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| Pendragon |
 Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 10:27 am Post subject: "The American Era?" |
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Some people compare the present day United States with the Roman Empire and say that the dominance of the US, just like that of Rome, is only a temporal thing.
Throughout history any great empire has seen times of power and times of decline. Does that mean the US must fear the end of it's "American Era", or is the American hegemony something completely different than that of empires of the past? |
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| (In)Sanity |
| Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
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Location: Phoenix AZ
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I think the US is headed down a dangerous road, it's starting to loose it's diversity that made it what it once was. I foresee freedoms of the people in the US slowly being degraded and the rest of the world almost flipping over to be more American then America. It appears to me the US is being lead by religion more and more, this can be very dangerous.
This is really a hard question to answer without bringing politics on board. |
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| buffstuff |
| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:53 am Post subject: |
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Sadly, I think your right. But I don't think that the US will decline as much as most empires from history have. Even though it may decline, the US will still have a say in things. If what history proves will happen to the US, the next "empire" will probably be from Asia, maybe China?
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Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. -Robert Heinlein |
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| (In)Sanity |
| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:57 am Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
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| buffstuff wrote: |
| Sadly, I think your right. But I don't think that the US will decline as much as most empires from history have. Even though it may decline, the US will still have a say in things. If what history proves will happen to the US, the next "empire" will probably be from Asia, maybe China? |
Yah, I don't think the US will fall hard. If anything it will become far less powerful then it once was. The debt the US is building will eventualy catch up and cause a very crippling impact. |
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| buffstuff |
| Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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thats true, unless they can find a way past it.
Make Canada pay rent perhaps? 
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Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. -Robert Heinlein |
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| science_nut06 |
| Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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I agree. America will not fall hard but it will fall as it did in the Great Depression. Personally, I think it will be Canada. Canada is so quiet, you dont hear anything from them, they will rise up and kick everyone's ass.
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| (In)Sanity |
| Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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| science_nut06 wrote: |
| I agree. America will not fall hard but it will fall as it did in the Great Depression. Personally, I think it will be Canada. Canada is so quiet, you dont hear anything from them, they will rise up and kick everyone's ass. |
LOL, I doubt that. They just don't have the population  |
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| HomoUniversalis |
| Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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We are living in quite an interesting age, as it seems large corporations have taken over the role of government, at least in the sense of controlling the masses. They are the ones giving us the bread and the entertainment. I don't think we are living in an American Age, but rather in the Age of the Corporation.
More interestingly, is the fact that these corporations are footloose, and internationally based. They are prowling the earth for the cheapest place to create their products and the most expensive place to sell.
Eventually, I believe, the people will break free of this, or the market will plummet because of increase of technology, but one way or another, the megacorporation will eventually fall. Whether it is for good or for worse, I know not. History is full with turning points towards either.
Mr U
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| (In)Sanity |
| Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2005 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
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| HomoUniversalis wrote: |
We are living in quite an interesting age, as it seems large corporations have taken over the role of government, at least in the sense of controlling the masses. They are the ones giving us the bread and the entertainment. I don't think we are living in an American Age, but rather in the Age of the Corporation.
More interestingly, is the fact that these corporations are footloose, and internationally based. They are prowling the earth for the cheapest place to create their products and the most expensive place to sell.
Eventually, I believe, the people will break free of this, or the market will plummet because of increase of technology, but one way or another, the megacorporation will eventually fall. Whether it is for good or for worse, I know not. History is full with turning points towards either.
Mr U |
I think you might be on to something, also religion has become a corporation in and of itself, at least some religions. They are very money oriented these days. Then you get down to it everything leads back to control and power. |
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| Pendragon |
| Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting point HU.
Still I think corporations have only so much power as we, the consumers, give them. If we want them to stop polluting, we simply refuse to buy products from polluting companies. This way we make pollution unprofitable. In the same way we can make 'the big corporations' give social security to their employees, fight global warming, etc.
So I think the people can indeed as you said break the power of the corporations, but not by destroying the free market but by using it more effectively. |
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| HomoUniversalis |
| Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:55 am Post subject: |
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Striking works. Yes. But when have you last heard of a major strike against one corporation. These companies are as powerful as a government, and through advertisement they control the information that reaches us.
If we think about Nike, we don't think about the poor children somewhere in the East. No, we think about shoes. If we think about Federal Reserve System, we think about money, not about Rothchild!
The public is easily influenced in their line of thought, and corporations dominate that influence. The majority of America supports the war, at least economically, and the corporations got what they wanted. Another four years of tax breaks and assurance that it will be their way, not the JFK highway.
Another major issue is the footloose property of major corporations. They are internationally based, and if Americans start to strike, and stop working, they'll just move to Europe, or India, or China. That's an important issue Unions are more than aware of in these days. If we mess with corporations too much, and it'll start affecting profits, they will move even more, and the American Economy will be drained even more, with disastrous effects for the US public.
In Europe, the same is happening. The public faces a grave danger as the corporations have the power to abandon a nation, and leave it to it's fate.
Where once the capitalists had power through firing and hiring cheap labor, now they have power through switching between companies. Sure, it is unlikely they will hop every year of so, but the power of suggestion rules supreme.
In the end it is doubtful that the corporations will completely move from the United States, because the government is so nice to them (something they might not get in other countries), and because the major banks also have a lot of economical power in the US, but it is the power of suggestion. The US has seen the destructive power of outsourcing and merely the suggestion that another company will leave, in my opinion, will be enough to silence the public.
(especially after every American has seen the stories on CNN, and the likes, about how bad Outsourcing is for the US)
Am I a conspiracy theorist? Perhaps, but than again, few major events have occured in the history of man that did involve some conspiracy.
Mr U
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| shizuku |
| Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 3:28 am Post subject: |
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| buffstuff wrote: |
| If what history proves will happen to the US, the next "empire" will probably be from Asia, maybe China? |
China is actually an empire.... that is why if any one has seen any ancient chinese films... the ruler of china is known as the emperor and not king.... around time of the birth of christ, what China is now, was actually made up of sveral countries. |
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| sploit |
| Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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You are forgetting that the U.S. was created less than 300 years ago. The Roman Empire spanned 1500 years. I do not see the United States crumbling very soon. It will eventually, like all empires, collapse. New nations will come to be, and eventually they too will collapse. Althought corporations do have a large influence on American culture, they are not fullly dominant. If the people ever find a need to rise up and overthrow their government to preserve their country, I believe they will do it.
| science_nut06 wrote: |
| Personally, I think it will be Canada. Canada is so quiet, you dont hear anything from them, they will rise up and kick everyone's ass. |
ahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Crazy Canucks.
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| buffstuff |
| Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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I take back what I said, I think the US will NOT crumble, but stay in dominance. No stats or facts, just wishful thinkijng.
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Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. -Robert Heinlein |
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| jett |
| Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 6:50 am Post subject: |
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| Take a gander at THE LONG ENERGENCY by James Howard Kunstler (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press) whose subtitle is "Surviving the converging catastrophes of the 21st Century" for a glimpse of the non-political reasons why America as an empire would seem to have a much shorter life expectancy than the Romans. We in the West have built our entire way of life on a hydrocarbon economy whose extraction peak is already passed, and blithely ignore the collateral effects therefrom, like global warming, aquifer depletion and a coming global water shortage, insane population boom accompanied by territorial land grabs by homo sapiens, to the detriment of many other diverse species, suburban sprawl that only further commits us to the automobile as a way of life, etc. These are fundamentally resource allocation questions on a finite planet, but anybody that dares mention these looming problems is politically marginalized by short term thinkers who want a few more squeezes from the goose (that laid the golden egg) before bequeathing these mutlivariate problems to their grandchildren and beyond. |
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