Wind of Change

In 1960, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Macmillan, delivered a famous speech known as the "Wind of Change":
One of the constant facts of political life in Europe has been the emergence of independent nations…
The wind of change is blowing through the continent… Whether we like it or not

empire building

The structure was a familiar one. Tried and tested. The state provides security (military) to ensure stability and enforcement of legal contracts. And while this cost a lot of money, in return the vassal states pay taxes to the empire.

As long as the taxes exceeded the costs of keeping the restless natives in check things were golden. As we know this math didn't last forever for any of the empires…

all of the power structures… were centralised structures. Top down - like a pyramid, with the wealth accumulating at the top.

Today

Just as each empire has finally succumbed to the gravity of unprofitable ventures, today we have much of the developed world labouring under similar problems.

Europe, the poster child for socialism, has a structure whereby member states in the EU contribute to a centralised bureaucracy and receive a number of benefits in return. The problem is the math doesn't work.

Across the ditch, our American friends have much the same issues. A top down structure, centralised… and ever increasingly so.

Today, however, the gravity forces at work are due to a setup where those in power will actually cause the demise of this structure.

Today, the costs and losses of the empire (I'm using the term loosely here to include the nation states of the world but in particular the US and EU) are socialised. Like an insurance policy, the costs are distributed across society. The rewards are, however, privatised. They don't accrue to the state... and this is very different from how the Romans or Genghis Khan ran things.

Lobby groups and big business push for policies and privileges that will benefit their… business.

In turn, the state tilts the playing field in their favour. This comes at a cost, and that cost is a cost to the state, not the industry being favoured.

When enough of this happens... like now, for instance, then the finances get all wonky. What's ironic is that the revolving door between Wall Street and the White House is parasitic on the state, which in turn is a parasite on the citizenry.

Parasites can be fed and maintained up until the point where they kill the host. The Cheneys, Gores, Bushes, and Clintons of this world don't siphon funds directly from the treasury like our friend Mugabe and his ilk. They just do the same thing via companies and charities. It provides a cloak to true intentions... but the results are the same. A math problem which reaches breaking point.

This is a problem not just for the US and Europe. It's a problem for the nation state structure, which is more buggered than an alter boy in the Vatican.

This is because the centralised structure, of not only running a country, but doing business at every level, is being destroyed.

Consider that, for the first time in history, individual companies are worth more than the most modern large governments of the world. It is a consequence of an ongoing unstoppable trend towards decentralisation, and it promises to bring us an entirely different empire that will follow the existing one.

While it's easy enough to see that the empire won't last... what replaces it will, I believe, look distinctly different to yet another centralised nation state.

Pareto's principle is well defined and consistent. What changes are those at the top and those at the bottom.

The philosopher Nietzsche noted: "In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, it is the rule."

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." — Ariel Durant

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ref: http://zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-22/how-will-empire-end