[Mase]

Soon we’ll hear from the FReepers who think the key to our survival is to cut ourselves off from the world economy and buy and sell only in local markets. What they may not realize is that this approach was tried before, in Europe, after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was called the Dark Ages.

[mnehring]

Soon we’ll hear from the FReepers who think the key to our survival is to cut ourselves off from the world economy and buy and sell only in local markets

We have them, they are called Paulvestites and Buchananites.

[muawiyah]

Actually, the Dark Ages began on a specific day in a specific year when some sort of natural catastrophe wiped out high civilization in Western Europe, Nortern Europe, Northern Asia, China and a variety of other places.

It seriously hurt Mediterranean civilization.

Within a short while one of the best places to live was out in the Arabian desert at the oasis called Mecca ~ and that was not all that good a place.

The development of small, local markets was a sign that civilization was returning to Western Europe. That came about some time after the creation of the local defense system called Feudalism. Took Western and Northern Europe about a thousand years to recover ~ I believe Michelangelo (1475-1564) was the first sculptor since the 400s to create a human-form statue as good as had been done by the ancient Romans and Greeks.

Not that statuary is the halmark of the best in civilization, but a thousand years without a good statue is definitely a sign that something serious was wrong, and it wasn't exactly marketing strategies!

The Chinese did their recovery in something like 300 years. They still get higher scores on IQ tests.