People believe that the economy will collapse because it WILL.

[Tyler Durden]

It is inevitable.

What has CHANGED to make the Stock Market, The United States, or World Capitalism invulnerable to disaster, obsolescence, and collapse?

NOTHING.

You know WHY? Read some HISTORY.

NOTHING lasts forever.

Not the Roman Empire, Not the Golden age of Greece, the Babylonians, the Persian Empire, Carthage, The Italian City States, the Hanseatic League, Imperial Russian, the USSR, Imperial Germany, WIEMAR Germany, NAZI Germany, East and West Germany, The Age of the American Robber Barons, Imperial China, Communist China...

Shall I keep going?

WHY do you think that the "ECONOMY" gets a "by" on this? Do you actually believe the United States will last forever? Jefferson and Adams wrote of the end of the Republic. We have lasted longer than the Roman Republic and the Golden Age of Greece already. The writing that usually signals the end of a "system" are already on the wall, in 10' high neon:

The persistence and dominance of a landed or wealth centered elite...
The drastic widening of the Rich/Poor Gap with no relief or change in sight...
A "hereditary" Ruling Class (not necessarily a Monarchy)...
Rapidly increasing unfavorable Trade Ratio (see "Venice")...
Religious intolerance/dominance/scisms and the attendant "pogroms"...

There are only about 20 or 30 more historic markers for Empire collapse or civil war.

Doesn't ANYONE take HISTORY in college anymore?

The disastrous collapse will come because IT WILL COME. It keeps coming, again and again, and nothing except a basic "sea change" in the way countries and wealth are structured and managed will change this, but even then, IT WILL COME AGAIN, even if the "sea change" increases the interval drastically.

WHY do people want to believe that they can structure things so they never fail? I personally think these people never built sand castles at the beach on the low tide line.

"Of his bones are coral made:/Those are pearls that were his eyes:/Nothing of him that doth fade,/But doth suffer a sea change" (Shakespeare).

[Tyler Durden]

1. ANOTHER effort circles the bowl.

:hurts:

Seems I can't get a discussion going unless I gore someone's ox around here.

[rug]

6. LOL, you have the patience of Daffy Duck.

[Zywiec]

8. Maybe because it looks exactly like this post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2753737&mesg_id=2755245

[arendt]

9. I know that feeling. I have to practically get tombstoned to get attention. Serious stuff sinks.

Your points are well taken, but sort of without a denoum-wa (can't spell that one).

I guess you are of the "with a whimper, not a bang" school.

arendt

[tom_paine]

10. You've noticed that, too, Tyler?

I have had the same thing happen a dozen times. A thoughtful post, or one which actively conciliates...sinks like a fucking stone.

But let me gore the ox, as you put it, and woo-hoo the sparks fly.

It's fucked up. Know what else? It just goes to show that we, all of us DUers, while we like to think we are so superior to everyone else because we see through the MSM bullshit, we are as addicted to the "Hardball"/"Crossfire" way.

We can't help it. It's how we we raised, so to speak, it's who we are.

That bullshit is now as much a part of all of us as the air we breathe.

[Selatius]

2. Many Romans of the era thought the Principate was always meant to be temporary and that...

in time the power of the Caesar would be given back to the Senate once stability was restored. After a while, it sort of became accepted, and enough people had been born under the rule of the Caesar that they had forgotten what it was like under a representative order. In hindsight, it's easy to tell what has happened because one's view is less likely to be biased, but it's not the case when you're living in it.

There is always somebody saying that it's going to get better, that it's temporary, and I'm sure there were many Romans who said the same thing when the Senate voted to make Octavian the emperor, effectively ending the Roman Republic forever as it turned out.

[Tyler Durden]

3. Exactly.

I think because PEOPLE are temporary, they want to believe that the situations they exist in are eternal.

Why else is RELIGION so popular?

[Selatius]

4. It's common. "I'll be dead by the time Social Security runs dry; let someone else deal with it."

I've run into that one in several different iterations.

[Tyler Durden]

5. I can't WAIT to see one of THOSE assholes....

...come down with a disease they didn't plan for by not buying health insurance.

That's another thing I've run into on several occasions.

What is this...they think they're IMMORTAL or something.

[MiniMe]

7. Those who forget are doomed to make the same mistake again

Or, in Bushspeak: Fool me once, uh, uh, shame on you. If you fool me once you can't get fooled again.

[newportdadde]

11. As you mentioned in your OP empires do eventually collapse.

Another big reason I would add to your list is a Fiat money. You could also add that our US economy is based on the concept of forever growth.

Unfortunately topics like these don't stick around much in GD.

I think the question we have now is "How will we collapse?" Will it be a slow bleed or a fast plummet. Personally I believe it will be a slow bleed.

I'm 31, unions were around when I was born and were powerful then but have certainly declined greatly in my lifetime. My young children will know even less of them. In time a workplace without unions will seem 'normal'. Same could be said for pensions etc.

I think the next thing coming will be health care. Companies will start to drop it and we will start having to buy our own crappy individual polices with a high deductible. In time that will also seem 'normal'.

Its a very gradual decline in a standard of living.