I've been thinking of reasons not to worry and reasons to worry about the fate of nations. And I've come up with what I believe to be the three most significant proximate causes for the devolution of nations. The good news is that America is in good shape.
The Corruption of the Upper Class: Tyranny
As much as we talk about this, and we talk about it a great deal here, well, BDS sufferers do most of the talking, we are fortunate to have a very open and clean system. The banks don't steal our money, the trains still deliver, the stock markets are open, the press is free (if retarded) and judges are not shot nor bribed. But the fundamental premise is that when the elites become irrevocably corrupted, it is the beginning of the end.
The Insecurity of the Middle Class: Civil War
If and when the middle class loses all sense of security, they take things into their own hands. We flirt with the far margins of this all the time, but we're a long way from the bad old days of feral motorcycle movies. I've always seen the evolution of Cocooning, the two child family and the pre-eminence of the 4WD SUV as evidence that America's middle class feels less secure. However we still enjoy taking weekend drives in convertibles which is a double hit against insecurity. The middle class that can no longer feel encouraged and protected by elites will subvert them and use their own skills against them and each other.
The Sickness of the Lower Class: Plague & Famine
Basically, when the poor start to drop dead and pile up, there is little that can be done to save a nation. Clearly, we have more people who die of congestive heart failure than failure to eat, and we do remarkably well when it comes to immunization and public health. No, everybody doesn't have dental and pre-natal, but our infant mortality rate is pretty respectable.
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