These are strange times indeed in my view. I am interested in your thoughts on what will arise out of the ashes (assuming something different does arise.) Someone once said "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." As we watch the unfolding bankrupcy of democracy in the place where democracy was said to be invented, I can't help but be curious about where our world will be after we work through our current world messes. Capitalism seems to deliver a lot of good things, but unfortunately, ultimately the business cycles result in an increasing number of monopoly and oligopoly situations which seem to me to concentrate capital causing problems with free markets. Charge what the market will bear is destructive ultimately. There are also problems with items which can not be measured in money (environment, quality of life, truth, freedom etc.) , I think largely because accounting can't value them properly (assuming that the accountants are not acting as advocates but are valuating companies honestly). The market can't act as a balancing mechanism for improper valuations for those improperly valued items. Socialism is a wonderful theory but tends to cause issues in the long run because too few want to step up and pay the bill. Liberals (and many other such parties) are just different mixes of "socialist-lite" or entitlementism in my view. The increasing use of socialism in capital societies to support failing or failed welfare companies I suspect leads eventually to the same issue as the quote above. A book I read in university, called the real world of democracy essentially said that socialism and capitalism were identical except for who the small group of planners were - government or wealthy capitalists. Religion (or what ever kind of spirituality one chooses) seems to be on the way out unfortunately and the rampant increasing corruption and moral decline is a sign to me that we are fast approaching a major change in worldviews. (This can happen suddenly or over centuries I think.) There is some hope in that charity often appears when people become very wealthy. When you can't take it with you, why not leave a legacy? It seems to me that the cause of many world problems is the concentration away from the balancing middle. Trends gone too far, unions with too much power, government with too much power, organized crime with too much power, corporations with too much power. Too much is too much no matter what individuals see as the ideal. One side being totally good and the other being totally evil is nonsense and another issue of the extremism away from the balancing middle in my view. Or are we doomed yet again to the "tragedy of the commons" which seemingly causes issues for the world, no matter what path we go down. Will we choose our fate or will it choose us? Since one of the few things that separate us from animals is the ability to co-operate to achieve more as a group than separately, there must be a better way to co-operate for the good of us all. But what is that way? How do we divy up goods and ensure a fair "payment" whether in goods, labor, services or something else. I thought some on this site might be able to help out. Thanks for your thoughts.
Something dramatic could happen to turn the course of history. A Religious revival or a great leader with noble character appearing on the scene would do it maybe, otherwise it's pretty clear where we are headed with the children fighting over the dwindling supply of cookies in the household...
I agree without that is is often how it happens, but I am wondering more about the what will happen. That leader will bring something. My reason is that understanding of the longer cycles leads to better profits and many people focus on the shorter time frames. Shorter time frames are easier to manipulate. The truth is much harder to manipulate. There are cycles that are longer than the lives of people. Those ones are particularly hard to understand. They can be very profitable. I suspect that the answer is already in our worldview, but it is still too small and too much in the fringe to see yet. The fringe is where the most severe (and surprising) turns come from. That is the nature of human nature IMO.
Not sure about that. 20 years ago anyone who stood up at the school board meeting and demanded that creationism be taught instead of evolution would not only not have been taken seriously, but actually laughed at. It would seem that Scopes was a long time ago in a country far, far away. Perhaps what we've seen is the moderates becoming less superstitious while the remainder hardens their position.
That man be Ron Paul.... Seeds have been implanted into your subconscious thru free propaganda ever since Ron Paul was not elected in 2008... You have all been "prepped" into voting for him in 2012...
The only thing Big-C Capitalism truly delivers well is the ability to maximize short-term usage of natural resources. When those resources were abundant, that was the "right" way to go. Now that they're not, it won't be. We've spend the last 100 years in a Capitalism Bubble. Most of the economic theories propounded these days have an underlying hidden assumption about the availability of cheap energy - all those models are going Kaboom. The future will look a little less Federal, a little more Tribal, nothing too too extreme, for the most part - and in many parts of the world, it will likely look quite a bit less populated. On it goes, this thing of ours...
I actually think that democracy can exist forever, it's the dictatorship that's always temporary. See, in a dictatorship you always have a large number of people that are unhappy. They are repressed of course, but they remain unhappy. One way or another, they always get a change of regime. This is probably best exemplified by the French Revolution. It not only was a rage against the minority that owned everything, it was also a revolution against the feudalistic economic system by the capitalists. You could say that feudalism lasted for so long because it was such a rigid system. Everyone had their place, from birth to death. But even that system slowly changed. It took hundred of years, but some people were given the right to leave their villages (crazy I know!), people were allowed to sell their labour to the highest bidder etc Little by little, feudalism was dismantled from within. No society is permanent, and those that try to be very rigid like dictatorships are doomed to fail. Democracy on the other hand, has the potential to morph the society based on internal pressures. An interesting question would be whether revolutions like in Egypt could happen if every country had the same government and situation as Egypt.
A similar thread idea expressed here http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3231865#post3231865
I've gone by the long wave cycle for decades. It predicts inflation for the 2020's or later. I read about the reasons to get fixed rate loans all the time but I had, and still have, nothing but variable rate loans on RE and so far I'm really happy with that. I'll set aside cash to retire them in the case of inflation but until then, wow!! I don't know about waves that are longer than our lifetimes.. .there used to be a thing called the Center for the Study of Cycles or something like that, they had a library that covered the subject...