A Social Commentary Post
Most people don't have much familiarity with history let alone a archeology, paleontology, or geology. If they did, they wouldn't be so smug about their belief that the US is the greatest best nation on earth or their belief that we totally deserve and are entitled to the lifestyle we currently enjoy regardless of its relative cost compared to the rest of the world.
Here's a quick quiz for you. Over the 5,000 years of recorded civilized history, how many recognized political dynasties or regimes have lasted over 1,000 years (defined as a continuous dynasty of kings or other polity such as republic)? Answer - Perhaps one or two if we count the Roman Republic and Empire as one polity or the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire as one polity. Scanning over Chinese, Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Ancient American, as well as, Medieval and Modern history, one finds that it is rare for a dynasty or polity to go much beyond 200 to 300 years. 400 plus is long indeed.
What follows is usually a period of disunity or chaos. Often that may be followed by the rise of another dynasty or polity with the same cultural subset (China, Ancient Egypt, England from Medieval through early modern periods) or they just disappear.
Why bring this up. Who cares? Maybe we should. After all our republic is now in its two hundred and twenty sixth year (depending on exactly when you start counting). And we are certainly facing a number of changes (I think big changes) in the political and economic environment.
Let's consider one such change - their are billions (plural) of people who over the last 20 years have found that they have the economic ability to pursue a material lifestyle path similar to our own (around 600 million if we count both the US and Western Europe). So now we have billions of new consumers who want cars, electronic goods, home furnishings, the ability to eat more meat, better homes, travel, etc. And that number is increasing even more rapidly as nations such as China, India and other push their development.
Yet the world supply of raw materials (oil, metals, grain production, etc.) that can be used to produce such goods has not increased at anywhere near the same rate. When we have an increased demand for a stable quantity of goods we have? Right, price increases. Now think about this. What chance do you think there is that these new economic powers are going to go back to where they came from? What chance do you think that they are in fact going to pursue bringing even more of their population up the economic curve? What chance do think there is that we are going to be finding and producing substantially more minerals, petroleum, foodstuffs? What does that mean for our ability to maintain the current US lifestyle and the prices that we have been accustomed to?
More to come....
5 comments:
ummmm. wait. is this an essay question? True!
I find this very interesting. As it always does for me, it brings up lots of questions. Looks like we will have some great discussions when we see you in a couple of weeks. G said he has heard some discussions like this on public radio recently.
In a mulitple choice exam, C tends to be the correct answer 37% of the time.
living outside the US has given me a lot of freedom to think about this sort of question. The US is truly more isolated than perhaps it realizes, especially in its thinking and ability to choose what ideas it wants to reflect on or keep out. Europe is more unique than they care to admit, being at once all relatively wealthy, sharing much common ground, though of course they have their problems these days.
The fact that we've infected the rest of the world with our (consumer) culture will be, I firmly believe, America's lasting legacy long after our empire is ashes.
Atomic and nuclear weapons change everything. I don't think it's possible for only one dynasty to emerge in such an environment. As much as we'd like to think that we are THE dynasty, it's not true (as the middle east has repeatedly proven over the last 40 years).
The threat of annihilation will insure that at least two or three "dynasties" or cultures or polity will survive.
And I'd argue that over the last 75 years, our (the world's) ability to mass produce all sorts of food (crops included) and increased close to on par with the rate of growth of the world population.
Post a Comment