Friday, April 27, 2018

The Fall of Civilizations

h/t Bayou Renaissance Man


Peter comments:
Our modern civilization can fall, too, and in a surprisingly short time.  It's happened right before our eyes multiple times over the past half-century.  Think of the Soviet Union in the late 1980's, or Venezuela over the past five years.  It could happen even to the USA or Western Europe, if enough of the storm clouds gathering over either economy were to let loose.  (Think of what would happen if the US government, due to economic circumstances, were to stop providing Social Security and/or Medicaid to its citizens:  or, alternatively, if we did not act to stop illegal alien infiltration, and they did to the whole of the US economy what they've already done to California.  What would either and/or both of those events do to a very large part of our population?  And what would that imply for our society as a whole?)

Food for thought.
Maybe a light snack.

Unlike Rome, the means of decisive intervention hereabouts is not solely vested in the government's minions.

Hordes of illegals doing to the US economy what they've done to CA would simply initiate a bloodbath reckoning, and expulsion via the local cemetery, and in haste.

Stopping Social Security or Medicaid would be equally harsh, but the old and infirm aren't liable to kick up much of a fuss as they died from starvation or lack of medical care in the same numbers as the prior scenario.

(And, I suspect, local charity would pick up much of the slack for the deserving poor, and the hopelessly addicted would die in droves or be re-institutionalized en masse, simultaneously ridding us of society's wandering gypsy refuse and central government's power, both salutary consummations devoutly to be wished.)

In many ways, society is both more fragile and more robust than it was in 400 A.D.

Wholesale breakdown is less likely, though certainly not impossible.
You've just chosen the two scenarios least likely to do more than inconvenience society for more than a season or three, for those other than the target demographic.

Neither A Day Without A Mexican nor A Day Without Grandpa would affect most of society except to lessen the traffic load on the interstates, and shorten the waiting time at the local ER, ultimately.

Bring down the financial system or the power grid rapidly and in total, and you've got quite a different matter on your hands.

6 comments:

FiftycalTX said...

Be careful when you speak of grandpa. While I am of that age, I don't have a family to help me. And my pension and social security allow me to live a modest life. Cutting that off and trying to kick me out of my house may result in unpleasant situations. I have more ammo than I can carry and don't plan on moving again. I don't see PRESIDENT TRUMP cutting off SS or doing what the communist party wants. But it's a good day to die and we'll see what happens.

Aesop said...

The entire system goes bankrupt in a few more years. Maybe faster, with the onslaught of letting in elderly illegals and giving them benefits as if they'd paid a dime into the system.

What cannot continue, will not.

Buckle up, bud. If SS and Medicare is your nest egg, you're going to die eating cat food, if you don't stroke out first.

If any of that's news to you, you haven't been listening for forty years.

Twenty-somethings aren't going to pay 80% income taxes to keep generations of older folks in Depends and caviar, or even hamburger.

YOYO.

One can deal with reality, or get rolled over by it. And about your ammo?
How well does it work against tank hulls?
Maybe check in with the folks at Waco, and let me know how that goes for ya.

Learn how to raise chickens and rabbits.
You can keep both in the average garage, and neighbors will always pay cash for a dozen fresh eggs.

Anonymous said...

You can cut down on waiting time @ the ER by yelling "MIGRA!!" at the top of your lungs.
The crowd will thin out. _revjen45

AB.Prosper said...

It wouldn't come even close to an 80% tax bracket to pay for social security. Just extending SS to all income and maybe knocking up withholding a point or two should do the job. It can also be means tested a bit as needed.

There is also the option to simply mint more currency. We've been borrowing/minting more than a trillion a year for a long time with little effect and this can go on for a long time yet

This lack of effect is an artifact of wage arbitrage and a global labor surplus do to global trade, automation and a surplus or workers . Basically wages as percentage GDP are from 1/2 to 1/3 of what people made in 1973 *1/2 or so for most workers, 1/3 for jobs that are no longer union that once were) and this suppresses demand and the velocity of money

Heck Japan has been deliberately trying to induce inflation for two decades and its done jack

There really isn't any policy that can create hyperinflation short of say minting 80 or 90 trillion or something equally absurd

State and Private pension like those here in California though? They are screwed blued and tattooed

As far as the immigrant invasion? The US has already been irretrievably changed through mass immigration and neither the gentry right nor the radical right have done a damned thing about it.

I don't blame them for not taking drastic measures but the Right is mostly brag and bluster as far as can tell. Heck they have nearly 3/5ths of States, the House Senate and Presidency and either can't or maybe won't exercise real political power

The only issue that gets them rilled up is abortion and the fairly small and declining number of abortions pales in comparison to mass immigration

However things come out are going to be strange, you have a rump Generation X , A left wing generation Y and Gen Z while its too soon to be sure seems to be less religious on average than ever , only half are Christian but the ones that are more fervent

While any sound person will prepare for the possibility of a collapse we may just limp along getting dumber, more diverse (but I repeat myself) and less functional till whatever comes after Gen Z , caveat again State and private pension

Aesop said...

Right.
Because 5B people don't all want to come here.
It's B-R-O-K-E in a decade and change now, with the current demographics.
As the tail end of the baby boom retires, and the population contracts, that squeeze only gets worse.
And when more people start working in the gray economy (like most under-the-table-cash-paid illegals are now), and become gov spending consumers, rather than producers, what then?
Means-testing is the SS death-knell. people at the top end will simply shift assets out of the US, and stop having declared incomes. Or simply move.
Taxing the top end with no payout is cutting off your head to save your feet.
But yeah, print your way out of this.
A dollar now is worth $0.03 in 1932 dollars as it is.
And Weimar never happened. Or Zimbabwe. Or Venezuela.
You're speaking fluently the land of Grasshopper Economics.
Unfortunately, the world runs on Ant Economics.
And winter is coming.
Meanwhile, those depressed wages mean people will retire sicker, in worse shape, than they did 5, 10, 20 years ago.
Sin taxes mean they won't conveniently die off from the after-effects of smoking and drinking, because less of them do either, so your SS costs continue to bloom.

The Right is a spectrum.
Don't confuse the State House with Joe Sixpack's house.
Abortion has overwhelmingly done two things: kept blacks at 13% or so of the population, and trimmed the white birthrate to the point that they'll be a minority in this country at a certain inevitable demographic point.

And anyone who thinks Pedro and Maria - or anybody else - is going to come here and then pay higher taxes to fully fund Boomer SS and Medicare is in for quite a surprise.

SS and Medicare have always been Ponzi schemes, and those are always an inevitable and inescapable fraud, when you run out of new suckers at the bottom of the pyramid, and other people's money to pay for it all.

The boomers finish retiring in about 2030, and there ain't enough taxable incomes when they're gone. SS started with 14 workers per 1 payee, and it's now down to 2:1. IIRC, after 2030, it drops below 1:1.

What cannot continue, won't.

You can't have a country where everyone's riding in the wagon, and no one is pulling it.
Except when it's going off a cliff.

AB.Prosper said...

Aesop, every word you said is truth but so long as there is food, shelter and NetFlix ain't no one gonna do a thing about nothing. IMO anyway

. Of the one million or so abortions , 300K are White and I suspect they use the same sketchy definition of White the cops do sometimes, lumping in Mestizos, Persian Arabs and whatever to boost the narrative.

Even so at face value if all White abortions stopped tomorrow and every baby that would have been aborted was born, i.e. no better use of birth control or even self control, the White TFR would just hit replacement. That's it

That entire TFR has been below replacement for nearly half a century with one, count it one year on which it went a tiny bit above (2007) basically it hit replacement in 1972 , below it in 1973 and stayed there. Back before easy divorce was everywhere and when the US was 85% European too

Its probably not going up in your or my lifetime and if there is a kaboom, it will fall like a stone. Unless I'm on a farm, I'm not bringing kids into the post apocalyptic hell-scape if I can help it .

Hopefully though we won't end up like Ireland after the famine where its population never recovered

And yes SS and MC are Ponzi schemes, this doesn't mean we can't find a way to pay for them for a while longer though Gen Y probably isn't getting them and doesn't make enough to pay the 35-40% GDP in taxes to the Fed alone required to actually get solvent. They get political power though, count of high taxes money printing and social spending galore

In any case we really don't want the kind of saving needed we'd get without them

If everyone who possibly could went to the 25% saving rate required to fund a real retirement and of course paid down and eschewed all debt, unless wages went up a fuck load , the economy would go tits up at in incredible speed

The economy is a great big efficiency trap built on constant unsustainable population growth and I have no idea how to fix it nor does anyone else

As you said though eventually it will end, on that we agree. I kind of think it might be in the 2030's too even though the powers that be have kept the balls in the air far longer than I would have thought possible

Regardless , though most of my post are to argue some point you made , me being a contentious SOB by nature the work you do in getting people off their ass and prepared physically, mentally and morally is invaluable and much appreciated.