Via Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics blog [10],
QUESTION: Does society ever wake up? Are there any such examples from history?
ANSWER: Of course.
If society did not wake up now and then, the outcome would always be the same – a dark age. The late 1700s was a revolution against monarchy – i.e. American Revolution. Then there was the overthrow of the kings and birth of Roman Republic in 509 BC. Each of these two events was followed by a contagion where the first inspired the French Revolution and the latter the Athenian revolution giving birth to Democracy. Then there was the collapse of Communism that began in China and spread to Russia and Eastern Europe as a contagion.
[11]
There is hope that we can wake before we go to the Dark Age stage – the Mad Max Event. If there were not, I would be building a bunker on an island someplace. This all depends upon society and where it resides at that moment. We have more danger in places like France where people are so reliant upon government which has laid waste to the private sector exactly as communism did in Russia.
The difference between China and Russia is important. In China, they did not try to change the thinking of society, they merely punished those who disagreed openly. Under Stalin, he persecuted people for having a brain. Therefore, China’s rebound has been spectacular because people were NOT reliant upon government. The more a society relies upon government the greater the damage to its economic potential. It requires a control-alt-delete reboot.
It is similar today where we have smart phones. We now push a button to call a friend. Lose the phone and most of us have no idea what phone number to call any more. We become dependent upon the technology. The same is true with government. In Ukraine, the people simply did not trust government and have had an independent streak to always maintain some self-reliance.
The future depends upon that quality. It will vary from region to region even within the same nation. For example, stop the flow of food into NYC and they begin to starve after 10 days. You would see a mass exodus raiding the homes in the suburbs. The city people rely upon someone producing the food 100% and have no land to even grow a tomato. At least in the suburb, they can plant something assuming it is not robbed by another.
This is the problem with all analysis. Only a fool cannot see that there is something beyond a one-dimensional view of the world. Everything they look at they twist into their own view and fail to understand that this is a multi-dimensional world where the same fundamental does NOT produce the same result perpetually. This is a combination of trends, which merge together to create a dynamic future that leaves opinion always trying to justify its errors.
Society will wake up, but not necessarily as a whole on a universal basis. There will always be differences of opinions and culture for everyone’s history dictates their future. Germany demands austerity because of the 1920s hyperinflation after the communist revolution of 1918, and the USA stimulates because of the 1930s deflation. There is NEVER a one size fits all outcome for everyone. They simply fight the last war over and over again blind to the changes because of their prejudice.
