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A Book That One Should Read
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Ron Smith
This morning I’ve been reading about how members of the news media have not only taken off the gloves and the proverbial rose-colored glasses as well when it comes to Obama as Messiah and actually grilled the man quite thoroughly over the reported overtures his people made to Canadian officials to assure them his tough words on renegotiating the terms of N.A.F.T.A. were just campaign rhetoric. As a front-runner the young senator from Illinois can’t expect much more critical scrutiny from a press that until now has been mesmerized by his charisma. Chris Matthews may still fawn over the speechifying of Barack, and some ladies may still faint when he stands before them, but there will more prying into what he and his candidacy really represent.
That was a clumsy opening to these comments and I apologize, but you get the drift and I’m short on time, in part because I’ve been once again reading through a book by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin called, “Empire Of Debt,” published a couple years back and now even more pertinent than it seemed at the time because events have conspired to confirm the essence of their critique of the American Empire in decline.
There are people still, and I know this for a fact because they call and email me, who insist we are not an empire. For them it might not prove sufficient, but it is nonetheless true that once we created a Department of Homeland Security the jig was up and there could be no more denying the reality of the American Imperium. Ordinary countries don’t have “Homelands.” They are merely nations. Only Empires have a Homeland. Get it?
And the authors don’t suggest this is completely a willed role on the part of generations of leaders who guided our imperial course. Much of it, no doubt, is circumstantial and probably couldn’t have been avoided. But they argue that we haven’t been a very efficient empire in that instead of exacting tribute from our vassal states abroad, we borrow money from them. This has enabled us to live far beyond the means we otherwise would enjoy, but living on borrowed money really can’t result in a happy ending. Eventually you have to pay your debts one way or another.
We have absorbed as a people all sorts of vanities and illusions that defy reality, and in the end reality asserts itself in lots of disturbing ways. The way they illustrate it is by referring to the law of regression to the mean. Market prices may skyrocket in a boom and plunge far below normal averages in a bust, but most of the time they stay right around the historic mean.
So it is, they say, with empires. “An empire itself is a rare thing. It is normal, but unusual. Nature abhors a monopoly. An empire is a monopoly on force, Nature will tolerate it for a while, but sooner or later, the imperial people must revert to being normal people, and the preposterous beliefs that the imperial people cherish must also pass away.”
Think of some of the incredible things we have been expected to think are true, such as real estate prices never go down, or it doesn’t matter if you save some of what you earn, or the Dick Cheney formulation that deficit spending doesn’t matter, or that we fight wars large and small to advance the cause of “freedom,” or to just make the world a better place.
All empires believe themselves to be world improvers. Alexander the Great, the Romans, the French, the British, all believed that imposing their rules and traditions on the barbarians of other, lesser lands, would be of benefit to the native populations.
“Americans believe they can get rich by spending other people’s money. They believe that foreign countries actually want to be invaded and taken over,” say the authors. “They believe they can run up debt forever, and that debt-laden houses are as good as money in the bank.”
The “Empire of Debt” was not favorably received when it was published. Who wants to be deprived of their cherished illusions, the ones that make them the heroes of modern world history? But I agree with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan,” that this book “should be mandatory reading in most circles.”
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Ron Smith
This morning I’ve been reading about how members of the news media have not only taken off the gloves and the proverbial rose-colored glasses as well when it comes to Obama as Messiah and actually grilled the man quite thoroughly over the reported overtures his people made to Canadian officials to assure them his tough words on renegotiating the terms of N.A.F.T.A. were just campaign rhetoric. As a front-runner the young senator from Illinois can’t expect much more critical scrutiny from a press that until now has been mesmerized by his charisma. Chris Matthews may still fawn over the speechifying of Barack, and some ladies may still faint when he stands before them, but there will more prying into what he and his candidacy really represent.
That was a clumsy opening to these comments and I apologize, but you get the drift and I’m short on time, in part because I’ve been once again reading through a book by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin called, “Empire Of Debt,” published a couple years back and now even more pertinent than it seemed at the time because events have conspired to confirm the essence of their critique of the American Empire in decline.
There are people still, and I know this for a fact because they call and email me, who insist we are not an empire. For them it might not prove sufficient, but it is nonetheless true that once we created a Department of Homeland Security the jig was up and there could be no more denying the reality of the American Imperium. Ordinary countries don’t have “Homelands.” They are merely nations. Only Empires have a Homeland. Get it?
And the authors don’t suggest this is completely a willed role on the part of generations of leaders who guided our imperial course. Much of it, no doubt, is circumstantial and probably couldn’t have been avoided. But they argue that we haven’t been a very efficient empire in that instead of exacting tribute from our vassal states abroad, we borrow money from them. This has enabled us to live far beyond the means we otherwise would enjoy, but living on borrowed money really can’t result in a happy ending. Eventually you have to pay your debts one way or another.
We have absorbed as a people all sorts of vanities and illusions that defy reality, and in the end reality asserts itself in lots of disturbing ways. The way they illustrate it is by referring to the law of regression to the mean. Market prices may skyrocket in a boom and plunge far below normal averages in a bust, but most of the time they stay right around the historic mean.
So it is, they say, with empires. “An empire itself is a rare thing. It is normal, but unusual. Nature abhors a monopoly. An empire is a monopoly on force, Nature will tolerate it for a while, but sooner or later, the imperial people must revert to being normal people, and the preposterous beliefs that the imperial people cherish must also pass away.”
Think of some of the incredible things we have been expected to think are true, such as real estate prices never go down, or it doesn’t matter if you save some of what you earn, or the Dick Cheney formulation that deficit spending doesn’t matter, or that we fight wars large and small to advance the cause of “freedom,” or to just make the world a better place.
All empires believe themselves to be world improvers. Alexander the Great, the Romans, the French, the British, all believed that imposing their rules and traditions on the barbarians of other, lesser lands, would be of benefit to the native populations.
“Americans believe they can get rich by spending other people’s money. They believe that foreign countries actually want to be invaded and taken over,” say the authors. “They believe they can run up debt forever, and that debt-laden houses are as good as money in the bank.”
The “Empire of Debt” was not favorably received when it was published. Who wants to be deprived of their cherished illusions, the ones that make them the heroes of modern world history? But I agree with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan,” that this book “should be mandatory reading in most circles.”
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