Fair enough. I think our biggest problem is that we've become people who treat the world in a very binary fashion, treat other people like tools to be used and discarded. We've turned into barbarians, like the Mongols invading Europe. We invade using whatever tricky advantage we can gain, scope out the resources, take whatever we can grab and often spoil what's left so no one else can use it and compete against us in future, then leave. Small wonder that Americans are hated worldwide, and Californians and New Yorkers most of all, even in the rest of the nation.
It bothers me that we've become a nation of selfish idiots. We are entirely involved with consumption, with getting ours. I don't think it was always like that, but I may be blinded by revisionist history they taught us in school and the history books are written by the victors, after all.
Rome took 4 centuries to fall. Spain fell in one. Britain fell in decades. America seems to to have fallen in around half a century, starting in 1968 (Free Love was a terrible thing), war in Vietnam (which we lost), the Cold War (which we won, barely), and all that deficit spending has finally come home to roost. I see the current crisis, which is only half-way over at this point, to be the beginning of the end of the financial system which allows the USA to be cooperative states. After the Dollar fails, we need replacement currencies and a total refusal to back US securities by the individual states so we aren't paying China for centuries into the future. We're better off losing faith and focus on our real product: food. America grows enough rice, in California, to feed a billion people. America grows enough grain in the midwest to feed another 2 billion people. We literally feed half the world. That's our Ace In The Hole. Its all dependent on water supply and soil fertility. We will be forced to convert to sustainable agriculture over the next 5-15 years, and figuring out the water supply problem will depend a great deal on the weather, I think, and how well we get along with Canada. Their Frasier River has enough to divert to irrigate the Great Plains and recharge the Ogalalla Aquifer. That's a big deal. We'd need their permission to build a canal and take lots of water, though, and they're not interested right now.
In the long run we'll be bioengineering crops to grow with less water and fix their own nitrogen into the soil so most of the legwork isn't required any longer. People have to get over their hangups about transgenic crops. Its the future. People who disliked looms broke them. People who disliked iron cursed it. Both types fighting the future lost. The future always wins. We can count on that. That is why, despite the low depression caused by the oil collapse, in a few decades things will improve again. Here in the USA it won't be Mad Max or The Stand or anything like that. It will just be poor, smelly, dirty, sticky, humble pie america for about 20 years. I can deal with that, so long as they keep delivering the insulin. So can you. The Third World is going to suffer. We'll be a lot better off.
Re: Some arguments to consider
It bothers me that we've become a nation of selfish idiots. We are entirely involved with consumption, with getting ours. I don't think it was always like that, but I may be blinded by revisionist history they taught us in school and the history books are written by the victors, after all.
Rome took 4 centuries to fall. Spain fell in one. Britain fell in decades. America seems to to have fallen in around half a century, starting in 1968 (Free Love was a terrible thing), war in Vietnam (which we lost), the Cold War (which we won, barely), and all that deficit spending has finally come home to roost. I see the current crisis, which is only half-way over at this point, to be the beginning of the end of the financial system which allows the USA to be cooperative states. After the Dollar fails, we need replacement currencies and a total refusal to back US securities by the individual states so we aren't paying China for centuries into the future. We're better off losing faith and focus on our real product: food. America grows enough rice, in California, to feed a billion people. America grows enough grain in the midwest to feed another 2 billion people. We literally feed half the world. That's our Ace In The Hole. Its all dependent on water supply and soil fertility. We will be forced to convert to sustainable agriculture over the next 5-15 years, and figuring out the water supply problem will depend a great deal on the weather, I think, and how well we get along with Canada. Their Frasier River has enough to divert to irrigate the Great Plains and recharge the Ogalalla Aquifer. That's a big deal. We'd need their permission to build a canal and take lots of water, though, and they're not interested right now.
In the long run we'll be bioengineering crops to grow with less water and fix their own nitrogen into the soil so most of the legwork isn't required any longer. People have to get over their hangups about transgenic crops. Its the future. People who disliked looms broke them. People who disliked iron cursed it. Both types fighting the future lost. The future always wins. We can count on that. That is why, despite the low depression caused by the oil collapse, in a few decades things will improve again. Here in the USA it won't be Mad Max or The Stand or anything like that. It will just be poor, smelly, dirty, sticky, humble pie america for about 20 years. I can deal with that, so long as they keep delivering the insulin. So can you. The Third World is going to suffer. We'll be a lot better off.