length of empire

LENGTH OF EMPIRE

An easy quick read is “The Fate Of Empires And Search For Survival” by Sir John Glubb ( usually by being knighted, at least prior to the embarrassing Elton John, it was generally acknowledged that you weren’t a complete idiot ) which you can easily find in a PDF file by Google-ing the title and author, followed by “PDF”.  Sometimes this stuff is simple.  I didn’t read anything too new, as I had come across this material in a different form in the book “War And Peace And War” by another ( which is the only affordable book by the author as the others are, from what I understand, very heavy on the math.  W&P&W is the authors concession to the general reading public, and quite good-I’ve read it at least twice ).  If you want the condensed version, just download Fate Of Empires.  Very simply, all empires last about ten generations ( Rome is explained by dividing it into two empires, first Republican and then Imperial.  I‘m not sure if that is cheating or not ), and the general direction of their decline is pretty similar.  They all start out with an outburst of energy, the Have-Nots of a lesser group hungry for wealth and power and willing to take chances to get it.

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The next phase is conquest, consolidating the gains from the initial outburst.  Following this is Commerce, as trade always follows a monopoly on power.  Affluence comes next, which is the beginning of the end, as all the energy and motivation is swamped by decadence and luxury, laziness and lack of risk taking.  Simply, a nomad warrior sees the city riches, fights his way to them, assumes the lifestyle of the conquered and becomes what he fought against.  Don’t despair the lazy videogamer of today while celebrating the rugged youth who went off to fight The Good War.  The former CAN’T become the latter even if the desire was there.  Society no longer values and rewards the same behavior.  Note that this book was written as the American Empire was done with the Outburst mode-and look how we have followed the historical trajectory towards collapse.

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Another Fun Filled Fact was that you can go back a thousand years and see the same deviant, anti-social or lazy traits we have today.  1,000 AD Baghdad had the following.  Free health care.  Filthy pop culture songs.  A feminist movement.  Agitation for a reduced hour work week ( this is, granted, more of a European thing, unless you view ObammyCare as a stealth imposed reduced work week ).   Swarms of the poor moving to the urban areas.  And a widespread hubris of the wonderfulness and uniqueness and the never-ending-ness of their empire.   If Shrub hadn’t Shocked And Awed Iraq, would the average citizen ever even heard of Baghdad?  How did that empire work out for them?  Now, so far so good.  We know that when it comes to the Agricultural Age, empires all have followed a similar pattern ( all end up in widespread ecological damage, also, by the way ) and America is certainly no exception.  We just think we are because we are a bunch of dumb asses which has got to also be a shared trait as luxury and sloth don’t exactly motivate the masses to apply themselves to study-why, when they are just living off the wealth generation of the past?

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However, the next step in this logical thought process is NOT that we will collapse just as they did.  We most definitely will collapse-that is human nature as unsustainable growth is part of the process.  But collapse must follow the energy decline of the civilization.  Which hence far has been agriculture until the British ( and they didn’t even use oil until their 10^th generation-although coal use was enough of a paradigm shift to make them unique in the generations prior.  A generation being about 25 years, by the way ).  The British would have seen a denuded and abandoned London at the end of their collapse, had it not been for the American Empire Of Oil.  England fed itself from its colonies, using coal fired sea transportation ( by and large as obviously they fed themselves by sail transport first, then in the end with oil, but we are speaking of cushioning the collapse, which coal certainly helped do ). 

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It was expedient for the US to bribe England to peacefully cede western civilization control.  Mostly by giving up strategic naval bases but also by allowing the island to become a bomber base ( Iceland was also used hence, and Greenland, but there wasn’t as nice of a request by us to them, nor the benefits ).  In effect, the rulers of England allowed their citizens to be painted with a Soviet nuclear target, in exchange for the rulers being excused from going down with the ship.  Rather than collapse ecologically, they merely had an economic one.  If the US had not had petroleum riches, the British Empire would have collapsed like all the rest of them-into an impoverished near wasteland ( like, for instance, Baghdad ).  Unfortunately for the US, not only is no one interested in peacefully allowing us to coexist with them in return for the ruling elite being handed a pension, no one has the resources to do so.  Energy decline being what it is, it is unlikely a world naval power can ever again police the oceans and global trade. 

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And you are of course aware that the American Empire is global.  Global Trade is really just American Trade.  We have done a pretty good job of sucking everyone else’s resources through a fire hose.  There isn’t really anyone that can build up another empire to replace ours ( not to mention that uncomfortable nuclear arsenal someone is going to last minute desperately use, to help poison great swaths of land covering resources ).  The Russians contracted in land, security obligations and population, and hence have a fighting chance of remaining a strong regional power-but not an empire per se.  The Chinese are a Potemkin Village empire.  A Kaboki Theatre Empire.  They are reliant on American naval power, and to a certain extent American Dollars, to feed themselves.  I’m certainly not saying “America is great and the world can’t survive without us”.  I’m saying that the world is declining with us, unable to break free as we control the last of the oil extraction.  It will be an American Empire collapse, with few nations left standing around us.

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