The developed world faces financial crisis after financial crisis because the majority of inhabitants of these countries have a buy-now-pay-later attitude. Our love of cheap luxury and the ease at which we can get credit from banks now has most of the developed world held hostage to debt and, simply to maintain our tenuous position in life, we have to continue the cycle of earn and spend just a little more more than we garner.
The sub-prime mortgage crisis that pushed the world into its most recent major depression is an example of how living beyond ones means is a recipe for disaster. House repossessions and the resulting reduction to poverty of people that were just holding on to a standard of living has worsened the situation because the poor will always accept short-term and high-interest credit and there will always be a banker willing to tread another face into the dirt for a few pennies.
Fairly soon, certainly within the lifetime of my children, if not my own, I predict civil unrest and revolution in the western world where the number of people who are forced into poverty by unscrupulous banking practices will far outweigh the capabilities of those who have the power to enforce order. The resulting battle will drag what we like to think of as civilisation down into a place where we will be dominated by the new world superpowers of the east and Africa. Given the abilities of the inscrutable easterner to ignore human rights for their version of the greater good, that does not bode well for the west.
The empire of the west has passed its zenith and is in decline. It can no longer enforce dominance of its holdings and the heavy industry that it has lost for the cheaper options of its poorer neighbours has weakened it. People in the west believe that they have a god-given right to food and luxury, just as the Egyptians and the Romans did before their empires crumbled and the man in the street is more concerned with his own petty needs than the needs of his empire and so they make demands on the government asking "Why have you not provided for me?" at the same time as telling the government "You cannot tell me to do things I don't want to do! Let the slaves do it!" This leaves the Emperor in an untenable situation and he will eventually be deposed and the empire will fall.
Empires fall because of two things. Firstly, the empire expands to hold more territory than it can control given the resources it has to hand. Secondly, the empire farms-out much of its heavy industry to lesser powers that adopt it to improve their own lot. Developing a heavy industry is a business that goes hand-in-hand with empire because the Emperor must have ships for his troops and supplies and more importantly, the Emperor must have the best weapons for his troops. As soon as everyone else has those weapons and everyone else understands the technology, all advantage is lost and the empire will crumble.
Empires rise because of frontiers. Those who have the ability to breach the frontier become the next superpower. For the Egyptians, the frontier was how to feed millions. For the Romans it was how to move men and supplies fast and far, for the British it was how to mechanise an entire continent and the western world we have today is a holdover from that empire. The English Industrial Revolution laid the tracks upon which the entire western empire was able to expand and America, for all its denial of British governance is as much a product of the British Empire as Tony Blair was a product of Margaret Thatcher.
There is only one possibility for the Western Empire to survive and to grow. We, Europe and the United States must pull in all of our resources that are using up credit that we cannot pay back and from where we will be forcibly evicted if we don't act now. Foreign aid is a big drain and most of the people who receive it laugh at us behind our backs. It is obvious that unless we are willing to become what we despise, that is to say bloodthirsty dictators who crush all in our path, we can never hold on to the outskirts of our empire. We must stop giving not only our cash in hand but also all our credit business to foreign powers like China and Africa and hunker down to create jobs in heavy industry here at home, in the west to feed our own and to look after our own interests. If this doesn't happen, our daughters or granddaughters might be the victims of forced sterilisation and our sons and grandsons the indentured slaves of the new Mandarin and Saudi princes.
Where can an empire discover a new frontier to breach? The only way is up! The society that owns the high ground also owns the low. Getting out of Earth's gravity is hard and anyone running up a hill can be knocked down by a rolling log cheaply and easily. If you are first to the top then you win. If you're running up after someone else then you will loose! its as simple as that.
If you want your grandchildren to be on the high-society side of the new empire then you must push them to build the heavy industry of space. The United States Congress have consistently fiddled with foreign policy and holding on to empire while the Rome that was their space industry burned and crumbled before their eyes. They have given away the marvels of western technology by allowing cheap eastern labour to build our gizmo's and learn all our secrets without actually paying for the research. As a consequence our subjects of empire are soon to be more powerful than us.
Bring heavy industry, jobs and prosperity home to the west. Stop paying our enemies to build their armies against us, stop helping them to dominate our children and our grandchildren. Lift your children and grandchildren to the top of the next hill that Mankind must conquer. Lift them into space!
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