Well said Jim, and more true than most everyone realizes. From Richard Maybury's US & World Early Warning Report (excellent and scarry reading). The following are tidbits from his newsletter and website - chaostan.com
We've been taught in school that civilization advanced slowly but steadily over thousands of years until we reached our present high level. But this is false. Nearly all progress happened recently and suddenly. The typical individual in 1500 AD lived little better than in 1500 BC. He had little food, little clothing or shelter, and so much disease, filth and ignorance he was lucky to survive till age 30; most died in childhood. Until recently, poverty was so awful that even royalty lived in conditions we would regard as horrifying.
What happened to cause this sudden, dramatic takeoff? What year did the sharp escalation begin? 1776. You can verify this yourself. Walk around your home and make a list of everything you have that was developed after 1776. Electricity, indoor plumbing, plastic, aluminum, central heating, air conditioning, plywood, refrigerators, nylon, jogging shoes, inner spring mattresses, rayon, facial tissue, stainless steel, corn flakes, underwear, radio... Then make another list of everything developed before 1776. Compare the lists and ask
yourself what your life would have been like if you had lived before 1776.
For thousands of years up until the American Revolution, our ancestors lived just barely above the base line of human existence. Destitution had been the normal condition since Adam and Eve. The past two centuries -- a mere eyeblink in the vast span of history -- have been a spectacular exception.
Which brings us to Chaostan - The land of great chaos - Like the Roman empire, the Soviet empire is splintering into hundreds of tiny feudal states ruled by independent warlords. These warlords have the potential to use nuclear, chemical and biological weapons on each other. Chaostan comprises roughly the area from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and Poland to the Pacific, plus North Africa. A good way to visualize Chaostan's coming dark age is to watch the '81 Mel Gibson movie ROAD WARRIOR.
I love this comment: "With the Dow over 8,000, the stock market must be so packed with amateurs and lotus-eaters that it is entirely divorced from reality. Thousands must be saying, see, taking out a second mortgage to buy stocks was a good idea after all, let's take out a third!
So far, we are replaying 1929, when one of the most important banks in Europe, Boden-Kredit-Anstalt, went on the skids. This triggered a global domino effect, widely reported. US stock investors ignored it, until they were smashed by it."
Just some late night ramblings,
kw. |
