Can Anything be Changed
There are many cyclical aspects of economics, in fact economics as a whole is often presented as a succession of slightly altered cycles, as cities and entire regions that are considered centres of the world and brokers of power, rise and fall, largely due to the same factors again and again. Many of you may have heard of the war between ancient Athens and Sparta; what you might not know was that Athens was backed by moneylenders from outside Greece and that this was what ultimately allowed Athens to outlast Sparta and become the dominant greek power.
This sounds bizarre until you considered how Sparta’s monetary system operated; there were no denominated currencies, you simply carried around a giant cart full of iron bits (these being the one and only tradable currency within Sparta) when you needed to buy something bigger than a goat. Sparta could not effectively engage in external trade and had no immediate means or intention of receiving and benefiting from foreign currency. Their landed military might was significantly stronger than Athens, although again Athens had the advantage of owning a powerful East-ward facing navy; this not only gave them strategic options the Spartans lacked but was part of why their foreign relations were so robust compared to the Spartans.
None of this might seem a problem in and of itself, and truthfully one war that was over well over two thousand years ago isn’t the problem either. It’s that during the course of a “big cycle”, let’s say the entire history of a given culture or civilization, almost no civilization ever manages to hit a soft landing. What do I mean by this? Economists use the term “soft landing” to describe the ideal outcome when a central back, let’s say the Federal Reserve, enacts monetary policy that successful prevents overheating (mainly overinflation) from occurring, and does so with minimal unnecessary damage to the economy as a whole (specifically with the goal of avoiding a recession).
Now, what do I mean by “soft landing” in the context of a culture’s entire history? That would involve navigating the period of civilizational tumult or decline that comes at the end of an expansion period with the minimal amount of unnecessary damage to one’s citizens and the world at large. This can be thought of as “ageing gracefully” for civilizations; preventing unnecessary loss of homeland territory, cultural heritage, natural and human resources and well as national and ethnic pride. It has long been observed that the most civilized places inevitably descend into the most corrupt barbarism after the collapse of the central authority that protects and edifies them. Babylon, as well as Sodom and Gomorrah, are still the universal bywords of the excessive corruption that can be achieved by civilized man.
Thus the question: is it possible to be civilized, to reap the fruits of civilization, and eventually to follow those fruits as dust into the ground, without compromising one’s dignity in this life or the next. This question must be asked at both the individual and civilization level.
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