A scramble for the spoils: A description of America's ongoing collapse

This will be puzzle pieces forming a easily recognizable scenario. This will not be news, but rather the rehashing of an inevitable tale - the implosion of an empire. (mainly just to get this off my chest) All but one act has been completed, and the final act is not nearing, but present.

Decadence (originally meaning "decline") usually means a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or leadership among the members of the elite of a large social structure. Source

Let's confirm this final act is currently playing out by describing the actors listed in the definition of decadence above. [It's important to understand that we must compare America to America, not America to the rest of the world, for It is the current empire and It is currently in decline.]

Decline of standards. Where shall we begin? It is actually easier to provide examples of standards that have improved... hmmm... Technology & medicine (not healthcare) is all I can come up with. And some may argue that even medicine has declined in some ways. (i.e., application, quality, availability). Moving on!

Decline of morals. This is simply very apparent. As society's moral fabric tears at the seams, the truth becomes more and more blurry. The 'true self' for most everyone in society is no longer sought after, and is more like a fossil from ancient times buried under a layer of earth. When I think of a moral decline in regards to America, terms like bankers, representatives (of the people), Hollywood (if morals ever existed here), media and police come to mind.

Decline of dignity. Remember dignity?.... Honor... ? Value... ? How many times do you even hear the word anymore? I, personally, haven't heard a human being say the word 'dignity' in years. And whether that says more about me or about society, it is still reflective of the current state of decline.

Decline of religious faith. Oooh, here's a touchy subject! I don't push my beliefs on anyone else. For myself, I think it's mighty irresponsible to not leave room for error, in whatever you believe. But I will say this, where morality goes, religious faith is sure to follow... I don't think science is solely responsible for a decline in religious faith but is just one of many reasons. Its not as black and white as some would like to believe. Nonetheless, religious faith is in sharp decline.

Decline in leadership. Wow, can we have a better example than the current POTUS? How about the VA scandal? Just because we have leadership, doesn't mean it is quality leadership or that with the people's interest in mind. Our leaders are paid off (in one way or another) by morally-bankrupt sociopaths, for the most part... or they're just terrible people to begin with (most of them). You have to keep in mind the type of person which seeks out a high ranking position...

That covers the actors playing a major role in decadence. Next I just want to touch on a couple of topics that play a huge part in the final act of an empire.

Sex! Should we cover how much internet traffic is due to porn or should we cover prostitution, sexual abuse, rape, trafficking, Bill Clinton, the church? How about young mothers or infidelity/divorce? Maybe Hollywood or the Kardashians?.. What are they famous for again...?

Power/military might!. The Obama admin is currently taking the steps to ensure a weaker military, by reducing military numbers. The VA scandal will also help -- who watching the scandal unfold will suddenly jump up off the couch and say with conviction, "I want to join the military!" .. show I can be put on a never-ending waiting list for medical treatment...

Finance!. I just want to show two famous charts 1) the wealth of the 1% & 2) the buying power of the U.S. dollar.

Source

Source

So you may ask yourself - six67seven, why is unemployment down and the stock market breaking records?!

Well, I'll tell... Unemployment might be down, and the unemployed might have just given up on the search. In a time of morally-bankrupt leadership from those that make up our government, are going to put your faith in their information?
Sure the stock market is blowing up, but you should know the only people moving the market are the ones reflected in the first chart above. Do you know what this last ditch effort to grab a piece of the crumbling empire is called?

A scramble for the spoils!

In any standard distribution within a dataset, you will still see some smaller percentages going against the grain.

This thread you've started seems awfully singular in its conclusion and to be frank, I'd rather believe that the fact that this country might be seeing something that remotely resembles a "rush for the spoils" includes some companies that are actually gearing up to invest again in this place, with this people, in a very powerful way.

Here are my canaries in a coal mine, if you will, that I think are indicators to the glass is half full argument:

Employment is up. No link, just read a news website. The numbers probably lie but there really are more people employed now.

Enormous companies are consolidating with smaller ones and coporate buyouts are on the rise. This is a good thing for a struggling economy because it means while jobs are initially sacraficed during mergers, it means the companies are not necessarily ditching their capital overseas and they are trying to maintain strong foundation flows of dollars down to mid and small size companies. Call them evil if you like, but it is in the interest of corporate America to keep their dollars here.

I'm going to stop at those two reasons, but I want to add that the reality is that corporations are the puppet masters of Congress to a great extent, but that also means that as long as they want to keep that power here in the U.S., they probably want to strengthen the economy in the country they control. Simple logic.

As for the 1% chart that has by now become overused by now, the same is true. If I am a 1%-er, I live here in the U.S. because of the freedoms I enjoy, as well as the profits I make and the power I wield. This is a great thing for them and while other countries like India and China have their own economic booms, they don't have our Constitution, our laws and national identity. For better or worse, we have what others want to give their life savings for to come here.

I wonder what the immigration rate is for China...or India...or Japan (we should be helping Japan especially after the disaster in Fukushima)...we are fortunate to be here, and that is why wealthy people and companies are here too. They know what is here.

Decay happens after growth. Then growth again. It's a cycle. You should try gardening. You'll pick the concept up a whole lot faster.

a reply to: six67seven


Well done and put together nicely, I have said many times to friends you will know when the crash of the SHTF is about to happen. That is when you will see the wealth of a country start to move. It will move out of the country, it will move in market places they can eke out the last vestiges of capital, it will move to secure locations untouchable by government hands, for John Q. Citizen he most likely will not notice, but it starting to move now and is very noticeable if you're willing to remain with your eyes open.

It is the midrange wealth that I find most interesting in this instance, it is the one most likely to remain with their heads in the sand, and the most vulnerable because money will no longer buy you the security they have become accustomed to. The day is coming I think in the near future, that the only thing that will matter is what you have to eat and drink for a long while.

The question is two fold, why was this allowed to happen, and with all the european countries bankrupt or in incredible debt, this country 17T in debt, where has the money gone? Where is it hiding?

My 2 cents.

a reply to: Zedski

I am sorry but you have no idea what you are talking about. Unemployment numbers......You might want to do a little research on that one. I will tell you they are no longer counted when the compensation stops....Sketchy.



You also mention how it is a good thing when mega companies buy out smaller ones.......If you truly think this is a good thing I might be wasting my ink.

originally posted by: Zedski
In any standard distribution within a dataset, you will still see some smaller percentages going against the grain.

This thread you've started seems awfully singular in its conclusion and to be frank, I'd rather believe that the fact that this country might be seeing something that remotely resembles a "rush for the spoils" includes some companies that are actually gearing up to invest again in this place, with this people, in a very powerful way.

Here are my canaries in a coal mine, if you will, that I think are indicators to the glass is half full argument:

Employment is up. No link, just read a news website. The numbers probably lie but there really are more people employed now.

Enormous companies are consolidating with smaller ones and coporate buyouts are on the rise. This is a good thing for a struggling economy because it means while jobs are initially sacraficed during mergers, it means the companies are not necessarily ditching their capital overseas and they are trying to maintain strong foundation flows of dollars down to mid and small size companies. Call them evil if you like, but it is in the interest of corporate America to keep their dollars here.

I'm going to stop at those two reasons, but I want to add that the reality is that corporations are the puppet masters of Congress to a great extent, but that also means that as long as they want to keep that power here in the U.S., they probably want to strengthen the economy in the country they control. Simple logic.

As for the 1% chart that has by now become overused by now, the same is true. If I am a 1%-er, I live here in the U.S. because of the freedoms I enjoy, as well as the profits I make and the power I wield. This is a great thing for them and while other countries like India and China have their own economic booms, they don't have our Constitution, our laws and national identity. For better or worse, we have what others want to give their life savings for to come here.

I wonder what the immigration rate is for China...or India...or Japan (we should be helping Japan especially after the disaster in Fukushima)...we are fortunate to be here, and that is why wealthy people and companies are here too. They know what is here.

Decay happens after growth. Then growth again. It's a cycle. You should try gardening. You'll pick the concept up a whole lot faster.

Try gardening?? I'll pick up the concept??

I'm not sure what you think I need to pick up, to be frank...

Your first point, you say employment is up, but its probably a lie...? So agreeing with me is a canary in a coal mine....?? A glass half full scenario?? I failed to 'pick that up'. Maybe I should start gardening.

Your second "canary", you say enormous companies are consolidating with small ones... WTF kind of canary is that!? So Consolidation of goods and services and power into the hands of a few is "a great thing", as you put it?!?!

What the hell are you talking about?!


A chart to show the true distribution of wealth in the country is so often used that it becomes... What?.. Less true??

Obviously gardening didn't help you

I''ll tell you what partially led to this downslide, for I was a witness to it, indeed I participated in it.

When Silicon Valley was in its hay day there were a multitude of businesses that employed tons of people in the computer hardware and software business. So many companies vying for the next advancement, so many people learning the technical and engineering end of the industry. Silicon Valley was the world wide hub of that awesome wave.

A couple things occurred that changed all that. In particular as I see it, one thing that brought the whole valley down. I'm not talking abut the introduction of the personal computer by Apple. All that did was upgrade the technology to fit in a smaller package. That didn't destroy the valley. Companies adapted to the change, keeping up and promoting ever shrinking chip size and ever increasing speed and capacity of computer packages.

No, what did it, what destroyed the future of the computer industry here, was the move over seas. I don't just mean the movement of jobs, although that helped. I'm talking about the licensing of the right to produce vacuum systems (the chip makers) in foreign lands. Thats what did it. After that a multitude of companies like Applied Materials, Intel IBM, Rohm, DEC, Amdahl, plus ad infinitum smaller tooling and machine support companies withered and died on the vine.

As each of these big companies declined and finally closed their factories, all the little support industry companies began to scrap their inventory, machines and buildings to the highest bidder. The recycling industry bought multi million dollar mainframe computers by the mile for pennies on the pound. Commercial companies leased office space and sold among other things, carpet and camper shells.

Once the rights to produce American manufactured vacuum sputtering systems was sold to overseas companies that was pretty much it for Silicon Valley. Thats the part I witnessed, the scrap fest that occurred, reduction of whole industrial sections of Silicon Valley to shredded, smelted ore. The recycled metal was melted down overseas and sold back to us in the form of the newest line of computers.

Since then Americas tech industry has been reduced to development of software and support for systems that are no longer produced in America. What a shame.

Oh, the big internet companies and some aero space, engineering and development happens here, but no longer the days of glory gone by. No more riding the crest of the wave here. So sad.

Now apple is constructing this super ship which is supposed to do what I don't know (besides burn away their reserves). They will continue to pay Chinese a couple dollars and hour to produce their hardware, not Americans. For shame.

Once the Asian tech front as a whole outdoes the Apple engineers in their Super Park they'll be scrapping that place too, I guess. Maybe i'll still be around to see it go the way of everything else… overseas.

Just like everything else in the universe, the American Empire also has a lifespan. Part of the old age of empires is rampant corruption.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Just like everything else in the universe, the American Empire also has a lifespan. Part of the old age of empires is rampant corruption.

Yep, it's going to be EPIC!!

Just wonder how much longer they can delay the inevitable.

I'm really just waiting for all these old, powerful farts to pass on to the other side. I know they have plenty of sons to keep their ideology going but geez they've been alive for what seems like forever.

Or here's a concept: Stop complaining and change things yourself!

Forget all the garbage I wrote earlier to get you to think a little bit beyond your doom and gloom.

Fight your way out! Find your own answers. Are there ultra rich people and corporations that are in power, likely running everything? Yes. Without a doubt. Does that mean all your happiness is doomed? I'll let you answer that one.

Looking at the big picture is not serving you well, apparently.

a reply to: six67seven

And as far as waiting for all the old farts to pass on...there will always be more. Always.

a reply to: six67seven
Great post and succinctly put. I agree with intrptr that the wholesale exporting of America's manufacturing was probably the most devastating to the American way of life. Now we have a corporation owned by the banks (the Fed) printing fiat currency with no backing at the official rate of $45 billion a month but which is probably closer to $100 billion a month when you count the Belgian recent purchases of Treasuries and back door liquidity to European banks.

Here are a few more to add to the list:

- an Attorney General who refuses to prosecute banking crime or hold any of the fraudsters accountable
- a concentrated media bought and paid for that spews propaganda worthy of the old Soviet Union
- a court system that is no longer accountable to the people but does the bidding of corporate / fascist interests
- a 10 year old war that profited the MIC and was designed to ramp up poppy production so that Langley Al-CIA-Duh can control heroin traffic worldwide and restock their black ops funds.
- multiple government agencies that use surveillance as a means to front run markets, intimidate opponents, gut constitutional rights and enlarge themselves at the expense of their hosts (you and me).

I have more but I will stop with these.

a reply to: intrptr

Fine. Pack your bags now then. If you are so sure of that, why waste any more time here, or income potential. Hope your Chinese is good.

a reply to: six67seven

For a person to try and foretell a decline / collapse of America one should understand the setup first. A collapse of the federal government does not mean a collapse of the United states. People seem to either ignore or don't understand / know that the States and the Federal government are separate sovereigns.

The country did ok after the revolution when they were designing a new government. The colonies handled their own affairs during this process. While the Federal government has issues, there are states who are not having issues and they could survive without the federal government (Texas for example).

New York city generates close to 6-8 billion in tax revenue that goes to Albany. Of that amount, they get about 2 billion of it back. There are a number of states who over pay into the system who don't see a return.

Americans have always shown resiliency, even in the face of death and destruction. We survived those times, and we will survive those times yet to come.

a reply to: Xcathdra
I think six67seven was speaking of the decline of the American Empire not the Federal government. I think the Federal government is running on all cylinders. Unfortunately they are busy selling the American citizen out and lining their pockets.

The American people are resilient and many of us are creating the next economy based on real value, hard work, cooperative networks, locally sourced products (and labor) and sound money. Of course TPTB do not want too many of us to work in Galt's Gulch since it means fewer sheeple to fleece with their Ponzi schemes.

If religion is so great, how come all our leaders always do the 'God Bless America' schtick while ordering as much death and destruction as possible? As I understand it, all religions have some variant of 'thall shalt not kill' on board, right? Why are these people unafraid of eternal lakes of fire, not to mention the Hague?

I for one would like to see an honest atheist, rationality unfettered with 'beliefs' in anything silly like the Easter Fairy or the Tooth Bunny, Santa Claus or pregnant virgins, take the office. It's common knowledge that an atheist can never be elected president, so many voters are staunch believers. But could an atheist possibly be any worse than what we seem to keep getting? At least they wouldn't be liars about their own inner thought processes.

As far as the whole when will the SHTF scenario goes, after years of expecting it any minute, I'm with Katherine Austin-Fitts on this one. They'll never collapse the dollar, they're still making too much money off the IRS to Treasury to Federal Reserve coffers round-robin game. All our savings will be dwindled down to being worth nothing over time, but frogs in boiling water and all that...

originally posted by: Zedski
Or here's a concept: Stop complaining and change things yourself!

Forget all the garbage I wrote earlier to get you to think a little bit beyond your doom and gloom.

Fight your way out! Find your own answers. Are there ultra rich people and corporations that are in power, likely running everything? Yes. Without a doubt. Does that mean all your happiness is doomed? I'll let you answer that one.

Looking at the big picture is not serving you well, apparently.

Lmao.

I'm doing pretty good myself. Have the most savings now than ever before and hold a position which pays me the more than I've ever made before. Been married for two years as of May 17th (first marriage!)

See, there's this thing called 'perspective' which allows me to see the bigger picture with a modicum amount of objectivity.

Hell, anyone can see what I and many others on ATS and around the whole damn world can see. Just open your eyes!

Don't take it personally, just don't try to bullsh*t those on ATS or you'll get called out on it.

originally posted by: signalfire
If religion is so great, how come all our leaders always do the 'God Bless America' schtick while ordering as much death and destruction as possible?

For votes

Decline in religious faith...and morals... here the old stereotype again.
Wrong.

There are plenty of countries on this planet where

religion is rather under-represented and a large population may be considered atheist or not belonging to the traditional religions, like Scandinavian countries or many other countries in Northern Europe.
Those countries are certainly not "immoral" neither have they collapsed due to a "decline in religion", in fact they do great in many aspects.

Compared to some Western European countries, there are a lot more fundamentalists/religious people in the US, despite the "collapse".

Your collapse has NOTHING to do with declining faith and morals. This is what you believe since you want to rationalize the reason for the collapse. Besides that morals is always a subjective thing.

"Sex" = plain nonsense. Sorry, don't know what else to say.

If you want the REAL reason for the collapse, look at your political system, leadership and corporates. This is what brings your country down, not a more lax view on sex.

Ironically, your country was MORE lax in terms of morale (sex included) in the 1960. People didn't give a ** about many things back then. Now you have a society which is so PC that mini-skirts may already cause national outrage. Something people laughed about in the 1960s. If anything, you got more prudish. Just the exact opposite of a decline in morals.

originally posted by: six67seven

Sex! Should we cover how much internet traffic is due to porn ...............


A scramble for the spoils!

Porn is often used as an example of imorality and I have a problem with this. First of all lets agree that kid porn rape exts is not porn anyway but plan ole child abuse and sexual assault respectively and is not considered by mainstream people as porn anyway.

To watch consenting adults either on the screen or live, engaging in normal everyday human sexual behavior is not immoral.

I think those who associate porn with immorality have much to learn or are deliberately muddying the waters for the own agenda.

The people who are deliberately muddy the waters by making this association are usually bible bashers and like all bible bashers they just want to rule other people and try to portray themselves as superior beings just because they are religious.

Such people do not seem to realise that in order to be a free, individual sovereign human being, one must first of all be free of religion and go to religion as an act of free choice as an adult. To be indoctrinated into religion as a child is nothing short of a form of child abuse and mind control but then I guess that's what religion is all about isn't it?