Lights Out: My Two Cents on What We Stand to Lose

Spare Change | August 25, 2006 | David J. Aland

[WorkingClassFilth]

Specialized skills fell aside as sustainment skills became critical. Artisans and artists were replaced by the jack-of-all-trades.

This will be the moment I was born for...

[BipolarBob]

Pretty much nailed it.

[Howie66]

In other words: Our Freedom.....Our Society.....Our Way of Life.

No biggie to the Anti-Military, Anti-Constitution, Anti-America RATs that infest our country.

[KoRn]

Great read! Thanks for posting it.

[gas0linealley]

"This will be the moment I was born for..."

What a great comment. "It's an ill wind..."

When I was young and credit was not an easy thing to come by, I made old things last and thrived. As credit got loose young guys with new toys passed me by. Maybe I'll share your moment.

[zarf]

Lights Out indeed.

[gas0linealley]

Old guys shouldn't wear shorts.

[dion]

ummmmm obviously this guy has never looked for a home in San Diego. :)

"When security is uncertain, commerce suffers. The porous borders of Southern California result in depressed property values and investment in the border counties."

[Doctor Don]

If we are to survive the terrorist threat, Iran must be obliterated by whatever means necessary and it must be very soon! The ghost of Neville Chamberlain rides before us!

[mingwah]

Thomas Cahill has a book, 'How the Irish Saved Civilization,the Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe'.
This article states some of the exact points Mr. Cahill made is his discription of Rome's failures.

[lightman]

Specialized skills fell aside as sustainment skills became critical. Artisans and artists were replaced by the jack-of-all-trades.

Twelve hundred years or so later such a "jack of all trades" would be acclaimed as a Rennaisance man.

Many professions, medecine especially, have been ruined by the specialists who know next to nothing outside of their very narrow area of expertise. We need more jacks of all trades and the sooner the better.

[Signalman]

Excellent post.

[oldbrowser]

Loss of trade is not an issue for a nation that has the one resource that everyone needs, and enough of it to be self-sufficient.

There is no doubt the terrorists are the modern day barbarians. I think maybe we should consider liberating their oil before somebody gets hurt.

[beebuster2000]

btt

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[justa-hairyape]

I just turned down an all expenses paid trip across the fruited plain because of terrorism fears. Having 6 incidents with US flights on Friday pretty much forced my decision (well that and the fact that it looks like All Out War in the Middle East is now all but inevitable). I have decided to cancel all my nonessential flights. What the author describes may already be occurring.

[ClaireSolt]

Does he talk about how the Roman emperors bought off idle, dependant welfare people in cities with bread and circuses? We are in danger of repeating that mistake. 28,000 Mexican gang members in LA.

Medieval Muslims effectively cut of the land routes to the far east that had been used for centuries and closed the Mediterranean to trade with their pirates. That stimulated the search for new trade routes.

[WorkingClassFilth]

If I may, I'd like to suggest that all may not be lost in the wake of the scenario the author suggests. The nation was founded largely though the toil of people who were, in fact, jacks of all trades. Up until the recent decades in the wake of WWII, Yankee ingenuity is mainly what gave us our progress, leadership and cultural identity. If, as the article opines, our demise may be at hand because of the loss of technically specialized, globalized and heavily energy dependent systems, this may be a jolt (granted a brutal one) that serves to recalibrate our national priorities and direction.

True enough, we would see significant upheaval like riots, crime waves and the like, but it is a certainty that the conditions that created the massive urban under-classes were, in fact, byproducts of rogue federalism built on the profitable specialization in the post-war economic boom. To a large extent, this comparitive advantage in American economic specialization has been monopolistic (and profitable) until the very recent past. Witht the rise of globalization, all bets are off anyway and our vaunted status is likely to be one of diminishing returns even if we continue to live in times of relative peace and security. In other words, the problem, according to this analysis, we now might face is generated by a very recent mutation of the corrupted system we wish to preserve - not an external, alien threat to traditional American values or intents. The solution, however bloody or painful, might just lie in excising this disorder from the body politic - even at the risk of civil strife and governmental collapse. Frankly, I can't imagine a better equipped nation of people to deal with a catastrophe of that magnitude.

BTW, Skeezix was a minor god.

[gas0linealley]

Apparently thinking and writing number among your trades, Jack.

Here's lookin' at ya'.