American Dependence

In the long run, it really doesn’t matter whether all this is planned, or in how much detail, because it’s all going to hurt just the same. And we went along with it.
An economy grows when a lot of people at the same time, in the same geographical area, make and sell things people want and need. That breaks down between things which are consumed and need replacing and redoing, or things people do not have and really want.
First, we created a high consumption market by sheer marketer’s brainwashing, convincing people they just had to have all these modern conveniences. Then we sucked them into buying all the more, designing in rapid wear out rates, the throw-away consumer culture. Then we built a huge overhead on our manufacturing with tons of savvy managers and huge cities of offices with people almost interested in what they were doing. But it wasn’t efficient enough. So we had government offering big tax relief to actually send all our manufacturing jobs oversees, then the management jobs, where it was imagined things might be more efficient. This was economic treason, but we bought the lie we could all get new jobs in processing information. Except the market discovered quickly there wasn’t much profit in that, so it died, after we off-shored the useful parts of it. Only government and predatory corporations do that now. And the predatory tracking of human response to advertising and such is about worthless when no one has jobs, so that, too, will crash soon. An honest accounting shows over one-quarter of Americans wanting jobs are unemployed. Almost half are under-employed.
The only real growth industry is government. Savor that for a moment. The fast growing sector of the economy produces nothing and consumes more, and more inefficiently, than any other economic entity in the world. How long can that be sustained?
We don’t have a land where people are used to making do with what they can get. We don’t see people trading older appliances like valued farm land, and we just barely comprehend the notion of keeping your aging autos because it’s cheaper to keep ‘er. We can’t seem to apply that frugal necessity to all the things in highest demand. People will steal and kill for more cell phone minutes.
Like our cheap junk “durable goods,” which are anything but durable, we have created a national culture and economy designed to fall apart. It was unsustainable more than a century ago, but there was room to run before the forward momentum ran out. It’s a race to see which currency dies first, and just now it seems the Euro might win that race. It’s just barely possible the dollar will get one last kick in the seat of the pants simply because investors will flee the Euro. It won’t really change anything except to delay the inevitable for the dollar, though.
It will make things only more brutal here in the land of the dollar. We simply do not have what it takes to make it through this. The vast wasteland of non-culture which is the American way of life offers no place to hide when things get rough. All we have are quick shelters of cheap plastic tarps strung across sun-rotted fiberglass whips, guyed by over-stretched latex bungee cords. One stiff wind and there’s nothing.
You should see what a monumental task it is to turn soft American boys into something resembling the image of tough warriors we project to the world. Most of them are hardly that tough, though some units are lucky enough to grab a handful country boys or something like that. We expect soldiers to grumble, but American troops whine. They remain largely incompetent, and only the vast expense of our high-tech toys — instructions printed on the side — are what keeps us in the field. We outspend most of our enemies, and only by sheer bullying do we choose those even less competent. Real resistance and our boys are whipped by stones and arrows. Our best troopers are used in special operations, the last bastion of true military nobility. Part of the reason mainline commanders slot five support troops for each one on the front line is because out of six, only one might be reasonably useful. I’ve been there.
So it comes down to this, Americans: You aren’t ready for what’s coming. It won’t matter if it’s two or three years down the road; you won’t be ready. More likely it’s next month or so. For the few of us who have any clue, it’s going to be made far worse by the vast horde of those around us who don’t have a clue, and who will be whining and clinging to us, trying to take us for everything we have gathered. For every strong household, there will easily be ten or twenty begging for your help.
It’s not simply things are going to be hard economically, but socially, too. We have this massive herd of folks who simply don’t value anything beyond their personal comfort. They aren’t predators in the typical sense, but they are willing to slash and burn what they can’t take for a quick relief of their appetites. These are animals with a human intelligence, rather like Planet of the Apes with less hair and none of the planning. What our soldiers experience in Afghanistan, needing to carry their weapons to the shower or simply to go potty, will become a routine here in some parts. The sort of thinking this requires is simply not possible to most Americans without a direct experience in the military.
If you are one of the few competent folks, prepare to inherit a couple hundred new dependents.