Posted on 11/14/2008 12:05:38 PM PST by Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!
Hello, everyone! The talk you are about to hear is the result of a lengthy process on my part. My specialty is in thinking about and, unfortunately, predicting collapse. My method is based on comparison: I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and, since I am also familiar with the details of the situation in the United States, I can make comparisons between these two failed superpowers.
I was born and grew up in Russia, and I traveled back to Russia repeatedly between the late 80s and mid-90s. This allowed me to gain a solid understanding of the dynamics of the collapse process as it unfolded there. By the mid-90s it was quite clear to me that the US was headed in the same general direction. But I couldn't yet tell how long the process would take, so I sat back and watched.
I am an engineer, and so I naturally tended to look for physical explanations for this process, as opposed to economic, political, or cultural ones. It turns out that one could come up with a very good explanation for the Soviet collapse by following energy flows.
What happened in the late 80s is that Russian oil production hit an all-time peak. This coincided with new oil provinces coming on stream in the West - the North Sea in the UK and Norway, and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska - and this suddenly made oil very cheap on the world markets. Soviet revenues plummeted, but their appetite for imported goods remained unchanged, and so they sank deeper and deeper into debt. What doomed them in the end was not even so much the level of debt, but their inability to take on further debt even faster. Once international lenders balked at making further loans, it was game over.
What is happening to the United States now is broadly similar, with certain polarities reversed. The US is an oil importer, burning up 25% of the world's production, and importing over two-thirds of that. Back in mid-90s, when I first started trying to guess the timing of the US collapse, the arrival of the global peak in oil production was scheduled for around the turn of the century.
SNIP...ARTICLE IS VERY LONG
Financial collapse seems to be particularly painful if you happen to have a lot of money. On the other hand, I run across people all the time, who feel that "Nothing's happened yet." These are mostly younger, relatively successful people, who have little or no savings, and still have good paying jobs, or unemployment insurance that hasn't run out yet. Their daily lives aren't much affected by the turmoil on the financial markets, and they don't believe that anything different is happening beyond the usual economic ups and downs.
Commercial collapse is much more obvious, and observing it doesn't entail opening envelopes and examining columns of figures. It is painful to most people, and life-threatening to some. When store shelves are stripped bare of necessities and remain that way for weeks at a time, panic sets in. In most places, this requires some sort of emergency response, to make sure that people are not deprived of food, shelter, medicine, and that some measure of security and public order is maintained. People who know what's coming can prepare to sit out the worst of it.
Political collapse is more painful yet, because it is directly life-threatening to many people. The breakdown of public order would be particularly dangerous in the US, because of the large number of social problems that have been swept under the carpet over the years. Americans, more than most other people, need to be defended from each other at all times. I think that I would prefer martial law over complete and utter mayhem and lawlessness, though I admit that both are very poor choices.
Social and cultural collapse seem to have already occurred in many parts of the country to a large extent. What social activity remains seems to be anchored to transitory activities like work, shopping, and sports. Religion is perhaps the largest exception, and many communities are organized around churches. But in places where society and culture remain intact, I believe that social and cultural collapse is avoidable, and that this is where we must really dig in our heels.
Also, I think it is very important that we learn to see our surroundings for what they have become. In many places, it feels as if there just isn't that much left that's worth trying to save. If all the culture we see is commercial culture, and all the society we see is consumer society, then the best we can do is walk away from it, and look for other people who are ready to do the same.
Click Here to READ FULL ARTICLE
Thank you for your thoughts. Could you please comment on recent events in Iceland as the value of their currency was halved in less than a couple of weeks. My questions is do you see any parallels between Iceland and the United States? If so, how close are we to going through the same experience as Iceland? Can we use that as a bellwether to know when to get ahead of the negative actions?
In the case of America, I would almost invert the order of occurrence.
ping
I take it you do not dispute the outcome?
How do you get ahead?
bump for later
ping
Just what I was thinking.
I would agree - social collapse is probably going to be first, and the rest will topple like dominoes.
...watch out for that piece of sky.... whew!!! That was close!
; ~ ) Seems I remember someone once said "nothing to fear but fear itself".
No one knows what is happening and no one knows what will happen. More than likely, we will muddle through this unless a devastating terrorist attack occurs, a major war or some cataclysm of nature occurs in which case, anything is possible.
Click on the link to the article to possibly e-mail the author.I am not the author.I just think it is quite interesting. The author does not bring religion into it
but it is still interesting.
That's a load of crap! Especially the first sentence.
chicken little or reality?
No thank you. Choosing martial law is choosing to trust the very people that caused a lot of our problems to begin with, instead of the people to defend themselves. Unless we're talking about gangs of dozens or hundreds running wild, the average citizen or neighborhood in most parts of the country can take care of themselves. The less law-abiding will get weeded out pretty quickly.
Very alarmist stuff.
Two eccentricities are the difference between the Soviet Union of 1990 and the US of today. The imports that he asserts drained and drains capital.
In the case of the Soviet Union, by far the biggest commodity they purchased was US wheat. Early on in his administration, Ronald Reagan opened up the floodgates of US wheat for sale to the Soviets, for which Reagan was roundly damned by those who didn’t grasp what he was doing.
But in exchange for US wheat, the Soviets gave us all their oil in return, and all their gold, and all their foreign currency. And yes, it did drain them dry, but without harming the US, which had and still has an overabundance of the renewable resource of wheat.
Now compare that with the current US trade deficit with China.
Amazingly enough, by far the biggest commodity China sells to the US is steel shipping containers. That is, along with whatever is in them, less expensive textiles, toys, etc., the price of the shipping container is included. And that is only because it would be too expensive for the US to send back those empty shipping containers. If we were to return them, we would get our money back.
Thus, the amazing result of just outside the Port of Los Angeles alone, where sits a veritable mountain of empty shipping containers, numbering over 1 1/2 million!
Shipping containers, made in China with Chinese iron ore and Chinese coal. But a mountain of steel that used up a huge amount of Chinese resources. If recycled, enough steel to make millions of automobiles.
If recycled. That is, while the Chinese hold over a trillion dollars of US debt, if it wanted to, the US could renege on that debt, and China would be left holding worthless paper. But the US would still have a huge mountain of steel, worth a huge fortune.
Steel that doesn’t require us to mine iron ore and coal. Steel that with a fraction of the energy can be remade into the industrial products that we need.
So once again, the US got the better part of the deal.
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