Reprinted from here.
It was 2017. Clans were governing America.
The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.
As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.
The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.
With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.
The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.
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Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIVVL43qPXY&hl=en_US&fs=1]
Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods.
Goods reappeared in markets under the protection of local warlords. Transactions were conducted in barter and in gold, silver, and copper coins.
Other clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition. Uneasy alliances formed to balance differences in clan strengths. Betrayals quickly made loyalty a necessary trait for survival.
Large-scale food and other production broke down as local militias taxed distribution as goods moved across local territories. Washington seized domestic oil production and refineries, but much of the government’s gasoline was paid for safe passage across clan territories.
Most of the troops in Washington’s overseas bases were abandoned. As their resource stocks were drawn down, the abandoned soldiers were forced into alliances with those with whom they had been fighting.
Washington found it increasingly difficult to maintain itself. As it lost control over the country, Washington was less able to secure supplies from abroad as tribute from those Washington threatened with nuclear attack. Gradually other nuclear powers realized that the only target in America was Washington. The more astute saw the writing on the wall and slipped away from the former capital city.
When Rome began her empire, Rome’s currency consisted of gold and silver coinage. Rome was well organized with efficient institutions and the ability to supply troops in the field so that campaigns could continue indefinitely, a monopoly in the world of Rome’s time.
When hubris sent America in pursuit of overseas empire, the venture coincided with the offshoring of American manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs and the corresponding erosion of the government’s tax base, with the advent of massive budget and trade deficits, with the erosion of the fiat paper currency’s value, and with America’s dependence on foreign creditors and puppet rulers.
The Roman Empire lasted for centuries. The American one collapsed overnight.
Rome’s corruption became the strength of her enemies, and the Western Empire was overrun.
America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many. Overwhelmed by liabilities, the government collapsed.
Globalism had run its course. Life reformed on a local basis.
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.
Updates
* Krugman: Defining Prosperity Down
* Carlin:
You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there… just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ’em showing up at those jobs.
* Goldman Sachs does what it does
* Police grabbing property
* Follow the money
I agree with you, totally. However, and I emphasize, however, I am pissed as a chimskyite about a geopolitical system exploited by the US and anytime I can heap alarmism and play the ‘ha ha’ game and mock the US nationalists – in effect I play a game with two outcomes I where I end up with a win/win scenario.
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Yeah, I am pissed at how ridiculous America is being ATM and I’m unfortunate enough to be living here.
The chief problem is, as defined by David Brin, a culture war between those who want to drag America back to a “golden age” that never existed and try to restore the “American Empire in everything but name” and those of us who understand that there never was a “Golden Age” and the only path is forward into a future that terrifies those who cannot understand the radical changes that the future will bring to nearly everything.
That’s why I cannot buy into the alarmism of the AGW movement, because at heart it’s not about the future and progress, it’s about trying to stop technological progress that will solve the issues by dragging us backwards with repressive and completely unenforceable “carbon bans”
I’ve been around a long time, and I was there in the 70’s when the movement was all about “The Next Ice Age” and then “CFCs are destroying the Ozone” and then mutated into the current AGW movement.
I don’t dispute that we are getting warmer, but I studied history BEFORE they tried to rewrite the books and eliminate the Medieval Warm Period, and as a member of the SCA, I’ve studied enough about clothing designs to trace the temperatures just by looking at the changes from “lightweight, cool clothes designed for hot weather” to “Heavy insulating clothes for cold weather”. I can also read the reports for myself, and don’t have to rely on people telling me what’s in them, and based on my own research, the cycles of the sun have far more to do with global warming and cooling then CO2 does. We are getting warmer, because we are coming out a cooler period, and we are not even back to the temperatures that existed merely a thousand years ago, which were cooler than the climate was at the time of Christ. We need to end pollution before we poison ourselves, and our biosphere, but I’m not concerned about “Runaway Global Warming” as anything but a political power grab trying to prevent progress towards technologies that can remove carbon from the atmosphere faster than we put it in while simultaneously trying to prevent 3rd nations from developing towards 1st world status as part of the ongoing “status game” we humans play.
Hope that doesn’t trigger the usual “You MUST BELIEVE IN AGW” response I’ve had to deal with from the majority of people who have bought into the AGW meme, but like I said, I can look at the evidence for myself, and it’s lacking, and I refuse to be bullied into joining what I see a little more than a cult of conformity with an anti-progressive agenda that differs little from the conservative movements that do the same thing. The rhetoric may be different, but the goals are too closely aligned.
And both of them come down to America trying to force their opinions and beliefs on the rest of the world. We’ve got to learn that we’re not “Exceptions” and acknowledge that we’re just one of the many nations and cultures on this planet, and we all have to share it.
I do not want to risk it. I assume there is solid merit to antropic global warming, and a factor in that is I live in the Netherlands. The slightest slip of Antarctic ice shelft slippage means my country is like *gone*. I’d be shoved into Germany. Trust me, that would suck.
Not that we would be able to STOP that IF it were a theoretical reality at this stage (…) but for consequence sake, as it would affect me rather acutely, I’d be concerned in past, present, future, theory, hypothetic, speculative or practice.
Humm, no, I don’t really see it happening this way.
We are facing a rather turbulent time, there is no doubting that, but the flaw in this scenario is that it not looking at what is really happening.
We are in a transition phase between “material wealth” and “Non material wealth”
Material wealth is based on scarcity. It depends on the rarity of an item to give it “Value” the less of a item there is, the more valuable it is.
Non-Material wealth is based on Abundance. It depends on massive availability to give it value. The more of it there is, the more people have it, the more valuable it is.
Take for example Gold vs. Microsoft Windows.
Corporations, and many of “the wealthy” are based on Material wealth, which technology is inevitably destroying by eliminating scarcity.
But rising up from this decay is a new “wealthy class” who’s worth is based entirely on “non-material goods”, and who’s “wealth” increases exponentially as more and more people gain access to their “product”
Take for example Rockefeller vs Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the founder of Facebook (can’t remember his name.
With this emerging class of “Non-material Superrich” as bad as things may get, they won’t get quite as bad as this, because more and more of the “elites” will either “go bankrupt” or make a transition to “Non-material wealth” based riches.
But because so many people (including Wall Street) can’t comprehend an economy of abundance, and how it functions, and because humanity has been chained to a “material” economy for so long, most of the world cannot comprehend that this is a phase change, as opposed to an apocalypse.
That’s nothing new. The same “apocalyptic” visions were common when the industrial revolution shattered the agricultural paradigm of wealth creation as well.