What Happens After America?

Strange things are happening abroad. The Asiatics are in the process of conquering the entire world without firing a shot. What they save on gunpowder and jackboots alone could balance the budget of one of the struggling economies of the Eurozone. They've the gall to have pals in our sacred hemisphere too, including one pesky island whose chief export is doctors of medicine and organic farming experts. Another strong partner is a massive, sprawling, continental size country, which is a treasure trove of earthly resources.

It's looking more and more as if the countries that came late to the game: Degenerate Crony Capitalism that is; may be the smartest, and/or the luckiest. Perhaps the rites of passage endured during those bleak years of collectivism; i.e, Communism and the dull leveling of Socialism, has provided them a powerful incubator to hatch a new social model. How this will play out in twenty years remains unknown but the old, singularly fierce competitors they have been facing went broke, and are fading fast.

Revolution preceded the collectivist experiment in Russia, China and Cuba. In Viet Nam it was revolution and later a violent civil war; while India emerged from decades of Colonialism to follow a Socialist path initially. In the US, however, Benjamin Franklin’s "Necessary Hints to Those That would Be Rich" preceded our noble Revolution. Of the new bunch, only Brazil has emerged from the old paradigm; appears to have a strong twenty-first century potential, but may fall back into the same rut as the US and Europe considering its lineage. Have the former collectivists learned from the past and are therefore determined not to repeat the errors of the late, great economic hegemon and its several clones?

So are we talking about the failure of a once proud financial system doomed from the start because of faulty genealogy? That rather than having had a normal gestation and birth what issued forth was rather a 'sport', a Minotaur like creature that could sustain itself but had no future aspect. A creature of bizarre appetite but narrow focus; i.e. individual success, which was clearly favored at the cost of another of equal worth, social success. Thus a flawed equation lead to inevitable societal decline. Obvious symptoms of this paraphilia are evidenced in the littering of the countryside with phallic oases, commonly known as centers of commerce, each more splendid and higher rising than the other guys'. The bull part of the Minotaur, of course, is the preferred totem thereabouts.

So will this new breed issuing from collectivist mamas and straight-up capitalist papas be long lived and prosperous or is some flawed gene lurking about ready to cripple the lusty bairn?