Hemingway said about the passage of bankruptcy, gradually and then all of a sudden. In other words, the patterns of financial behavior were well laid in the past and there could be only one possible ending. And when it came to an end it would be over in the blink of an eye. If you spend more than you earn you will have to keep spinning ever increasing numbers of plates to forestall the inevitable ruin. How many plates you are able to spin is up to your individual circumstances. A well connected man can have many plates indeed. A peasant will only have one shot at the title.
So too with the collapse of empires; gradually and then all of a sudden. The US empire is collapsing in real time. Try and get your head around that. Not only that, but the US empire is the first empire in the history of man that actually encompasses the entire physical world as opposed to the known one. How hard of a landing could this be? It has the real potential to be a Bronze Age Collapse.
The short version is the 13th and 12th Centuries BCE were pretty happening. 5 or 6 great powers ( depending on your count) had pretty much hit a “ lets not murder each other cause its expensive” level of civilization. Trade flourished, art and culture rose, things were just generally cool. Hippies probably had drum circles, and all the luxuries of a time of plenty were on display. Like philosophers and grand building projects. Things you can only afford when everyone is well fed and an excess of labor exists. Then, in the veritable blink of an eye, the entire system shattered.
How it happened was the fault of earthquakes, famine, drought and invasion by what is known as the ‘Sea Peoples’. Today we have our own sea peoples, known as ‘refugees’. The key to understanding how these great empires suddenly collapsed was that these events were cumulative as opposed to consecutive. They got all of the problems all at once. And civilization is always balanced on a very fine edge; once it tips then there’s no more indoor plumbing for quite a long time.
The US empire has been slowly and gradually reaching its own tipping point since its high water mark at the end of the Second World War. After that conflict, the USA took upon itself the role of global policeman. It had already dallied with such a position many times in the past, such as sailing its warships into an isolationist Japan. But in 1945 it went for broke and sealed its doom. In the following eighty odd years we can plot key events that have greatly contributed to where we are today. The 1965 Immigration Act was the equivalent of our soon to be bankrupt individual going out and purchasing a Porsche 911 on credit. The removal of the US dollar from the gold standard in 1971 was akin to the same man asking his best friend for a temporary loan to get him out of a spot of bother.
Why would someone who is having money problems buy an expensive sports car on credit? The psychological answer is that when you’re in a deep hole, further bad decisions don’t make much difference. So you’re still in a hole but you get to drive around a fancy sports car for a while. What the hell, right? I mean, you only live once.
Why would a nation which was already having serious racial issues commit to bringing into the country much higher numbers of incompatible races? We’re in a hole anyway, right? So may as well get some sweet cheap labor to drive up profits while we can take it. And kick the can down the road for a while; after all, when it all blows up, we’ll be dead and gone. You can’t fault their thinking.
Back to the Bronze Age Collapse analogy. We are in the tail end of a plague that has greatly weakened economies across the world due to the actions of governments, (the fakeness of the plague is irrelevant to its effect). Now we have war in Eastern Europe which has the potential to escalate very quickly indeed. We are already in a recession with hyperinflation of commodity prices and the weakening of currencies. This will cause the economic collapse to greatly accelerate leading to social unrest. The combination of social unrest and the high price or general unavailability of essential commodities such as oil and fertiliser will have the result of farmers not being able to plant or harvest crops. This will lead to food shortages which will exacerbate the social unrest. And the global food shortages will lead to huge invasions of entire populations seeking food, particularly from Africa.
And it’s all happening this year. It’s happening right now. Gradually, and then all of a sudden.
This is Egypt. With Pyramids. And carvings in stone, not to mention papyrus. Hundreds of years of history is just – poof- nonexistent, perhaps because everyone was to busy trying to eat some calories and not get stabbed in the chest with a sword to pick up a chisel or pen. No matter how you shake it, things went absolutely feral. When it was over, only the Egyptians and Babylonians would survive as an empire. And empire is a pretty loose term here. The Babylonians had one city, and the Egyptians had gone from an equivalent of say, ruling the United States, to ruling Arizona.
This period is when the vast majority of the tomb robbings occurred in Egypt. Surviving documentation indicates that the thieves mostly spent their ill gotten gains on food.
A man who goes bankrupt can recover from it, but unless he changes his behavior he will go on to repeat the same mistakes. An empire cannot recover from what is coming. All that will remain are those who were able to adapt to the incredibly fast pace of the changing circumstances.
You can hoard as much food as you like but unless you can produce food you will eventually run out, or have it taken from you. You can store as many bullets as you like, but unless you can make them then eventually they will run out or they will be taken from you. You may not believe this but we could be going back to swords and horses.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
