Are we in Western civilization's final hurrah?

[pezar]

Ok, follow my line of thinking here. There are zero currencies tied to gold. That means that, for the first time in history, there is no gold standard anywhere in the world. Thus, governments are free to inflate the currency-any currency-as they wish. The Federal Reserve is going to buy billions of dollars worth of government bonds to "spur the economy". What it will really do is spur inflation. Once the dollar starts inflating, all the rest of the world's currencies will too, whether their govt's want them to or not, because they are tied to the dollar. That means that, once hyperinflation sets in, it will be GLOBAL. There will be nowhere to run or hide.

There has never been a global financial collapse-until now. That means that there will be no empires to take the place of the American Empire, once the American Empire collapses. Nowhere to run, remember? Nowhere to put your money, no safe bank to stash your gold. The only option will be to bury your gold in a hole in the ground like people did as Rome was collapsing. They are still finding hoards of gold from Roman times, 1500 years afterwards. The end result will be that, as the globe is being ruined by hyperinflation, the prudent and visionary will start to abandon the cities in favor of forming "tribes" of hunter gatherers. At the end of the hyperinflation, all currencies, and even gold, will be worthless. Since there will be no money, there will be no economy. Without an economy, civilization all over the world will collapse like a bad souffle. Those still in the cities will die horribly. Those who have taken to the woods to forage will be the winners.

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond says that any system will get complex until it becomes impossible to manage. It's human nature to not say the truth about the emperor in these instances. When a system gets so complex that it can no longer be sustained, it suddenly gets dramatically simpler. Collapse is the only option left. We are fast getting to the point where the global system is getting too complex to go on any further. Therefore, the only option left is dramatic simplification. This time, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel. In an essay on Chile's hyperinflation that I read, the author emphasized that "even in the middle of Armageddon, things will get better". For a country, that's true.

For the world, that is not true. Instead, things get worse and worse. The cities become uninhabitable. So people leave them, and forage. A city, after all, is a place with people and buildings, but no food or water, it must be brought in. Cities have treasures but no food. When the treasure becomes worthless, the city has outlived its usefulness, and is abandoned. The problem is, we have 7 billion people on earth now. After the collapse, the earth might support 7 MILLION. That's a LOT of death. Most people live in cities for the first-and last-time in human history, right now. We are facing the oil running out, farmland losing its fertility, and a financial collapse all at the same time. It goes without saying that in the end there will be very little left. We here may be on the vanguard of the future, by returning to the past.

[bobenns]

There were some people at my door the other day who would agree with you. They had a little publication with a story about Armageddon in it. I think it was called All Along the Watchtower or something like that. I politely told them I wasn't interested in that topic and asked them not to come back.

Personally, I don't think this forum is the right place for a discussion about Armageddon. I'm sure you could find plenty of other places that would entertain that topic.

[pezar]

You're right of course, I've been spending too much time over at the survivalist forum again...

[bobenns]

You're right of course, I've been spending too much time over at the survivalist forum again...