18 August 2012
Norman Pagett writes:
Armies have only two means of support: they must either be carried by their host nation, or loot the nations they overrun. This why armies always bankrupt their homelands, because eventually they run out of resources in conquered territories, and look to the ‘home’ nation for support. We Brits were convinced we could afford a European army in 1914, and bankrupted ourselves , then compounded it in 1939. America in the modern context is a little different, in that initially they bought their loot (oil) until the arabs wised up to the fact they were being robbed anyway and quadrupled the price. Now the US military is committed to protecting that oilflow or face certain total societal and economic collapse. So now political/industrial/military systems have become intermingled, and politicians try to have their particular defence factory supported by the taxpayer ad infinitum. Once established, they must justify their existence, demanding bigger and better wartoys, and more tiers of rank and hierarchy against outside threats, whether real or imagined. Communities never accept that their particular factory is unaffordable, they want to keep their jobs.
To add to the insanity, Governments insist that military production is part of GDP, even though it’s paid for out of taxation, money extracted from taxpayers from previous GDP output.
It is all ultimately futile of course, but nobody is allowed to point out that taxpayers are paying for their gas at the pumps, then paying three times that much to pay the army that protects it, and that the entire edifice is a Ponzi scheme anyway.
The community is no longer prosperous, but it struggles to pay to secure oil supplies to keep the world economy ticking over for a few more years.
Since WW2, America has poured out treasure to this end, to maintain the illusion of a world superpower, and as a result is also bankrupt. The military complex must collapse, and as it does so we are facing a very different future.
