01-08-2020, 07:59 PM
(01-08-2020, 11:20 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:(01-08-2020, 10:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: There will always be coincidences. Besides, which orthography is correct? As an example, the pair of sounds sh-ch in Khrushchev as transcribed in English is seven letters in German (schtsch), five in French (chtch), four in Polish (szcz), three in Catalan (xtx) or Hungarian (scs), two in Czech or Croatian (sorry -- no hacek), or one in Russian.
The fall of empires of any kind usually relate internal rot that the elites fail to recognize but that the common people know all too well and enemy powers discover to their surprise, but bring irredeemable ruin. Defeated powers can emerge from the ashes if people want them to revive; people did nothing to revive the Roman Empire.
I don't understand your historical tarot.
I don't understand it at all either, but where the title is concerned, the fall of cities is often a result of social and economic change. Here in the US Detroit is no doubt the most obvious example of this. Could apply to smaller cities as well, such as Gary, IN. The latter being an example of small cities with all the big city problems.
Falls of cities can be results of economic patterns. Detroit was a large city when Henry Ford started mass-producing automobiles, and the highly-successful auto industry bled potential talent away from such alternatives as the textile industry and agribusiness that hire huge quantities of unskilled labor. The auto industry paid well, so it served as a foundation of a strong local economy while blocking out other things. OK -- so a physician is wise to not try to make additional money as an accountant if such an opportunity arises even if he would be good at it. A hobby? The late Robert Simpson (1921-1996, who was a physician) was a fine composer (I suggest that people listen to his music, some of the best classical music of the twentieth century!) He could not make a good living as a composer, but any reputation that he has beyond the grave will be his compositions. For him composing was a hobby, and I love the results.
Back to Detroit. Crowding out of alternative ways in which to make a living is one way to ensure that when the industry falters, the local economy will decline in many ways. Real estate values will plummet, property rents collapse, taxes will be harder to collect, public services will be debased, and unemployment will soar. Maybe Detroit could have thriving businesses that don't compete with the auto industry (think of the record label Motown), and it could have room in the end for the foundation of Rock Financial and Little Caesar's Pizza. But the ways of making easy money in Greater Detroit are gone. Wise job-seekers avoid Detroit even though the cost of living is low, the climate is mild for the latitude (Detroit does not get lake-effect snow) and the cultural legacy from the good times is rich... even in times when sports fans have strong teams to cheer (the antithesis of the 45-119 Detroit Tigers -- it was not that long ago that the Detroit Tigers were a fine team; that is over!). See also nearby Toledo, which used to be a prosperous industrial city. Do you want evidence that Toledo is a poor place for seeking a job? Traffic is light for the city's size. Any traffic jam that I have ever seen in Toledo has been the result of construction. Light traffic is a good thing, but having no place to go for a job is a good explanation of why you might visit it but not stay there.
Silicon Valley is in a similar position as Detroit and Toledo were at one time. It attracts talented people from around the world to innovate intellectually, much as people used to do with cars. The semiconductor industry has crowded out the former basis of the local economy (agribusiness) and makes other activities prohibitively expensive in which to compete. What happens to Greater San Jose when the semiconductor industry plays out? Just look at Detroit or Toledo. Such is the future of "Sannozay".
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
