When thugs and criminals become the power elite in a country, the populace eventually finds ways of ousting them or they destroy themselves through their own greed and stupidity, says the Gary North at the Tea Party Economist. What’s that you say, you thought all Tea Party people were drooling at the mouth troglodytes? Not hardly. I disagree with North on many things but not on this.
The power elite’s members do not sit in the cigar smoke-filled rooms of the history textbooks. Most of them do not smoke these days. Indeed, their non-smoking status is one mark of their superior status. But, just like the old political bosses, they depend on politics for their position. That is their Achilles heel. By becoming dependent on politics to protect themselves from free market competition, they will eventually overplay their hand. They will bet the farm — and ours — on a busted flush. Imploding debt will remove them from the scene.
However, what comes after that could well be what happened to USSR when it imploded. Party higher-ups and gangsters looted what was left and made the criminality overt. That doesn’t have to happen here.
Yes, we have options – but they will largely depend on how much community cohesiveness exists when the change happens. Much of rural American could adapt with minimal hardship (and much promise), at least in places where communities still hold together. There are some cities, too, that may be able to adapt well. However, if gun violence is (as I believe) a measure of community breakdown, there are some places in this country, including Los Angeles and Chicago, that face real challenges to avoid falling into either chaos or warlordism. Others, such as Las Vegas, have no resources of their own, and are likely to become ghost towns causing huge displacements of people.
I saw an ad recently reminding us that “Today is the day before.” It says the day before the 1989 Bay Area earthquake was just like any other day. Yet THAT was the day to get prepared. We know change is coming – it has to, our government and our economy are both unsustainable. (What else can you say about an economy that requires us all to spend more than we make to stay afloat?) The day to prepare for that change is today.