Problems of Empire

[nadinbrzezinski]

Yes I did post this originally in poltics, but the issue IS important, for we are facing an empire in decline

So here we are, at a point when we need to examine what are the inherent weaknesses of the American Empire.

I will ask first how many of you are familiar with how Rome, and the British built the Empire? Then ask yourself, as much as the
US has been compared to Rome, just how dissimilar we are from Rome. I will argue that the US is actually closer in the way it works
to the Spanish Empire.

Here are some of the points

Rome: You wanted to get anywhere, you served in the Imperial bureaucracy or the Army

The British: You wanted a comfy job later in life, you served in the Regiments or in the Imperial Bureaucracy, in some cases both.

The Spanish Empire: The poor people built the empire and went to the New World looking for riches. Heck, Cortez and Pizarro would
be at home with the good ol' folks at Halliburton and Blackwater. But service by the elites, unless you were the third son of the Duke,
in which case your other choice was the cloth, you mostly did NOT serve.

Rome set a system where goods were traded across the Empire, and many of our modern cities in Europe started as ROMAN cities, with all
that this implies. They built roads (for the first time) and goods and services were freely traded, with tax collectors always near by.

The British did something similar and many of the major cities in Africa were originally designed and gridded by British Engineers. This broke many
of the local traditions, but just like the Romans they were the dominant culture. The British also imported raw goods, and exported finished goods,
but by the end of the Empire they were in some ways approaching the Roman model... and some might argue the Commonwealth is just an expansion of the Empire.


Ok, Spain did build cities... but they imported major amounts of gold, which created a renter class, and in the end Spain did not manufacture goods either, but
had to get them from other places in Europe, and send them to the colonies. They kept this fiction of a mercantilistic economy.

Ok look at us, we are no longer producing any goods (shadows of Spain), and we have produced a Renter class, while the middle class disappears fast. In some ways
we are starting to resemble that Spain of the 18th and early 19th century. For the Record Spain also has an incredible foreign debt, and they have
just finished recovering

So as you look at events and then you turn to history... there are lessons of what the future may hold and it is not nice... for Spain did not remain a world
power... and one reason was... those who wanted the Empire were not willing to pay the pound of flesh they needed to pay. Oh and when this empire crashes it will

[nadinbrzezinski]

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