America’s ‘Oh Sh*T!’ Moment
Has the U.S. deleted the very things that made it great? Niall Ferguson on how America can avoid imminent collapse.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/30/niall-ferguson-how-american-civilization-can-avoid-collapse.html
The author provides some paths to avoid the looming apocalypse, though I tend to be skeptical that anything will take root. We would need a transformative leader (what Obama claimed to be), but clearly there is no one who appears to be that person on the horizon. Given our current police state, I would be quite surprised if someone came along appearing to be such and was able to actually achieve office (meaning he/she would be arrested, assassinated, ridiculed by the media, etc.). If changes can’t be made within the system, then what is left is revolution and very few revolutions are bloodless, particularly when the revolution is against the wealthy, powerful elite. Lets posit a revolution against the elite, what keeps that from following the Chinese path and turn into a revolt against the educated and intellectual? Our silly-assed country is already wildly anti-science and we have political leaders practically bragging about how clueless and ignorant they are, what chance a bloody (or even bloodless) revolution wouldn’t tar the intellectual and science community along with the financial elite?
I’m sorry, I just can’t develop any enthusiasm for a better future. The best I can envision is a slow declining status quo that gives me just enough time to get the f*ck out without having to trash all my assets. I am happy to be wrong, though! I would love to be able to stay in the US, build a business empire and go on to conquer the world, but in today’s society, having been born to the ‘wrong’ parents, attending the ‘wrong’ schools and marrying the ‘wrong’ spouse, I few my chances of achieving the goals I have set for myself as so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from nada.
Wrong spouse? Pshaw. Your spouse is 1 in 10^6. She provides you with precisely the right platform from which to launch whichever of your many ventures will eventually hit the big payoff . . . and eventually, one or two of them will.