Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [23]
Long-wave erosions are only visible to historians and those willing to root around obscure data. Thus the slow, steady redistribution of national wealth away from the middle class into the pockets of the State and Plutocracy is barely discernable. Yet just because this movement of wealth, capital and income appears glacial does not mean the effects are insignificant. On the contrary, over-reach by the State and Plutocracy at the expense of the tax-paying productive class has undermined the stability of the status quo to the point that a crisis which might have been contained in the past will spread in positive-feedback fashion, toppling other teetering dominoes in ever-widening circles.
That crises unfolding in different time scales will overlap is easily predictable, but the precise intersection or overlay of various crises is entirely unpredictable. Some geopolitical tension might close the Straits of Hormuz or Malacca, and the resulting restriction of sea lanes and oil tankers might trip some other related and highly unstable situation from brewing crisis to full-blown crisis.
It is also easily predictable that any one nation and its citizenry will have limited control or influence over a truly global crisis (though the one global Empire will have more sway than other nations). We can also safely predict the complacent nations and citizens will suffer more than those who proactively anticipated the likelihood of interlocking, reinforcing crises occurring within the next decade or two.
Ideally, such proactive anticipation should involve households, communities and the nation at large. But if the State (government at all levels) is in denial or deadlock, or crippled by debt or otherwise insolvent, then households and communities will also have to prepare themselves for dwindling State aid.
Even if the State does set aside prudent reserves, these are designed to smooth short-term crises, not semi-permanent declines in the FEW essentials (food, energy, water). For instance, the 600-million barrel U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds about one month's supply of oil (20 million barrels a day consumed in the U.S. X 30 days). While this is certainly a reassuring number in a short-term crisis, it would be foolhardy to think a one-month's supply will prove to be anything more than a stopgap should oil imports plummet over the long-term.
As we shall see later, various feedback loops (both positive and negative) are at work as each crisis erupts; in some scenarios negative feedback might stem the crisis; in others, a domino effect could transpire, toppling vulnerabilities which encircle the globe.
This is why time-sensitive predictions are foolhardy, both those predicting "the end of the world as we know it" and those spouting the "it will all work out just fine" complacency favored by the mass media and Plutocracy.
What we can predict is that fragile systems without redundancy are vulnerable to disruptions which could then freeze up or degrade the entire network of finance and trade. If these impact the critical FEW resources (food, energy, water) then the disruption can quickly spill over to other systems that were previously considered secure.
System prone to positive feedback (runaway self-reinforcing crisis) are inherently more vulnerable to collapse than those with multiple negative feedbacks--forces which counteract the trend.
The problem for the complacent is that time scales and vulnerabilities overlap and interactions differ for each crisis. Thus a fast-moving crisis with slow negative feedback (correctives) could race beyond the reach of corrective action, triggering other fast-spreading crises in its wake.
In a world so deeply dependent on cheap, abundant liquid/gas fossil fuels for everything from transportation to food, the vulnerability of all energy-dependent systems to shortage or disruption