Signs of a Dying Empire

[pbrower2a]

(08-19-2018, 02:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(10-22-2017, 12:40 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(10-14-2017, 10:17 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(10-14-2017, 09:55 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(10-05-2017, 05:21 AM)Galen Wrote: The problem the US empire faces is the changing logic violence where projecting power is becoming harder relative to defense.   As James Dale Davidson have said, "The most important causes of change are not to be found in political manifestos or in the pronouncements of dead economists, but in the hidden factors that alter the boundaries where power is exercised. Often, subtle changes in climate, topography, microbes, and technology alter the logic of violence."  This is what is shaping the demise of the nation-state and the US empire.  Trump is an effect not a cause.

The petrodollar is what has been keeping the US empire going since 1973 and the middle east wars of the last sixteen years are part of an effort to keep it going.  Once the petrodollar goes down, which looks like it will happen in the next five to ten years, then the US empire goes down with it.  I suggest you read the following two articles which describe the current state fo the empire as well as anything I have seen recently.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2...in-us.html
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2...-gold.html

While the next quote from James Dale Davidson will annoy most of you hear it contains much truth and you would do well to contemplate it.  The cultural equivalence that the SJW crowd believes in is completely absurd.

"Cultures are not matters of taste but systems of adaptation to specific circumstances that may prove irrelevant or even counterproductive in other settings."

-James Dale Davidson, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.

The US empire existed for a quarter century before the petrodollar.  Ultimately it's based on geography - the US geographic position on both of the world's major oceans.  There's every likelihood that the US could find a way to keep the empire going for the rest of the century, should it so choose.

I think you're missing a key factor.  What are the top exports of the US by volume.  Corn, Soybeans and timber.  What are is top imports, oil and consumer goods.  Considering that countries that typically export food and raw materials and import finished goods are third world countries, by definition, the end of the petrodollar would necessitate a transition to third world living standards.

Sure.  In the era of the petrodollar, there was little point to producing consumer goods ourselves when they could be bought with pieces of paper or electronic signals.

Without the petrodollar, that will change.  For example, a border adjustment tax could be used to level the playing field for consumer goods.  People on welfare or entitlements might have to start working again, but maybe that wouldn't be such a terrible thing.

And frankly, it's not us who produces the oil that supports the petrodollar.  Nothing says dollar denominated trade has to be supported by a US export.  In the extreme, the US Navy might provide protection from piracy only to ships carrying dollar denominated goods.

Incidentally, modern corn and soy are not raw materials.  They're essentially industrial products created from petrochemical based fertilizer.

Quote:And that assumes the state survives the hyperinflation that will ensue once all that debt starts coming back home.  Governments typically don't survive periods of hyperinflation, as Latin America can attest to (never mind Africa).

Since unlike Zimbabwe we don't have a single party state headed by a charismatic strong man (protests by the libtards not withstanding) the most likely outcome would be a military coup d'etat in the US should the petrodollar fail.

The fact is that the petrodollar allows the US to export its inflation problem (a problem inherent to fiat currencies) because if one cannot use US dollars to buy anything but corn, soybeans or timber then there is no reason to hoard vast reserves of US debt.

As for the US' geography, that is as much a hinderance as it is an asset.  Having lived many places in the US and abroad, I can tell you that Florida is vastly different from Illinois which is yet still different to Texas almost to the point of being almost completely different countries.  I suspect that the federal government failing under pressure of hyperinflation would likely result in states, or collections thereof forming into blocks and confederacies of their own.

Instead of a Soviet Union we'll end up with a CIS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonweal...ent_States

I'm not ruling out a change of government.  The seat of government might move, too, perhaps to wherever the nuclear weapons are or wherever they are produced.

I'm dispensing with the stripped format because it is getting too labourious to continue.

1.  A "Border Adjustment Tax" is typically called a Tariff.  I support raising tariffs, and raising them sky high.  I'm willing to pay more to buy Americans and to hire Americans.  Mind you I actually run a business which is more than be said of many posters on this forum.

Tariffs are taxes -- bad taxes that distort the usual signals of a free market. The increase the cost of making any export and the overall cost of doing business. The promote monopolies and cartels at the expense of comsumer choice and social equity. They gut efficiency. It is far more appropriate to tax even-handedly, understanding of course that taxing the poor is ultimately futile.

Quote:2.  How to people get US dollars?  They accept them in exchange for things they sell to the US.  Given we're a largely consumer society this means they have to sell things to individual Americans be that in the form of Dollar Store bullshit, or iShits or whatever.  The actual commodities themselves do not matter, what matters is their willingness to accept those dollars as payment for those commodities.  If the only thing one can buy with US Dollars is corn and etc, then there is no reason to hold US dollars as a reserve.  Corn can be found anywhere,  soy the same.  We just have the largest surpluses and can sell those at bargain basement prices.

Let's start by recognizing who buys in dollar stores -- the poor. Likewise Wal*Mart. It is safe to assume that the poor are as rational as any in making their purchases of just about everything. It is a survival skill. The poor buy the crappier stuff, especially including what economists call inferior goods -- things that people buy more expensive and more desirable things as substitutes that make life more enjoyable and less precarious. Examples of such inferior goods and services include potatoes, hamburger, canned goods, sugary sodas, mass-market beer, credit life insurance, purchases from rent-to-own emporia and cars from tote-the-note lots (from the sorts of places that offer 'easy weekly payments'), thrift-store purchases, and payday lending. As people go higher in the economic pecking order or get more economic security they are more likely to get fresh fruit and vegetables, better cuts of beef (as well as seafood), wine, better grades of beer, less-restrictive life insurance, books, and newer vehicles.

Don't knock the poor; they make the lives of our economic elites far easier as the domestics, cleaners, and restaurant help.

As for the electronic junk -- and it is junk -- I know one way to cheat the cost.. be a late adapter (but not so late that one can't enjoy what one buys). I was slow to get a VCR, a compact-disc player, a wide-screen TV, and a cell phone. I don't buy such things until I can no longer imagine living without them, which is typically after the production lines lengthen and prices come down -- unless, of course, I have a use for them in making money. My cell phone came from a dollar store; it is a smart phone and costs about $50, and I cannot understand why people would pay $500 for a smart phone as computer access when one can barely get much enjoyment with of the screen size.

Quote:3.  The US Navy requires that the Dollar be able to support its operations.  After all countries whose main exports are bananas do not have blue water navies capable of protecting assets denominated in Colons or Pesos or whatever.  The loss of reserve status of the dollar would mean that the large military the empire relies on will be unsustainable.  Indeed it is likely unsustainable should the petrodollar be preserved.

All empires eventually go into decline, and how nations deal with such says much about the People of that country. Do the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, or Belgians want their old colonial empires back? Do people in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Brussels really miss the alleged benefits of colonialism?

We can count on much the same as other countries catch up with us in living standards and economic prowess per capita. Let's put it this way -- do the poor really have much of a stake in "American interests abroad", the usual description of American overseas investments? That mine in Chile or that sweatshop factory in Indonesia, even if owned by American investors, is doing the poor little obvious and direct good.

We are approaching the point -- if we aren't already there -- in which more industrial production does not improve our economic lot. That is the ultimate triumph of capitalism, when industrial capitalism has done all that it can.

Quote:4.  By your line of reasoning that soy and corn are fertilized and harvested with petroleum produced chemicals and using machines that use petroleum products one could argue that iron ore and coal aren't raw materials either because both are mined with machines that use petroleum.  Anyone who uses this line of argument usually gets laughed at by any serious economist.  Mostly because that argument is...how do I put this delicately...fucking stupid.

I do not draw that conclusion. If a consequence of a line of thought is an absurdity, then that line of thought is either fallacious or based on questionable assumptions.

Quote:5.  Possible but unlikely.  There is no reason to change the capital from Washington unless modern mosquito control methods fail.  After all the Russians still use Moscow as opposed to some remote Siberian city.

What if Chesapeake Bay expands to inundate Washington, DC (as well as Baltimore and Richmond)? We might have to rely on such a city as St. Louis or Chicago as the capital of the United States. That said, the capital of the US moves perhaps to Manchester...

Quote:I'm going to ignore PBR's reposing of fake news.  The separation of undocumented children from undocumented adults has been the law for ages.  Indeed considering that such children are possibly victims of human trafficking not doing so would be a greater crime and cruelty.  Also the law was passed by his good buddy that rabid fascist William Jefferson Clinton.  That is to say the President is enforcing the law.

It is not fake news. The difference is that Trump is using the children as cudgels to get illegal aliens to accede to deportation even faster. Human trafficking? There's nothing wrong with human trafficking that well-tied ropes and appropriate drops would not solve. But also, maybe Americans ought to think twice about visiting ill-disguised whorehouses that call themselves 'spas' or 'massage parlors' where many of the trafficked people are put to work as near-slaves.