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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: roto who wrote (44964)	7/17/2007 12:25:33 AM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78408

Usually disintegration is caused by gradual corrosion, which is based on natural electrolytic agents in the environment and current loops around points of weakness that have exposed underlying corrodable anodic areas. If the acidity of the leachants increases, which could happen given that the increase in dissolution lowers Ph, then more general areas of corrosion may develop. Weakness begets more weakness of the corroded and the strength of the corrosive increases as well. The most common agencies of corrosion are the natural agents of weathering that work on the most exposed, or highest points in the topography and the most soluble of artifacts, as in the bridges in Quebec, built with carbonate sands surrounding unprotected ferrous rebar. Weathering has two main agencies, freeze thaw cycles, and water flow which carries away small particles into steep channels towards the sea. It is akin to an increase in entropy. Increases in civic entropy occur with disintegration of infrastructure, and the social control structures that develop with small scale social groups. Increases in economic entropy occur as more civilizations come to a more common level of monetary empowerment. This allows for the natural decay of civilizations that previously depended on mercantile and imperial trade. The cities choke as gardens choke with weeds, to mix the metaphors. And the soil gets poorers and there is less to go around. To jump outside the metaphor and simile, to get right down to actual mechanism of decay we simply have to look at previous civilizations and see what happened. Hittite: Civil war, overly rigid peon/slave/master society. A natural hubris. Nazi: live by the sword, die by the sword. Roman: Excessive size of an empire leads to collapse around the edges as the progenitors grow weaker with wealth, sloth etc.. Greek: While at nearing their height, the fought amongst each other enough to give vigour to their people and refine their military. At their height they were drive by military genius. At the end they fell apart from sheer size and lack of a governmental system that was cohesive over their vast empire. Turkish: economic dearth and lack of resources led to an uncompetitive government which ruled over a dissatisfied many. British: Highly organized, but too far flung for the forces which begat it, and like the Roman did not offer anything to its diverse groups that gave them self affirmation. You cannot make a million horses drink water except by unacceptable means. No governments can last without the total consent of the governed. As bad as this consent makes the final mix of rules, it is the only adaptable choice. It will not guarantee the survival of any group within its boundaries. It will not guarantee the boundaries nor guarantee the survival of the whole of the groups within. I think the final disintegration of the American empire will be a social disintegration preceded by an relative short but significant economic decline. Civil war may never ensue, but civic strife may prevail for many years before the quality of the society is finally recognized as third rate enough that at least concessions to better or more organized nations will have to be made. Invasion of the boundaries may result, although with sufficient resources of wide scale destruction, that everyone knows cannot be used, it is hard to imagine this working very well. We have to figure what sort of enemy might have the resource to try this. I think a massive co-opting of the body politic may happen before an actual invasion is mounted. It is obvious that for this to happen a stalemate in military and economic matters must happen. EC<:-}