning - Howe and Strauss and Fooled by Randomness - N. Taleb (black swan guy)
Ahem, you missed this one:
THE FATE OF EMPIRES and SEARCH FOR SURVIVAL Sir John Glubbhttp://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
No form of governmentt, no ideology, nothing is exempt. Sadly, Glubb couldn't put his finger on THE origin of all failures: the underlying premise that ALL had, that of promiting perpetual growth (on a finite planet).
Seer.... you hit the nail on the head!! While I still rank plain old greed and the desire of a few to control the many.....as the top problem....
I firmly believe that most discussion about "the economy" completely ignore the fact that all popular economic theories have at their core, the expectation of constant 'growth'.....both in population to 'buy more', and use of natural resources 'build more'. Mankind got away with this for centuries....but we are hitting the limit.
Yup. We've ALL been in this game. I look around and see all these folks lashing out at others as though others are to blame for what is the natural course of events and find there is quite the thick cloud of hypocrisy masking the facts as we know them to be.
Been well over 5 years that I've taken a beating on ZH over my promotion that people understand the core underlying fact of growth. They seem to get close, even recognizing the "math problem" with printing up endless fiat, but when pointing out that the earth isn't a perpetual printing press of resources they then lash out like you're, um, who the fuck knows! (I want MINE; or, "tech will save us all" because, well, hopium) It would be comical if not for the fact that such thinking is going to end up killing a LOT of people (well, a LOT of people are going to die anyway, so I guess the more troubling point would be that no lesson would be learned, we'll end up trying to repeat he very same thing, only to once again complain about our heads hurting because we're not able to bash them against the wall as per our "god given right" [whatever the fuck that means- queue up George Carlin's "Words" as in, it's only fucking words!]).
Greed and the desire of a few to control so many and exponential growth on a finite planet are merely two sides of the same coin in my book.
Meanwhile in the land of milk and honey...
NY Fed President Dudley Sees a Stronger Economy in Second Half of 2015
While uncertainty remains about whether growth will be strong enough to lead to further improvement in the labor market, President Dudley expects that the Federal Reserve will be able to raise interest rates later this year. However, the likelihood and timing of the increase will depend on the economic outlook, which will be largely shaped by incoming economic data.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/speeches/2015/dud150605.html
Everybody's got something to hide, 'cept for me and my monkey.
Everyone wants to invest in someone else doing something.
The short term solution here was derivatives.
With the derivatives market at ten times global GDP, producing useful products and providing useful services is already nearly irrelevant.
There is no solution to the crash. The crash IS the solution.
Make it so, Mr. LaForge.
Naw, no need to expend precious energy, it'll come on it's own... Of course, if you're wanting to speed up the trainwreck THEN you're going to have to pitch in and give things a shove. For me? I'm using my energy to get on with life as I see it needs to be: and I aim to minimize the negative impacts I have on others.
All this, and yet: stocks grind higher.
It's just those that don't/can't participate in this rally that come up with these negative, fatalistic views.
For fuck's sake, just go invest in something...do yourself what you say people aren't doing enough of (investing in productive assets).
"For fuck's sake, just go invest in something...do yourself what you say people aren't doing enough of (investing in productive assets)."
The very notion of "invest" is highly perverse. The reason why the "productive assets" seem to be fleeting is because growth is waning. There's nothing in the "System" that addresses a no-growth environment. Productivity means growth. This is the reason why "wealth" is seemingly "invested" is stupid stuff- we're still spinning the wheel after it's been off the cart (and the cart will no longer be pulled).
Stocks = paper. There's no physical there, therefore, there's no reality there.
"Invest" is all about the "future." The "future," as the "System" has programmed us to understand, has been thoroughly pillaged. It's time to define one's own, realistic, future.
Death to the human race. Long live the non human species!
The circles are some of Charles best work.
Whats in it for me to be productive. The fruits of my labor thing? I will not be making pies to eat crumbs.
It sure looks like a controled crash to me. Not one thing has been left up to chance. This is not random or a natural progression. It is under some form of control. Who or what is controling I cant say for sure.
Can this cycle be broken tho? With the technologies we have today we might not get another shot a breaking it.
It comes down to the will to do what needs to be done. That and a plan that actually addresses the true issues facing Earth. The complete loss of accountability of a small fraction of mankind.
"This is not random or a natural progression. It is under some form of control. Who or what is controling I cant say for sure."
I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell ya!
This is all perfectly predictable! As resources diminish there is always tighter control. And if there's anything that power knows, it's CONTROL.
Anyone believing that POWER is not trying to maintain itself for as long as it can just doesn't understand basic human behavior. Really, who expects power to step up and admit that our outcome is one of declining resources on a per-capita, of a reduced "lifestyle?" Fuck, look at Greece; nothing says how fucked up things are than that recent "protest" sign asking to side with the EU and NOT austerity (of words to that effect). We are incapable of accepting the truth because it'll mean that we'll have to accept that in order to have MORE we will have to get our hands "dirty." So, we forever blame those in power, and those in power continue the great lie (of our false premise/promise of perpetual growth).
"Can this cycle be broken tho? With the technologies we have today we might not get another shot a breaking it."
Ah, another "technology can save us all" kind! Ever notice that the numbers of poor on the planet are only increasing? Technology has not, nor will it ever, CREATE actual resources: technology is a process- matter cannot be created or destroyed; "technology" is no more than our hubristic minds believing that we are capable of continuing our exponential plundering of the earth's resources.
" It comes down to the will to do what needs to be done. That and a plan that actually addresses the true issues facing Earth. The complete loss of accountability of a small fraction of mankind."
OK, go ahead, tell us what you believe "needs to be done." Be sure to include guidance on what is to be done to/with 7+ billion humans. Will that which "needs to be done" scale? Keep in mind that this is for eternity, unless, that is, you wish to specify a timeline for human existence.
BTW - Earth will be just fine; well, until the universe blows out (or in, or whatever will eventually happen to it- expect the sun to expire prior to that event)
Wow nice bit of spin!
Aside from that. What needs to be done you ask? Well its all starts with some real accountability. That changes our dirrection in a big way. As to the future of billions of people? Well thats not realy for me to say. People need to make their own choices. Hopefully based on informed consent would be nice.
On the piont about technologies saving us? Well my view is the technology is like a tool. Its all in how its used.
Case in point. The massive data collecting is simply used as a tool to force things and people. Now if it was used to root out corruption? I think many good people would be ok with it. Truth and accountability should work very well together. No?
So ever given any real thought into what it would take to actually set things right long term? I am looking forward to your thoughts. Or are you just going to lay there while they stomp all the good things to dust?
All of your complaints can be easily and simply addressed, by the use of existing technology. It's an engineering problem.
Asteroid mining will save Earth.
"Technology has not, nor will it ever, CREATE actual resources:"
Technology give us ACCESS to resources that were already there.
One important thing CHS missed: the Roman Empire suffered several devastating plagues. The Plague of Galen from 165-180 wiped out huge portions of the Roman Army, utterly depopulated some sections of Italy, and killed two Emperors. It may have killed 5 million people. The Plague of Cyprian from 250-275ish itself killed two Emperors, re-depopulated some sections of Italy, and killed probably another 5 million people.
I sat thru a meeting this AM and the political guy from the mayor's office says they want to keep Seattle a "middle class city" and not let it become San Fran with an "hourglass" population. He mentioned rent, cost of living, etc.
When confronted that the government was dictating to business their costs via minimum wage, sick leave, ACA, taxes, permitting, etc he gets the deer in the head lights look. The problem he says, is business "did not organize as labor did on the minimum wage issue."
Of course, the issue is the pols were not lobbied sufficiently or paid enough to do the "right thing."
Poor police protection, lousy schools, high cost of housing, traffic, property taxes. All are primarily the result of government interference. Of course, these issues have little to do with a family moving to the burbs. :-)
FWIIW, sschu
Empires are about energy flow, everything else is secondary (symptom).
While energy input can still grow, empires grow. When energy declines, empires decline too.
The US share of global energy consumption is shrinking: US empire is shrinking.
CHS does not get this.
No, No! The empire isn't shrinking, energy "consumption" is just that much more efficient (thanks to Teslas and hope!)! </sarc>
The nation’s brightest minds were enticed into Wall Street by the massive rewards.
This elite was set to work on building the biggest ponzi scheme the world has ever known on the back of sub-prime mortgages.
They came up with securitisation, CDOs, CDO(squared)s, synthetic CDOs, CDSs in their efforts to build the ponzi scheme.
Seven years after the bubble blew the global economy is still crippled, they had succeeded.
"It’s nearly $14 trillion pyramid of super leveraged toxic assets was built on the back of $1.4 trillion of US sub-prime loans, and dispersed throughout the world" (pg 404, “All the Presidents Bankers”, Nomi Prins).
This is probably the least productive allocation of human resources the world has ever known.
The end is nigh.
It takes two things to topple a mighty oak: the rot within, and then a strong wind. Of course, The Great Red Dragon just arms its agents with chainsaws.