Jed wrote: <snip>. . . Most people throughout most history have been rational and reasonable. Not ideal, but good enough. If that were not true our species would have gone extinct long ago. We are social animals -- pack hunting carnivores, like wolves. Such animals must to cooperate and protect other members of the pack, or they do not survive. We are only in danger now because our technology has increased our power. But our power has often escalated in the past, and we have usually survived these escalations. As shown in Jared Diamond's book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," even primitive people had the power to destroy themselves. Occasionally they did destroy themselves, but more often they survived.
MC: I don't know of Jed has read Diamond's book: I recommended it the other day. It is easy to see China as a looming threat, as the USSR seemed during the cold way. Diamond characterizes it as a "lurching giant", not a s drunk, but because of its size and highly centralized government, changes in drection move a lot of 'mass'. As with the USSR, internal problems eventually made it weaker than it looked, and it may be so with China as well. This cnetralized government both enabled the early growth of technology long before Europe, enabled the buildingof a great fleet of exploration in the 1400s [which mapped the world and discovered the Americas and Antartica] and also led to the collapse of that expansion and a turn inward that lasted for centuries. MC: Of course they will set up their own network of oil sources, as does the US. They are buying massive amounts of stuff from the US in building their infrastructure -- this is good for Amaerican jobs and business, isn't it? Reduces the trade deficit? Or are we becoming a colony, exporting our mineral and agricultural resources while buying manufactured goods from others? If we 'gave this away' it is the fault of every consumer who bought for the lowest price, and of workers who demanded ever higher wages and benefits. Or blame the Wright Brothers and Fulton, whose inventions in transport made a global economy possible. Mike Carrell
