How A Country Dies

[Taco]

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives.

How A Country Dies
http://www.economicnoise.com/2014/06/20/country-dies/

[Jester]

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives.

How A Country Dies
http://www.economicnoise.com/2014/06/20/country-dies/

Interesting summary.

The model fits:
Anglosphere ountries
Western Europe
Rome
Byzantium

I muse also about whether such a decline is what caused the extinction of the Master Race who built Macchu Piccu in the mountains of Peru.

[Jester]

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives.

How A Country Dies
http://www.economicnoise.com/2014/06/20/country-dies/

Interesting summary.

The model fits:
Anglosphere ountries
Western Europe
Rome
Byzantium

I muse also about whether such a decline is what caused the extinction of the Master Race who built Macchu Piccu in the mountains of Peru.

[Tsar]

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives.

How A Country Dies
http://www.economicnoise.com/2014/06/20/country-dies/

Interesting summary.

The model fits:
Anglosphere ountries
Western Europe
Rome
Byzantium

I muse also about whether such a decline is what caused the extinction of the Master Race who built Macchu Piccu in the mountains of Peru.

Byzantium only fell in the end because some Crusaders sacked Constantinople which weakened it and although it regained independence that loss ultimately caused the destruction of the Empire. The Turks were the ones who dealt the deathblow. Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Crusaders for sacking Constantinople and destroying any chance of reuniting Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox faith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Cru ... tantinople

[Moretorque]

I have come to the conclusion the stupidity of the herd is most of the problem in trying to run a democratic society.

Most people do not educate themselves, I do not see any way to make a democratic society work long term considering how dam stupid most folks are.

I do not see this one world dictatorship forming as planned by our rulers either. I have come to the conclusion the best thing for me anyhow is to not pass my genes and believe there is something other than this.

I predict man is a bust long term and at the end of this century the mass extinction picking up speed will be cleaning the slate at warp speed to make way for the next at bat.

[Jester]

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives.

How A Country Dies
http://www.economicnoise.com/2014/06/20/country-dies/

Interesting summary.

The model fits:
Anglosphere ountries
Western Europe
Rome
Byzantium

I muse also about whether such a decline is what caused the extinction of the Master Race who built Macchu Piccu in the mountains of Peru.

Byzantium only fell in the end because some Crusaders sacked Constantinople which weakened it and although it regained independence that loss ultimately caused the destruction of the Empire. The Turks were the ones who dealt the deathblow. Pope Innocent III excommunicated the Crusaders for sacking Constantinople and destroying any chance of reuniting Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox faith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Cru ... tantinople

Byzantium's "byzantine" internecine bloodletting and scheming literally begged Crusader intervention. The whole episode was a tar-baby created by Byzantines and blundered into by initially well-meaning Crusaders. It was in part the chimera of reuniting Christendom that motivated the Crusader intervention into Byzantine politics.

The Byzantines blathered on about one nature of Christ versus two, and many things more arcane and silly, but on the ground they were neocon-style control-freak pragmatists who never took the straight way when they saw an angle.

Individually there were many heroes and saints among them, great people. But collectively they pissed away the most technologically and culturally advanced center of the Christian Millennium.

They managed to alienate some of the most important Armenian aristocracy, that protected their Eastern flank.

It was a Byzantine royal who invited Crusader intervention, and then betrayed the Crusaders after they had done the nearly impossible, taking Constinople.

And it was Byzantine "strategists" who brought the Turks into Europe.

The Byzantines were not innocent victims of Crusader aggression. They were a high-tax, high-taxing, high-tech society that felt they knew better than their fellow Christians to the East the West, and the South (Egypt). They pissed off everybody. And most disgusting, they calmly resorted to torturing and blinding rivals and hostages without a flicker of conscience.

And so, in some aspects at least, they parallel modern decline.