So the Romans were a resource empire like the Spanish. The coolest book I’ve ever read was 1493 by Charles Mann. He described Potosi, a mountain in Bolivia whose gold financed the spanish empire for 200 years from roughly 1550-1750 at times the silver that flooded into Europe was so vast it helped cause the famous dutch tulip craze. But when the gold ran out, the power of the Spanish vanished.
That has been the great cautionary tale that people have heard since.
What I find interesting is that the tip of the spear and the current economic endpoint of the american space program today is psyche. The amount of precious metals on that asteroid makes the current complete wealth of earth look approximately like a grain of sand.
The technical/engineering difficulty today of getting the precious metals of psyche is about on a level as that of spain getting the silver of petosi in say 1540. ( a bavarian mining engineer figured out how to extract the silver of potosi about roughly 1540.)
For context on this historical story is this story about a revaluation of gold coming later this year. I totally think this is in the offing.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4387563/posts
The trump administration will be known as providing the financial bridge between the post war world and the dawning space age. ... no it won’t ... but in monetary terms ...that will be the case.
the trump people have both understood the past very well and understood the future very well.
For context on this historical story is this story about a revaluation of gold coming later this year. I totally think this is in the offing.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4387563/posts
The trump administration will be known as providing the financial bridge between the post war world and the dawning space age. ... no it won’t ... but in monetary terms ...that will be the case.
the trump people have both understood the past very well and understood the future very well.
The Potosi mines have produced circa 4-5 percent of all the silver ever mined, but in that time period, in peak years it was producing as much as 35-40 percent. It's what kept the lights on, even though the Spanish also hauled out gold and emeralds.
Regardless of source, the vast fortune apparently went into adornment including loads of palaces.
The list of wars lost by the Spanish Empire (as well as pyrrhic victories) is pretty impressive in its own way. They managed to defeat lesser opponents, and tottered on with occasional victories until loss of most of their American colonies.
Endpoints of the US space program is the Moon, Mars. Everything after that is up for grabs, with mining the asteroid belt way down on the list, including Psyche.