#obviously that’s besides ethical concerns for still living authors

[womenaremypriority]

I really want to save money + paper + time by reading books for free online but I just. I can’t get into actually reading on screen my brain just can’t handle it.

[southern-continent-skies]

Mirror Barrayar

I’m not writing this fic, but I wrote out a bunch of world-building/bios for a Barryar Mirror Universe while I was trying to write something else that ended up being too dubcon to fit into canon, and instead went sideways into this.

The concept of Mirror Barrayar is basically like the Star Trek version. The main difference is that the Terran Empire in Star Trek is inherently atomized and selfish; everyone is murdering/sleeping their way to the top on their own, with no personal or community ties except to The State. Mirror Barrayar still has the feudal aspect to it, so it’s different, in that you do have some residual notions of Family, Honor, and Loyalty (especially loyalty), but there’s a great deal of F You I Got Mine, as well. 

Generally, the Vor see an obligation to their proles and liegemen, but its the same way you might see an obligation to a pet. It’s reprehensible to, say, chain them outside with no food, or beat them for personal entertainment, or abandon them. But it’s also reprehensible to just let them do what they want, because they’re animals; if they snap, it’s because they’re poorly trained, and if they’re obese, it’s because you overfed them. You have absolute authority over their lives, so you need to step up and exercise that authority responsibly. But you don’t go through the motions of making sure your terrier wants you to pet it, that’s ridiculous. If it doesn’t growl, it’s fine - and if it does growl, obviously it needs more training. Keep them well-fed and happy, but never make the mistake of offering them respect.

Bios behind the cut because Long.

Emperor Gregor is recognizable, but much more Ezar-like; sharper, less concerned with ethics and more concerned with keeping power. Vordrozda was a much more conscious ploy to smoke out any actual disloyalty of Aral’s; he knew what Vordrozda was doing, and he played both sides against the middle. He didn’t want to execute Miles, but he would have done it without an existential crisis; he’d rather keep the campstool than his cousin. Not only is the position of Emperor intrinsically valuable, but it’s the only way he stays alive. Ride the tiger, however many of your friends it eats. 

He’s still depressed (neurotransmitters are a bitch), but his saving grace is duty, which he knows he can do better than anyone else - he took a swan dive on Komarr primarily because he was temporarily convinced otherwise. He wants to avoid civil war, because that needlessly endangers proles and civilians, but he’s not remotely above strategic assassination. He found Cavilo entirely attractive, and very Vor, but he didn’t really want to sign up for a marriage where he’d always have to watch his back. He doesn’t really want a partner, either; feudalism doesn’t understand the concept. Sorry, Laisa; you (and his conception of Kareen) are more like chivalrously-accommodated pets. It’s less male/female than political combatant/civilian, but the distinction is definitely there. He respects and relies on Alys, but he watches her like a hawk because he knows she has ambition. He almost wishes Ivan were a woman, because he’d hate to have to execute his favorite social General for treasonously plotting his replacement. Maybe they can come to some arrangement anyway...

Aral Vorkosigan really is loyal, because he recognizes Vorbarra authority as legitimate and therefore voluntarily submits to it. However, he’s more apt to seize power himself as a “last” resort if he feels Gregor couldn’t keep it in his own right; better, in his version of honor and duty to Ezar, to have Gregor as a puppet than a corpse. He’ll be glad to step down as Main Power Broker in Gregor’s favor, but mostly because that shit is exhausting and he’d rather retire than die. The post to Sergyar is less a compassionate sinecure and more a board-clearing move on Gregor’s part, that happily also allows him to avoid killing them (he really does like Aral and Cordelia, but you can’t make compromises on power). On a personal level, Aral is the “switch” he sort of is in canon, except he’s not remotely that self-aware, and just chalks it up to Authority Moving As It Should, i.e. Sempai Is Always On Top - which is also why he and Ges were so explosive. Technically Aral, as a Count’s heir, outranked Ges, but they weren’t in each other’s chain of command, feudally or militarily, so they had to continually fight about it. That’s what made their affair so transgressive, not the m/m aspect.

Ges Vorrutyer needs no alterations. 

Neither, for that matter, do Ezar and Serg. Really, this is just a universe where Barrayar never socially progressed beyond Dorca’s Game of Thrones bullshit, except that now they have spaceships and fast penta.

Cordelia Naismith ran ALL the way out of fucks to give after Mehta, and is much more convinced that nice gets you killed. She still wants to be nice, if it’s possible, but she’ll shank you pdq if you might be a threat. Her advice that Aral execute Carl Vorhalas was on purpose, here: show them you’re ruthless enough to kill their sons, and they’ll fall in line. And if they fall in line, they won’t threaten our own children, so win-win (except for Carl; sorry Carl. But not too sorry). Aral’s “fountain of honor” is, uh, a very relative term. (And then, of course, her Carl Vorhalas ploy backfired horribly, because that sort of relentless back-stabbing is what the Mirror Universe attitude generally gets you in the end.)

Piotr Vorkosigan died much earlier on; Cordelia isn’t taking those chances with her son, and Bothari knows which way his bread is buttered, too.

Miles Vorkosigan is much more like the caricature of himself that he and Gregor feed Cavilo, except not nuts; that same scene happens here, but it’s full of a lot more barbed back-and-forth between them, with Elena watching not in incredulous giggles but in the kind of silence that means you’re storing up actionable intelligence for later use. He loves Admiral Naismith because it gives him a stage for the plots he’d be executed for in Vorbarr Sultana, and Gregor likes it because, again, he can make use of his family members without having to execute them for being themselves. Miles nearly gets executed for his Memory falsified report business, because if Gregor can’t trust him absolutely then he just has to die. He definitely sleeps with Bel; if he can’t swear it into his service personally, establishing a sexual pair-bond is the next best thing - and besides, it’s a willing subordinate and it’s hot. Likewise, the Elli/Miles relationship is much more fraught, and Miles’s involvement with other people is much more pointed in her general direction. Elli has too much non-Barrayaran self-respect to take the hint and *submit* to Miles, but she likes him enough to put up with way too much of his power-dynamic shenanigans anyway.

Elena Bothari is much more ruthless. She leaves Barrayar because she’s tired of the barriers put in place on her gender AND her class. She wants to play the game, to be a combatant and not a civilian, but on Barrayar she was born unarmed and would be trampled sharp-ish. And that’s why she wouldn’t ever marry Miles; she wants to be an officer, not a pet. And even though she has to leave the Imperium to do it, she’s still very much operating in the Barrayaran style. Baz, the poor puppy, still doesn’t quite know what hit him; but for a pardon, a Vorkosigan connection, and a kickass, gorgeous wife, he’ll do whatever she wants.

Lady Alys is the reigning domme of Vorbarr Sultana. She rules the entire social scene, and social ladder, with an iron fist, tastefully draped in very plush velvet. Marriage contracts for the High Vor go through her first, or good luck getting an invitation to any of the Residence events this year - and she absolutely insists on her version of droit de seigneur. Unlike in canon, she is very much not in a hurry to get Gregor married off, because then she’d have to step back, and fuck that noise. She may have sabotaged a few potential matches by fucking with their gene scans. If Ivan were a woman, that dynastic loop would have been closed yesterday. As it is, she’s been hinting since forever that it might be a good idea for him to cultivate a, ah, “closer” relationship with his cousin, ifyouknowwhatimean. And her relationship with Simon Illyan is equally pragmatic, though no less enjoyable for it. After all, if Gregor dies without heirs, who would be better placed to pull her son’s strings right into the campstool? “Dowager Empress” has a ring to it, don’t you think?

Simon Illyan, Negri’s student in every way, has internalized enough Barrayaran class sensibilities to accept, and even enjoy, reflexively submitting to the Vor - as long as they’re at least as competent as he is. He’s loyal to Aral, and to Gregor, as he was to Ezar before them - but in a much more “I have weighed the pros and cons and come out on your side” sort of way. Aral and Gregor both take proper care of their vassals, after all, and better to be 2IC in heaven than to scrabble for a fighting chance in hell. If Gregor died without heirs, he would have some serious problems trying to decide between Aral and Alys (i.e. Ivan), but until that happens, he is more than happy to let them both think him Their Man. If they require assurances of such in bed, he’s more than happy with that as well. 

Ivan Vorpatril still has the whole “no ambition I prefer my head thanks” vibe, but it’s more pointed this time, because this Gregor would actually execute him if he put a toe out of line. He doesn’t want to get married, not only because then he’d have to deal with a wife, but also because it would put him in the middle of his mother’s schemes and potentially at odds with Gregor, and no thank you. The Arquas’ “analysis” in CVA that he’s been kept in the capital on purpose is actually accurate here; Gregor won’t risk such a photogenic descendant of Xav anywhere he can’t see him, and/or shoot him if necessary. Definitely potential Gregor/Ivan sequel here, in case this one doesn’t have dub enough con for you. Ivan generally tries to make himself as small a target as possible on that end of things - but he also does a great deal of “swiving” of his social inferiors, because he’s the Emperor’s cousin and he can. The Vor/“high prole” young women don’t like him very much, primarily because he expects something for nothing, but it’s easier to go on a few dates than to try to refuse. The “low prole” women who end up in bed with him… don’t bother to complain.

Laisa Toscane is as ruthless as the Barrayarans - all the Komarrans are. They cut their teeth on cutthroat capitalism, after all. Adapting to the feudal structure of the Imperium has meant some sacrifices, mostly of their pride - but pride doesn’t earn shares. She’ll bend both her knees if she can win her children, and her conglomerate, advantage in the process. Gregor’s not a bad husband - and the more he underestimates her, the more she can slip by him. Her gene scan came certified from a Komarran doctor straight to the Emperor’s personal physician - no Vorpatril fuckery possible. She hasn’t yet acquired the social capital to tell Alys to fuck off, but she’ll get there; she’s one of those Toscanes.

Duv Galeni is at least as ruthless as Laisa. He left his academic post for the Imperial Service Academy, because of course he did; he knows which way the bread is buttered, and he wants as much butter as possible for himself. His father was a naive idiot; fighting an overwhelming force for “principles” gets you nothing but pain. Duv, having learned from that experience, will do what it takes, whatever it takes, to get his. Bend over for the Butcher? Why not? It works for the Vor.

Byerly Vorrutyer only has one hand of cards, for the moment, but he plays it really, really well. He’ll suck anyone off for the social capital - and then promptly sell their pillow talk to ImpSec for extra points. Fuck you, pay me - twice, if possible. He may not be a high-level player yet, but give him a decade and a metric ton of blackmail material acquired along the way, and then we’ll see. Loyal to Dono, and to Gregor, to the extent Gregor can spare the attention; he’d gladly serve his Emperor in any sense of the word his Emperor wanted. Byerly’s attracted to power - in other people. What he wants for himself is security. His ideal endgame is to level up out of the game entirely, and just be someone’s pet - but he’s having difficulty finding anyone who would keep him in the style to which he would like to become accustomed. Dono doesn’t count - they both have had it up to here with the Vorrutyer penchant for incest, thanks. His second choice is to acquire enough cards to be untouchable in Vorbarr Sultana. Failing those, his contingency plan is to retire to the District on Dono’s pension and play court jester, but they both hope it doesn’t come to that.

Oliver Jole, bless his heart, is a junior prole officer whose competence is more military than social. He still has enough stars in his eyes to be dazzled by Vor authority, and he hasn’t been spoiled by having to serve a bad boss. On both a personal and a professional level, he’s completely in love with the idea of submission to the Vor - but whereas Simon is doing the same thing in self-awareness and as Part Of This Complete Strategy, young Oliver actually considers it some combination of personal choice and cultural obligation. It’s a good thing he’s pretty, and that Cordelia takes him in later, because the ingenue never quite grows up in that regard.

Admiral Kanzian, as a likely irrelevant-to-the-hypothetical-fic side note, is an absolute dragon of a superior officer. He got his position on the General Staff through both merit and social savvy (and, in his younger years, a bit of, uh, “personal competence”), and he’s not giving it up this side of the apocalypse. Junior Vor members of his office staff reportedly have to suck his dick before they start work, just to get them in the properly subservient frame of mind, for once. Rank hath its privileges - especially on Mirror!Barrayar.

[derangedhyena-delphinidae]

Hey! I think this is a prime opportunity to grab some knowledge off you as someone who wants to learn more about the anti-captivity argument and why killer whales are unsuitable for captivity. Everything you know would be ideal with studies and links and stuff (you’re super smart. I can only hope to know as much as you one day). I understand that’s kind of impossible though!

Sure thing. Must preface with - I’m not really that smart, nor do I specifically have defined expertise at this or anything, I just really like to read. I also enjoy learning from the experts, which I’ve taken to doing around here via attending/filming many of the available talks. So that’s what I’d recommend to anyone, really. Firstoff as a resource, I would like to offer my Youtube channel, which features a variety of speakers covering many topics. Only a few are captivity-issue centric; available are not just videos I’ve recorded, but a handful of other videos I’ve found informative in playlists. Of those I’d recommend these two:

https://youtu.be/L00CfGpVnUAhttps://youtu.be/OmMv9t_hW8k

Here are a few links/documents/books I’d recommend as overviews as well.

https://awionline.org/content/confinement-marine-life AWI has an entire section of its website that explores various facets of these issues.

https://www.scribd.com/document/265647897/Killer-Whales-Theme-Parks-Controversy-An-Exploration-of-the-Evidence This is a chapter in the book Animals in Tourism: Understanding Diverse Relationships

https://www.scribd.com/document/312800031/Orca-White-Paper This is a paper authored by Dr. Rose while she was working at HSUS. She no longer works there, she works at AWI.

https://www.scribd.com/document/118447693/Captive-Orcas-Dying-to-Entertain-You-by-Vanessa-Williams An older WDC document, but still a decent (when not outdated) overview.

I know some folks may contend that this material majority-features a handful of folks (like Dr. Rose), but it is what it is - because there’s only a handful of folks writing about these things in general (positive or negative). References are available and presented in their documentation: I will always encourage people to look, really look, into those as well, so it becomes very clear that information is simply being gathered and presented as a unit. Not misrepresented in some fashion just because xyz person pulled it together.The other big “sections” of this for me personally are neurobiology, ethics, and ‘the industry’/Seaworld.The neurobiology section of this is a bit more vast than I’m prepared to cover in one sitting, but the tl;dr is delphinid brains exhibit incredible complexity and have a number of unique properties that very likely indicate a lot of intelligence/perceptual/emotional abilities. Here is a 2009 overview by Dr. Marino. There is substantial disagreement about the function/structure of delphinid brains (particularly lodged by one scientist’s “dumb dolphin” theory), as detailed here. A transcript making this somewhat easier to approach can be found here. The information is all worth considering. I personally find myself deferring to my own reading into affective neuroscience/related research (wiki link, overview), as well as general observations/research on cetacean behavior - which prompts me to find Dr. Marino’s assertions more compelling. I’ve noticed that captivity proponents tend to stick to the ‘dumb dolphin’ bit and ignore the other side of the discussion.Ethics! This is discussed in bits in most of the above, but there’s certainly an ethical side to all this that often goes ignored. I’m personally not in the boat that it’s unethical/wrong/improper to keep any/all animals captive. Just the ones that show evidence of having their lives highly negatively impacted as a result. There’s a world of difference between a cetacean and a fish. This isn’t saying fish aren’t smart - most animals have to be pretty smart in their own way or they wouldn’t have done well as a species! But I do doubt fish have the complex cognition necessary to understand confinement as a negative, and be insulted (physically) by it. (Unless the conditions are completely inadequate (temperate, size, surroundings, companions) and the fish can’t express its usual behavior, in which case it still likely can’t understand ‘confinement’ but it does understand it can’t function or behave normally and may be distressed as a result.)

Large predatory animals in particular tend to exhibit higher intelligence (more problem-solving typically needed to hunt) and have larger ranges - removing their ability to hunt, traverse area and meaningfully engage their environment as the species evolved to can cause problems (eg the incessant pacing seen in captive big cats, bears, etc.)  They’re also more or less stuck in captivity once there - captive-raised predators do poorly in the wild. This significantly undermines the claim that captive animals of that stripe have a lot of conservation value. Directly? They really don’t.

(Captive-raised cetaceans haven’t really ever been considered for wild release/conservation initiatives of that type, so the direct conservation value argument, while still made, has no basis. The link above discusses needed improvements and design for terrestrial predator programs. I’m all for it if they can figure it out, but as noted in the link, animals constantly subjected to people obviously won’t fare well when released - any eligible animal would need to be raised in relative human-seclusion in something more closely resembling its natural habitat. The same argument could easily be made for anything like this re: cetaceans - with the additional difficulty level that much of their learning seems to be culturally transmitted and rely on social structure heavily. How do you teach what you don’t know, in a framework you don’t have?)

One of the biggest problems this is the overall lack of research done on captive cetacean issues. Much critical material is forced to fill in blanks and operate from a basis of comparison, ex-trainer materials, and observation/documentation. Because direct information is largely unavailable, thanks to things like what’s noted here. And only very recently have cetacean-holding facilities even begun research on the topic of welfare in earnest, which is confusing and a little disturbing considering how long the practice has been going on and how vehemently it’s claimed that all is well and that captives contribute to research.Which, for research in general, they do. I have no doubts that they do. The concerns come in regarding how useful that research is for much besides perpetuating captives’ situations (breeding/husbandry materials) and very basic physiological stuff. There has been a lot learned about cetacean physiology in captivity, certainly. And I’m sure there’s more to be learned. But when one starts to bring in the ethics side of things, and what is being gained vs. what is being impacted (and for what - animals at a dedicated research facility and animals being used every day to mindlessly entertain audiences are different discussions, especially with all collateral considerations)...

A NOAA scientist called captive orca “sacrificial animals”. Even broader acknowledgment to the public by these facilities, that there are downsides, would be a great start, so people could be making better-informed decisions about whether or not they wanted to participate. Disguising the problems, dismissing criticisms and forcing a pleasant facade when big issues exist (and have, for a long time) does not point to wholesome ethics.Which leads me to Seaworld/industry representation. Why haven’t they done much/any research on the problems their animals have faced for years? Why are they constantly working to misinform the public and near-comically villainizing even reasonable criticisms? I can go into this further, separately, if desired, but there’s just a distressing amount of material supporting how “fake” and disingenuous they are. If they had these animals’ best interests in mind, instead of their company’s, this kind of behavior… really shouldn’t exist? Problems like this exist to a lesser degree in other facilities, depending on the facility. Unless it’s MSQ, which has problems connecting with reality at all.I do apologise if this doesn’t seem like “a lot”; reading, observing, talking to folks, listening to folks over several years (6+ now?) isn’t simple to condense. It is easier to address individual points/questions obviously, but I get that it’s useful to have an overview. Hopefully this is of use to that end.

[contextualstudieslorena]

Group presentation on the film Welfare by Frederick Wiseman

Info about the film: Welfare (1975)

by Frederick Wiseman

In his documentary “Welfare”(1975) Frederick Wiseman captures the activity and atmosphere in a Welfare center in 1970’s New york. His point of view is as unbiased as possible, showing on one side the claimers and on the other the social workers and welfare employees. In his own words, “All aspects of documentary filmmaking involve choice and are therefore manipulative. But the ethical ... aspect of it is that you have to ... try to make [a film that] is true to the spirit of your sense of what was going on. ... My view is that these films are biased, prejudiced, condensed, compressed but fair. I think what I do is make movies that are not accurate in any objective sense, but accurate in the sense that I think they're a fair account of the experience I've had in making the movie.” (potnitz, Frank (May 1991). "Dialogue on film". American Film. 16 (5): 16–21.)

Wiseman’s documentary is structured very loosely, he simply set up his camera and films for days on end, focusing on scenes like the plaidants in interviews with the social workers, or the workers discussing amongst themselves, and occasionally shows clips of the people in the waiting room, the janitor. Whether he had done previous research before is unknown, but one of his goals across his different documentaries is documenting the workings of American institutions and the people who are involved in them.

The documentary shows clearly how varied the cases that are brought up to welfare can be, and the different people who enter the center desperately seeking help. Many of the benefit seekers are european immigrants, young single mothers, men and women of colour and marginalised communities.

The documentary also shows the conflict between the simple act of charity, providing a person money for shelter, food and the convoluted bureaucracy they have to navigate, where even the social workers are confused and have to constantly ask each other for advice. The lack of communication between the different departments is also made apparent, several plaidant explain they have been referred back and forth between departments, in a never ending cycle, and that even when they are able to provide the paperwork they are still not guaranteed any help. Even the language barrier can be a big problem sometimes, when immigrants who speak little to no english have to plead their case and deal with the different papers and statements they are asked to bring.

This shows the stark contrast between the human tragedies and the mechanical, unyielding system, the conversations are repetitive and the claimants and workers go over the same points over and over. The whole exchanges are painful to watch, especially when we learn about the dire situation the people find themselves, their pain and frustration at the system failing them (cheques that are never received by the recipient, fair court hearings taking up time that they do not have, the imminent threat of being evicted and the basics of human rights not being met).

But Wiseman, does not only focus on the claimants but also the workers, and shows that they are just as human as the people on the other side of the desk.

He shows that many workers try their best to help but are tied by the system, or the tense exchanges between desperate, angry plaidants and the overworked social workers.

The documentary also shows the blatant racism people of colour face in 1970’s, through a scene in the wellfare where an elderly white man start insulting a black man sitting beside him, and the situation escalates until police officers have to remove him from the building.

Different important scenes:

A native american man talks about rejected by every organization he has gone too, he talk about the concentration camps his people have been put into and

the fact he has escaped.

“Everywhere i go they say “you’re Indian? Get out of here!’.”

A young man and woman, both married but separated from their spouses. The woman is epileptic and can’t work.

Their smile of relief when they are offered a room is one of the rare moments of happiness in this documentary. (it would have been interesting to see the accommodation the people are given)

A recovered drug addict who got himself work, an apartment and a dog, then lost everything but the dog, is told he can have a room in a hostel. He objects that he can't take his dog there. But the official says: "We're giving assistance to you, not your dog."

German immigrant who says he still believes that America is “a good country” , that wants to help people, but under under the circumstances he is considering suicide."I'd better look for a nice place to hang myself."

A young black woman is driven to tears, her interview lasts for hours with the conversation going back and forth about papers, authorizations and contradicting bureaucracy and rules.

Welfare social workers discussing how they can help the plaidants, and how to sort out the paperwork. It becomes clear that even the workers are confused by the numerous convoluted legislations, and the paperwork the plaidants are supposed to bring.

In the video, it can be seen that the artist wanted to focus on what the minority in the USA goes through every day, the problems that they have to face because of the environment they were raised in or brought to throughout their lives. The film is made in the 70s in New York, a city that is known for being a gigantic melting pot filled with people from different backgrounds.

The United States is a country that revolves around making money off of people instead of actually caring about them and their health and condition. That can obviously be seen in that film, when for example one of the people in it mentions that he hasn't eaten in 3 days because of the small amount of money that he has been given. He also mentions that he obviously can’t go around stealing food because that will lead him to get arrested, which just shows that those people are such in bad situations that they even consider stealing food to feed themselves and their families as they dont have another option, the government isn't providing them what they need and that is a very serious issue.

A problem that a lot of Europeans complain about in America when mentioning it is the lack of health insurance. There are many people who don't get any of their basic health needs because they just can't afford it. It gets to the point where people just deal with broken arms, legs, etc by themselves because paying for a simple appointment would be too expensive. The country has many problems when dealing with minorities and this film shows what those people go through by using a technique of recording them in a position where it seems as if they are trapped/with no way out. This also affects the person who is watching the documentary as it gives them a sensation of anxiety but also bringing a sense of naturality to it, as if the one who watches it is in their position dealing with the problems with them.

Throughout the documentary there appears to be an endless cycle of clients (from all walks of life) seeking financial help, but getting no quick resolve as they are having to explain and give proof on their situations over and over again; and to different departments. This suggests there is a lack of communication and/or understanding of the states rules and laws within the worker’s company. Evidently I am led to believe the blame for this confusion and lack of help for those financially struggling is on the USA government rather than both the parties shown in the documentary because the system is more concerned with making money FROM the people rather than making money FOR the people. Another reason I believe the workers aren’t to blame is because despite the chaos and some prejudice, they do all listen and attempt to help the clients that come to them, even if it was poorly. With more education and organisation within the company I do think many of the issues would have been resolved.

Welfare is a 3 hour long in depth look at the American welfare system. The film was shot in the Waverly Welfare Center in lower Manhattan where Wiseman documented the conversations and interactions that took place between citizens of New York and social workers (supposedly) helping them.

Wiseman’s method of filming in the majority of his films is to simply set up a camera for days on end and try to capture as much information as possible, this helped him somewhat in keeping his films unbiased but in his own words; film making involves choice and is therefore manipulative. As such films cannot be unbiased.

Wiseman’s ability is evident when we consider how he had to slough through days of film in order to make a film about bureaucracy entertaining at all times. Some conversations in this film feel so exaggerated or surreal that you can’t help but wonder if the individuals being filmed even knew there was a camera on them, but it being 1970 there is no way they couldn’t have noticed so they knew they were being filmed but either just did not care or thought they were totally justified.

At many times the social workers were portrayed as patient and helpful though we find ourselves sometimes rooting for the client even at times where they aren’t necessarily in the right out if sheer empathy for their situation in being bounced back and forth places and told different things, getting nowhere in the process.

An example of both a surreal and empathetic situation occurs around 2 hours and 40 minutes in where a man is trying desperately to get his social security check having being led to the welfare department from the social security department and is subsequently told to go back to the social security department.

He goes into explaining how he “rips off” different retailers and individuals to get by currently such as stealing chocolate bars from woolworths so he can eat or through ripping off people with car scams. Despite his questionable morality I cannot help but feel empathetic for him even through his ranting, nonsensical stories about mind control, psychic research and coincidental references to Godot.

I find it funny how a film shot in black and white portrays it’s subject matter in such a grey manner. Whilst the welfare system in America is portrayed as flawed and needing reform, wiseman shows neither the staff nor the clients as totally in the right or the wrong. There are situations where both sides are in the wrong and he seems to have balanced it out between the two.

[doliire]

Chapter 1: The Big Picture in a Tiny Nutshell

This chapter gives my description of the cause-effect relationships behind the archetypical rise and decline of the most powerful empires.  It is my distillation of the dynamics I saw in studying the three reserve currency empires (the Dutch, the British, and the American) and the six other significant empires (Germany, France, Russia, India, Japan, and China) over the last 500 years, as well as all of the major Chinese dynasties back to the Tang Dynasty around the year 600.  Besides seeing wealth and power shifts we see notable shifts in all dimensions of life, including technology, culture, and the arts.  These individual case studies will be provided in Part 2.  By going back and forth between this archetype and those cases, you will be able to see how the individual cases fit the archetype (which is essentially just the average of those cases) and how well the archetype describes the individual cases.

As I explained in the introduction, I’m on a mission to figure out how the world works and to gaintimeless and universalprinciples for dealing with it well.  It’s both a necessity and a passion for me.  While the curiosities and concerns that I described earlier pulled me into doing this study, the process of conducting it gave me a much greater understanding of the really big picture on how the world works than I expected to get.  It made much clearer to me how peoples and countries succeed and fail over much bigger swaths of time, and it revealed giant cycles behind these ups and downs that I never knew existed.

Though the big picture synthesis that I’m sharing in the tiny nutshell that is this chapter is my own, you should know that I didn’t come up with it without a lot of help.  It came from my last 18 months of learning, which was the result of triangulating with remarkably informed scholars and practitioners, reading great history books by insightful authors, doing a lot of original source research with the help of my remarkable research team, and reflecting on the prior research I’ve done and the experiences that I have from investing globally over nearly 50 years. Still, even with all that help, drawing conclusions about the timeless and universal forces that have driven the successes and failures of countries through time is an audacious, humbling, and necessary endeavor that I can’t be sure that I got exactly right.  Still, I’m pretty sure that it’s by and large right, and I know that what I learned is essential for me to anticipate rather than be surprised by critically important events that have never happened in my lifetime but have happened repeatedly throughout history.  My goal in presenting this to you is simply to pass along what I learned for you to assess for yourself.

The Countries Shown in This Study

To be clear, the leading powers covered in this study aren’t necessarily the best-off countries for two reasons.  First, while wealth and power are what most people want and will fight over most, some people and their countries don’t think that these things are most important and wouldn’t think of fighting over them.  For example, those who believe that having peace and savoring life are more important than having a lot of wealth and power wouldn’t think of fighting hard enough to gain enough of the wealth and power to make it into the group included in this study.  Second, this group of countries excludes what I will call the “boutique countries” (like Switzerland and Singapore), which score very high in wealth and living standards but aren’t large enough to become one of the biggest empires.

How Their Wealth and Power Was Obtained

Let’s start with the big picture basics.  Throughout recorded history various forms of groups of people (e.g., tribes, kingdoms, countries) have gained wealth and power by building it themselves and/or taking it from others.  When they gathered more of it than any other group, they became the leading world power and then determined the world order.  When they lost that power—which has been true of every past empire—the wealth, power, and world order changed in very big ways that had big effects on economies, markets, and all aspects of life.  In this chapter we will examine how a number of forces come together to determine the ebbs and flows of this cycle, causing the archetypical empire’s wealth and power to rise, be sustained, and then decline.  

Productivity is the force that causes the world’s total wealth, power, and living standards to rise over time as people learn how to do things better.  As we will see, productivity is upward trending because over time learning is gained more than lost, though it rises at different rates for different people for understandable reasons such as education, work ethic, the rate of development of new techniques and technologies, etc. These reasons are important for policy makers to understand in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for their countries and for investors and companies to understand in order to determine where the best long-term investments are.  While significant, these learnings and productivity improvements are evolutionary so that they are not what cause big shifts in who has what wealth and power.

The big swings in wealth and power are caused by a number of things, most importantly money and credit cycles, though I have identified 17 in total.  These big forces generally transpire in classic cycles that are mutually reinforcing in ways that tend to create a single very big cycle of ups and downs that has played out repeatedly throughout history.  This big archetypical cycle governs the rising and declining of empires, which influences everything about them including their currencies and markets (which I’m especially interested in).  As with the archetypical debt cycle I outlined in Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises, this archetypical cycle represents the typical one that we can compare others to, including the one that we are now in.  With that perspective in mind, we can attempt to squint into the future.  

As of this writing, we are seeing all of these 17 forces in play, most importantly the debt cycle, the wealth gap cycle, and the global geopolitical cycle.  As mentioned in the introduction, we recently hit 0% interest rates while having large amounts of debt in an economic downturn.  This is leading to the creation of massive amounts of more government debt that central banks are printing money to monetize at the same time as there are big political and values gaps within countries, and there is an emerging world power (China) challenging the leading world power (the United States).  While this sort of configuration of events has not happened in our lifetime, it has happened many times in history (most recently in the 1930-45 period).  For reasons I will explain in this study, I believe that we are now seeing the archetypical big shift in relative wealth and power and, with this shift, we are seeing a profound shift in the world order that will affect all countries.

This big shift is not obvious because, while it is evolving at a fast pace, it is not happening in an abrupt way that bangs us over the head with its obviousness and because most people haven’t paid attention to the patterns in history so that they can put where we are in perspective.  So in this first chapter, I will describe in a very brief way how I see the archetypical mechanics behind rises and declines of empires and their markets working.  

To See the Big Picture, You Can’t Focus on the Details

While I will attempt to paint this big sweeping picture accurately, I can’t paint it in a precise way, and, in order for you to see it and understand it, you can’t try to do so in a precise way.  That is because we are looking at evolution over long time frames.  To see it, you will have to let go of the details.  Of course, when the details are important, which they often have been, I will go from the very big, imprecise picture to a detailed one.

Looking at what happened in the past from this very big picture perspective will radically alter how you see things.  For example, because the span of time covered is so large, many of the most fundamental things that we take for granted and many of the terms we use to describe them did not exist over the full period of time.  As a result, I will be imprecise in my wording so that I can convey the big picture without getting tripped up on what might seem to be big things but in the scope of what we are looking at are relative details.  

For example, I wrestled with how much I should worry about the differences between countries, kingdoms, nations, states, tribes, empires, and dynasties.  Nowadays we think mostly in terms of countries.  However, countries as we know them didn’t come into existence until the 17th century after Europe’s Thirty Years’ War.  In other words, before then there were no countries—generally speaking, though not always, there were kingdoms instead.  In some places, kingdoms still exist and can be confused with being countries, and some places are both.  Generally speaking, but not always, kingdoms are small, countries are bigger, and empires are biggest (spreading beyond the kingdom or the country).  The relationships between them are often not all that clear.  The British Empire was mostly a kingdom that gradually evolved into a country and then an empire that extended way beyond England’s borders so that its leaders controlled broad areas and many non-English peoples.  It’s also the case that each of these types of singularly controlled entities—e.g., countries, kingdoms, tribes, empires—controls its population in different ways, which further confuses things for those who seek precision.  For example, in some cases empires are areas that are occupied by a dominant power while in other cases empires are areas influenced by a dominant power that controls other areas through threats and rewards.  The British Empire generally occupied the countries in its empire while the American Empire has controlled more via rewards and threats—though that is not entirely true, as at the time of this writing the US has military bases in 70 countries.  So, though it is clear that there is an American Empire, it is less clear exactly what is in it.  Anyway, you get my point—that trying to be precise can stand in the way of conveying the biggest, most important things.  So in this chapter you are going to have to bear with my sweeping imprecisions.  You will also understand why I will henceforth imprecisely call these entities countries, even though not all of them were countries technically speaking.  

Along these lines, some will argue that my comparing different countries with different systems in different times is impossible.  While I can understand that perspective, I want to assure you that I will seek to explain whatever major differences exist, that the timeless and universal similarities are much greater than the differences, and that to let the differences stand in the way of seeing those similarities that provide us with the lessons of history we need would be tragic.  

The Evolution and the Cycles Around It

As mentioned earlier, over long periods of time we evolve because we learn to do things better, which raises our productivity.  Over the long run, learning produces productivity gains and that is the most important force, though over the short run the swings around this uptrend are most important.  This is conveyed in the below chart, which shows estimated output (i.e., estimated real GDP) per person over the last 500 years.  As shown from this

top-down, big picture perspective, output per person appears to be steadily improving though very slowly in the early years and faster after around 1800 when the slope up becomes much steeper, reflecting the faster productivity gains.  This shift from the slower productivity gains to faster productivity gains was primarily due to the improvements in broad learning and converting that faster learning into faster increases in productivity.  That was brought about by a number of factors going as far back as the invention of the printing press in Europe in the mid-15th century (it had been used in China substantially earlier), which increased the knowledge and education available to many more people and contributed to the European Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the First Industrial Revolution in Britain.  That broader-based learning also shifted wealth and power away from 1) anagriculture-based economyin which agricultural land was the primary source of wealth and power that supported the monarchies, nobles, and the church, who owned the land and worked together to maintain the power system that allowed them to have the wealth and power to 2) an industrial-based economyin which inventive capitalists created and owned the means of production of industrial goods and worked together with those in government to maintain the power system that allowed them to have the wealth and power.  In other words, since the Industrial Revolution, which brought about that change, we have been operating in a system in which wealth and power have primarily come more from the combination of education, inventiveness, and capitalism, with those who run governments working with those who control most of the wealth and education.  While there have been deviations away from capitalism to communism (which didn’t work in the forms that have been tried) and socialism (which is essentially a hybrid wealth and opportunity distribution system that people can debate the merit of), the process of having educated people come up with innovations and own the means by which they are turned into production and of allocating resources and rewarding people by profit making (i.e., capitalism and government systems that work symbiotically with it) has been the formula for success.

Underneath this relatively smooth upward trajectory of productivity are the turbulent times that include booms, busts, revolutions, and wars.  Because these turbulent times are small in relation to the evolutionary uptrend, they show up in the chart as relatively minor wiggles.  Yet these wiggles seem very big to us because we are so small and short-lived.  Take the 1929-45 depression and war period, for example.  To us around 15 years seems like a long time and the swings within it seem enormous.  The chart below shows the part of the prior chart that represents that 17-year period. As you can see, during the Great Depression period real output per person declined first by about 10%, which was followed by a recovery.  The US stock market fell by 85%.  Then the depression period was followed by a war that raised output of things that were used in the war.  Much of this equipment was blown up, so it would be a misnomer to call the war years a “productive period” even though when measured in output per person, it was.  And at the end of the war, global GDP per capita fell by about 12%, much of which was driven by declines in the economies of countries that lost the war.

While the first charts I just showed you are for the whole world (to the best of our ability to measure it), they don’t show the shifts in wealth and power that occurred between countries.  The chart below shows you the relative wealth and power of the 11 leading empires over the last 500 years.[1]  Each one of these indices of wealth and power is a composite of eight different measures that I will explain shortly.  Though these indices aren’t perfect because all data through time isn’t perfect, they are excellent in painting the big picture.  As you can see, nearly all of these empires saw periods of ascendancy followed by periods of decline.  The thicker lines are the four most important empires: the Dutch, British, American, and Chinese.  These empires held the last three reserve currencies—the US now, the British before it, and the Dutch before that.  China is included because it has risen to be the second-most powerful empire/country and because it was so consistently powerful in most years prior to around 1850.  To very briefly summarize what the chart shows:

China was dominant for centuries (consistently outcompeting Europe in goods trade), though it entered a steep decline starting in the 1800s.

The Netherlands, a relatively small country, became one of the world’s great empires in the 1600s.

The UK followed a very similar path, peaking in the 1800s.

Finally, the US rose to become the world’s superpower over the last 150 years, though particularly during and after WWII, and is now in relative decline while China is catching up once again.

The next chart is the same chart going back to the year 600.  I included the one above because it is simpler, though with 11 countries, 12 major wars, and over 500 years, it can hardly be called simple.  The one below is more extensive.  I left out the shading of the war periods to lessen the confusion.  As shown, in the pre-1500 period, China was almost always most powerful, though the Middle Eastern caliphates, the French, the Mongols, the Spanish, and the Ottomans are also in the picture.

Our Measures of Wealth and Power

The single measure of wealth and power that I showed you for each country in the prior charts is made up as a roughly equal average of eight measures of strength.  They are: 1) education, 2) competitiveness, 3) technology, 4) economic output, 5) share of world trade, 6) military strength, 7) financial center strength, and 8) reserve currency.  While there are more measures of and influences on power that we will explore later, let’s begin by focusing on these key eight.

The chart below shows the average of each of these measures of strength, with most of the weight on the most recent three reserve countries(i.e., the US, the UK, and the Dutch).[2]  

The lines on the chart do a pretty good job of telling the story of why and how the rises and declines took place.  Using these and referring to some additional factors that we will delve deeper into later, I will describe that cycle in a nutshell.  But before beginning it’s worth noting that all of these measures of strength rose and declined over the arc of the empire. That’s because these strengths and weaknesses are mutually reinforcing—i.e., strengths and weaknesses in education, competitiveness, economic output, share of world trade, etc., contribute to the others being strong or weak, for logical reasons.  For example, it makes sense that better educated people would produce societies that are more innovative, competitive, and productive.  I call this cyclical interrelated move up and down the Big Cycle.  Take note of the order of these items moving up and down in the chart because it is broadly indicative of the processes that lead to the rising and declining of empires.  For example, quality of education has been the long-leading strength of rises and declines in these measures of power and the long-lagging strength has been the reserve currency.  That is because strong education leads to strengths in most areas, including the creation of the world’s most common currency.  That common currency, just like the world’s common language, tends to stay around because the habit of usage lasts longer than the strengths that made it so commonly used.    

The Big Cycle

Broadly speaking, we can look at these rises and declines as happening in three phases: 1) the ascent phase, which is characterized by the gaining of competitive advantages, 2) the top phase, which is characterized by sustaining the strength but eventually sowing the seeds for losing the competitive advantages that were behind the ascent, and 3) the decline phase, which is characterized by the self-reinforcing declines in all of these strengths.  

In a nutshell, the ascent phasecomes about when there is…

strong enough and capable enough leadershipto provide the essential ingredients for success which include…

strong education.  By strong education I don’t just mean teaching knowledge and skills; I also mean teaching…

strong character, civility, and a strong work ethic, which are typically taught in the family as well as in school.  These lead to improved civility that is reflected in factors such as…

low corruptionand high respect for rules, such as rule of law.  

People being able to work well together, united behind a common view of how they should be together and a common purpose, is also important.  When people have knowledge, skills, good character, and the civility to behave and work well together, and there is…

a good system for allocating resources, which is significantly improved by…

being open to the best global thinking, the country has the most important ingredients in order to succeed.  That leads to them gaining…

greater competitiveness in the global market, which brings in revenues that are greater than expenses, which leads them to have…

strong income growth, which allows them to make…  

increased investments to improve their infrastructures, education systems, and research and development, which leads them to have…

higher productivity(more valuable output per hour worked).  Increasing productivity is what increases wealth and productive capabilities.  When they achieve higher productivity levels they can become productive inventors of…

new technologies.  These new technologies are valuable for both commerce and the military.  As these countries become more competitive in these ways, naturally they gain…

a significant share of world trade, which requires them to have…

a strong militaryto protect their trade routes and to influence those who are important to it outside its borders.  In becoming economically pre-eminent they develop the world’s leading…

financial centersfor attracting and distributing capital. (For example, Amsterdam was the world’s financial center when the Dutch empire was pre-eminent, London was it when the British empire was on top, and New York is now it because the US is on top, but China is beginning to develop its own financial center in Shanghai.) In expanding their trade globally these growing empires bring their…

strong equity, currency, and credit markets.  Naturally those dominant in trade and capital flows have their currency used much more as the preferred global medium of exchange and the preferred storehold of wealth, which leads to their currency becoming a reserve currency. That is how the Dutch guilder became the world’s reserve currency when the Dutch empire was pre-eminent, the British pound became the world’s reserve currency when the British empire was pre-eminent, and the US dollar became the world’s reserve currency in 1944 when the US was about to win World War II and was clearly pre-eminent economically, financially, and militarily. Having one’s currency be a reserve currency naturally gives that country greater borrowing and purchasing power.  As shown in the previous chart, gaining and losing of reserve currency status happens with a significant lag to the other fundamentals.  

It is through the mutually reinforcing and unwavering improvements in these things that countries rise and sustain their powers.  Those who build empires allocate resources well by coordinating the economic, political, and military forces into a profitable economic/political/military system. For example the Dutch created the Dutch East India Company, the British created the British East India Company, the US created the military-industrial complex, and China has Chinese state capitalism.  Such economic, political, and military coordination has proved essential for all empires to profitably expand.  

In a nutshell the top phase typically occurs because within the successes behind the ascent lie the seeds of decline. More specifically, as a rule:  

Prosperous periods lead to people earning more, which naturally leads them to become more expensive, which naturally makes them less competitive relative to those in countries where people are willing to work for less.    

Those who are most successful typically have their ways of being more successful copied by emerging competitors, which also contributes to the leading power becoming less competitive.  For example, British shipbuilders, who had less expensive workers than Dutch shipbuilders, hired Dutch shipbuilding architects to design ships that were more cost-effectively built than Dutch ships.  Because it takes less time and money to copy than invent, all else being equal, emerging empires tend to gain on mature empires through copying.

Those who become richer naturally tend to work less hard, engage in more leisurely and less productive activities, and at the extreme, become decadent and unproductive. That is especially true as generations change from those who had to be strong and work hard to achieve success to those that inherited wealth—these younger generations tend to be less strong/battle-hardened, which makes them more vulnerable to challenges.  Over time people in the prosperous society tend to want and need more luxuries and more leisure and tend to get weaker and more overextended in order to get them, which makes them more vulnerable.      

The currencies of countries that are richest and most powerful become the world’s reserve currencies, which gives them the “exorbitant privilege” of being able to borrow more money, which gets them deeper into debt.  This boosts the leading empire’s spending power over the short term and weakens it over the longer run. In other words, when the borrowing and spending are strong, the leading empire appears strong while its finances are in fact being weakened.  That borrowing typically sustains its power beyond its fundamentals by financing both domestic over-consumption and the military and wars that are required to maintain its empire.  This over-borrowing can go on for quite a while and even be self-reinforcing, because it strengthens the reserve currency which raises the returns of foreign lenders who lend in it. When the richest get into debt by borrowing from the poorest, it is a very early sign of a relative wealth shift.  For example, in the 1980s when the US had a per capita income that was 40 times that of China’s, it started borrowing from Chinese who wanted to save in US dollars because the dollar was the world’s reserve currency.  This was an early sign of that dynamic beginning.  Similarly, the British borrowed a lot of money from its much poorer colonies, particularly during WWII, and the Dutch did the same before their top, which contributed to the reversals in their currencies and economies when the willingness to hold their currency and debt suddenly fell. The United States has certainly done a lot of borrowing and monetization of its debt, though this hasn’t yet caused a reduced demand for the US currency and debt.  

The leading country extends the empire to the point that the empire has become uneconomical to support and defend.  As the costs of maintaining it become greater than the revenue it brings in, the unprofitability of the empire further weakens the leading country financially. That is certainly the case for the US.  

Economic success naturally leads to larger wealth gaps because those who produce a lot of wealth disproportionately benefit.  Those with wealth and power (e.g., those who are commercially benefiting and those who run the government) naturally work in mutually supportive ways to maintain the existing system that benefits them while other segments of the population lag, until the split becomes so large that it is perceived as intolerably unfair.  This is an issue in the US.

The decline phase typically happens as the excesses of the top phase are reversed in a mutually reinforcing set of declines and because a competitive power gains relative strength in the previously described areas.

When debts become very large, when the central banks lose their abilities to stimulate debt and economic growth, and when there is an economic downturn that leads to debt and economic problems and to more printing of money, that eventually devalues money.  

When wealth and values gaps get large and there is a lot of economic stress (wherever that stress comes from), there are high probabilities of greater conflict between the rich and the poor, at first gradually and then increasingly intensely. That combination of circumstances typically leads to increased political extremism—i.e., populism of both the left (i.e., those who seek to redistribute the wealth such as socialists and communists) and the right (i.e., those who seek to maintain the wealth in the hands of the rich such as the capitalists).  That happens in both democratically and autocratically run countries.  For example, in the 1930s increasingly extreme populists of the left became communist and those from the right became fascist.  Populists tend to be more autocratic, more inclined to fight, and more inclined to respect power than law.  

When the rich fear that their money will be taken away and/or that they will be treated with hostility, that leads them to move their money and themselves to places, assets, and/or currencies they feel are safer.  If allowed to continue, these movements reduce the tax and spending revenue in the locations experiencing these conflicts, which leads to a classic self-reinforcing hollowing out process in the places that money is leaving.  That’s because less tax money worsens conditions, which raises tensions and taxes, which causes more emigration of the rich and even worse conditions, etc. For example we are now seeing some of that happening via the rich leaving higher-tax states where there is financial stress and large wealth gaps.  When it gets bad enough, governments no longer allow it to happen—i.e., they outlaw the flows of money out of the places that are losing it and to the places, assets, and/or currencies that are getting it, which causes further panic by those seeking to protect themselves.  

When these sorts of disruptive conditions exist, they undermine productivity; that shrinks the economic pie and causes more conflict about how to divide the shrinking resources well, which leads to even more internal conflict that increasingly leads to fighting between the populist leaders from both sides who want to take control to bring about order.  That is when democracy is most challenged by autocracy.  This is why in the 1920s and 1930s Germany, Japan, Italy, and Spain (and a number of smaller countries) all turned away from democracy to autocratic leadership, and the major democracies (the US, the UK, and France) became more autocratic.  It is widely believed that, during periods of chaos, more centralized and autocratic decision making is preferable to less centralized and more democratic, debate-based decision making, so this movement is not without merit when there is unruly, violent crowd fighting.  

When a country gains economic, geopolitical, and military power that is large enough to challenge the existing dominant power, there are many areas of potential conflict between these rival world powers.  Since there is no system for peacefully adjudicating such disputes, these conflicts are typically resolved through tests of power.  

When a leading country’s costs of maintaining its empire abroad become greater than the revenue that the empire brings in, that economically weakens the country.  When that happens at the same time as other countries are emerging as rival powers, the leading power feels compelled to defend its interests.  This is especially threatening to the leading country both economically and militarily because greater military spending is required to maintain the empire, which comes when worsening domestic economic conditions are making it more difficult for government leaders to tax and making it more necessary for them to spend on domestic supports.  Seeing this dilemma, enemy countries are more inclined to challenge the leading power when that leading power is showing signs of weakness.  Then the leading power is faced with the difficult economic and military choice of fighting or retreating.

When other exogenous shocks, such as acts of nature (e.g., plagues, droughts, or floods), occur during times of vulnerabilities such as those mentioned above, they increase the risks of a self-reinforcing downward spiral.

When the leadership of the country is too weak to provide what the country needs to be successful at its stage in the cycle, that is also a problem.  Of course, because each leader is responsible for leading during only a tiny portion of the cycle, they have to deal with, and can’t change, the condition of the country that they inherit.  This means that destiny, more than the leader, is in control.  

To summarize, around the upward trend of productivity gains producing wealth and living standards, there are cycles that produce 1) periods of buildingin which the country is fundamentally strong because there are a) relatively low levels of indebtedness, b) relatively small wealth, values, and political gaps, c) people working effectively together to produce prosperity within countries, d) good education and infrastructure, e) strong and capable leadership, and f) a peaceful world order that is guided by one or more dominant world powers.  These are the prosperous and enjoyable periods.  When they are taken to excess, which they always are, the excesses lead to 2) periods of destroying and restructuringin which the country’s fundamental weaknesses of a) high levels of indebtedness, b) large wealth, values, and political gaps, c) different factions of people unable to work well together, d) poor education and poor infrastructure, and e) the struggle to maintain an overextended empire under the challenge of emerging powerful rivals lead to a painful period of fighting, destroying, and restructuring that establishes the new order that sets the stage for the new period of building.

Looked at even more simply, the items shown below are the 17 main forces that drive the rises and declines of countries.  For any country, the more items it has on the left, the more likely it will ascend, and the more items it has on the right, the more it is likely to decline.  Those that make it to the top acquire the characteristics on the left (which causes them to ascend) but with time they move to the right, which makes them more prone to decline, while new competitive countries acquire the ones to the left until they are stronger, at which time the shift occurs.

That, in a nutshell, is what makes the cycles of rising and declining empires occur.  I’d like you now to go through a little exercise of ticking off where each of those measures is for each country you’re interested in.  Look at how much to the left or right they are.  What about the United States and China?  What about other countries?  Do that intuitively now.  Later, when I attempt to look into the future, I will use key performance indicators to more systematically do this for each of the largest countries.

Because all of these factors, both ascending and descending, tend to be mutually reinforcing, it is not a coincidence that large wealth gaps, debt crises, revolutions, wars, and changes in the world order have tended to come together.  They come as a perfect storm.  Most simply one can think of the big cycles of each empire’s rise and decline as looking like those in the chart below.  The bad periods of destruction and restructuring via depression, revolution, and war that largely tear down the old system and set the stage for the emergence of a new system, typically take about 10 to 20 years, though variations in the range can be much larger.  They are depicted by the shaded areas in the chart.  They are followed by more extended periods of peace and prosperity in which smart people work harmoniously together and no country wants to fight the world power because it’s too strong, which typically last for about 40 to 80 years, though variations in the range can be much larger. Within these cycles are smaller cycles like the short-term debt/business cycle that last about 7 to 10 years.

The last period of destroying and restructuring happened in 1930-45, which led to the new period of building that began in 1945.  More specifically, the 1930-45 depression, which was due to the breakdown and restructuring of the money and credit system, led to the new US dollar-based global monetary system (Bretton Woods) that was created in 1944.  The large wealth gaps that came about in the Roaring ’20s were narrowed by the depression and war, which led to radical changes in how wealth and power were distributed, and the global war changed world leadership and the world order.  So, in 1945 there was a new beginning with a new money and credit system that was US dollar-based and a new world order that was the American world order.  That new American world order was the natural consequence of the US being the richest country (it then had 80% of the world’s gold stock and gold was then money), the dominant economic power (it then accounted for half of world production), and the dominant military power (it then had a monopoly on nuclear weapons and had the strongest conventional forces).  It is now 75 years later and conditions have evolved in a number of measurable ways that we will explore in subsequent chapters.  That will bring us up to date.  Then we can attempt to squint into the future.  

That’s it in a nutshell.

In the next chapters in Part 1, we will look at each of these drivers more closely and, in the last chapter, I will conclude by bringing all this together to give you my hazy look into the future with some suggestions about what each of us might do to make our futures better given the circumstances we find ourselves in.  Then in Part 2, you will get each of the cases.

I will try to pass pieces of this study along to you about once a week (I’m shooting for every Wednesday or Thursday) until we reach the point of diminishing returns.

[1]These indices were made up of a number of different statistics, some of which were directly comparable and some of which were broadly analogous or broadly indicative. In some cases a data series that stopped at a certain point had to be spliced with a series that continued back in time. Additionally, the lines shown on the chart are 30-year moving averages of these indices, shifted so that there is no lag.  I chose to use the smoothed series because the volatility of the unsmoothed series was too great to allow one to see the big movements.  Going forward, I will use these very smoothed versions when looking at the very long term and much less smoothed or unsmoothed versions when looking at these developments up close because the most important developments were best captured this way.  

[2]We show where key indicators were relative to their history by averaging them across the cases. The chart is shown such that a value of “1” represents the peak in that indicator relative to history and “0” represents the trough. The timeline is shown in years with “0” representing roughly when the country was at its peak (i.e., when the average across gauges was at its peak).  In the rest of this section, we walk through each of the stages of the archetype in more detail. While the charts show the countries that produced global reserve currencies, we’ll also heavily reference China, which was a dominant empire for centuries, though it never established a reserve currency.

Disclosures

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[cactusnotes]

Divine Command Theory

Divine Command Theory is a normative, meta ethics theory.  Normative ethics is ethics concerned with the actual criteria of right or wrong, and how these translate into moral rules for humans, and metaethics is the study of ethics itself, examining the underlying values for moral foundations. It is based around the idea that it is God who commands moral laws, and to follow them is to be moral. 

The first form of the theory presents God as the origin and regulator of morality, and God’s divine commands as a metaphysical, eternal foundation for knowledge, which indicates that if non-believers do not have the same foundation, they cannot be moral, as they are not following the moral laws of God, and moral goodness is solely achieved by complying with divine command only. Right and wrong are thus objective truths, which means that they cannot be situational or subject to opinion, it is a simple fact that is determined entirely by God’s will or command, over any human interference. 

This theory suggests that morality is not external to God because the moral laws of right and wrong are determined by His own will, which is exclusive to Him. This form is championed as divine command is seen as necessary as God’s omnipotence, for if something else commanded laws besides Him, then he would not have power over those laws, which would reduce his omnipotence. 

Furthermore, it stabilises God’s identity as creator- since he created goodness, and he created moral laws- and if this was not the case, some argue that there could be no true moral law. Another implication of this theory is that, should there not be a moral law from God, then there is nobody to be answerable to, no actual laws to obey, and nothing to fix what is good objectively- moral laws should end with a result, and in this theory, that is Heaven or Hell. 

However, this first form could have two different interpretations, as expressed in Plato’s Euthyphro Dilema, based around fictional conversations between Socrates, and a man putting his father on trial for murder. Socrates considers the Divine command theory, and what it implies for the foundation of morals and the gods (Socrates lived around 430bc, where the default religion was based on multiple Greek gods). 

One horn of the dilemma is that ‘is something good because the gods love it?’ This suggests that whatever God decides causes that decision to become correct- God determines what is right or wrong through his own will. This would make the moral laws arbitrary, since they cannot be guaranteed to be eternal, for it is purely down to a will, and wills can change. 

The second horn of the first form also places problems- “do gods love it because it is good?”. In this interpretation, God does not decide what is good or bad, there is some separate foundation that determines the metaethics, and God commands them, to make these actual moral laws for humans. This obviously has the issue that what is right or wrong are based outside of God. 

This dilemma and certain, questioned laws set in the bible (e.g Lev 20 suggesting all homosexual men should be killed) lead to several other versions or forms of Divine Command Theory. Some suggest that there are exceptional examples to a fixed moral law, which would make the moral law subjective. William of Okham claims that the first horn is correct- whatever God commands is good, whatever he wills is good, so if God was to murder, he says “God can perform them without involving any evil”. 

St. Thomas Aquinas suggested that, as a creator, his creation- including humans- are entirely dependent and subject to him, thus whatever he commands has to be correct, and whatever he decides is due for humans must be accepted thus. 

Finally, St. Augustine of Hippo says that “there are certain exceptions to the law against killing, made by the authority of God”, meaning that God can suspend morality and moral goodness at times to suspend wrongness of an action. These different solutions also illustrate the pluralism problem in divine command theory, in that divine command theory is applied differently depending on religion, since religions imply a different moral law implemented by God. 

Robert Adams proposed a ‘modified divine theory’ which is aimed to overturn the Euthyphro dilemma. He claims that, unlike the first form, what is right and wrong is not determined by God’s will or command, he commands them because they are good from something outside his will. However, they are not good based on an outside source, but by another characteristic of God: his omnibenevolence. His omnibenevolence determines what is right, and it is thus part of his very nature. God cannot command something outside of his nature, so he must command these moral laws within his nature, determined by his omnibenevolence. 

Furthermore, as his omnibenevolence is constant, the moral laws can never change, and are therefore not arbitrary, and shall never change. Goodness is “ultimately grounded in the perfect character of God” (Austin), and God cannot change his character, so his will and decisions are consistent, and reflect his character, which would mean commanding what is good. 

However, this theory also has other implications, based on the fact that omnibenevolence and goodness are labelled as characteristics of God. Baggini pointed out that the theory does not explain what determines this ‘goodness’ within God. If God is good, because he has goodness, what determines why that is good? Logically, it has to be some source external to God, or God’s own will determining what goodness is, leading to the Divine Command theory still having a dilemma on what determines the goodness in God’s character is from some outside law of good and evil, or the arbitrary issue of it being God’s will. 

[feministdragon]

Here’s the actual ruling from Taiwan’s constitutional court on gay marriage:

Taiwan’s Council of Grand Justices on Wednesday ruled that it is unconstitutional for the country to deny same-sex individuals the right to get married.   As it currently stands, the Civil Code stipulates that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. Gay advocates argue that this stipulation violates constitutional guarantees of equal rights.

Full text of the ruling:

Constitutional Court Republic of China (Taiwan) On the Same-Sex Marriage CaseOn the consolidated petitions of Huei-Tai-12674 filed by Chia-Wei Chi and Huei-Tai-12771 filed by the Taipei City Government, regarding the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, the Constitutional Court announces the J.Y. Interpretation No. 748 at 4 PM on May 24, 2017. The rulings of the Court are as follows:

1) The provisions of Chapter 2 on Marriage of Part IV on Family of the Civil Code do not allow two persons of the same sex to create a permanent union of intimate and exclusive nature for the committed purpose of managing a life together. The said provisions, to the extent of such failure, are in violation of both the people’s freedom of marriage as protected by Article 22 and the people’s right to equality as guaranteed by Article 7 of the Constitution. (2) The authorities concerned shall amend or enact relevant laws, in accordance with the ruling of this Interpretation, within two years from the issuance of this Interpretation. It is within the discretion of the authorities concerned to determine the formality for achieving the equal protection of the freedom of marriage.

(3) If relevant laws are not amended or enacted within the said two years, two persons of the same sex who intend to create the said permanent union shall be allowed to have their marriage registration effectuated at the authorities in charge of household registration, by submitting a written document signed by two or more witnesses in accordance with the said Marriage Chapter. The main reasons of this Interpretation are as follows: (1) For more than three decades, Petitioner Chia-Wei Chi has been appealing to the legislative, executive, and judicial departments for the right to same-sex marriage. After more than a decade, the Legislative Yuan is still unable to complete its legislative process on those bills regarding same-sex marriage. This case involves the very controversial social and political issues of whether homosexuals shall enjoy the equal protection of the same freedom of marriage as heterosexuals. The representative body is to enact or revise the relevant laws in due time. Nevertheless, the timetable for such legislative solution is hardly predictable now and yet these petitions involve the protection of people’s fundamental rights. It is the constitutional duty of this Court to render a binding judicial decision, in time, on issues concerning the safeguarding of constitutional basic values such as the protection of people’s constitutional rights and the free democratic constitutional order. (2) Those prior J.Y. Interpretations mentioning “husband and wife” or “a man and a woman”, in terms of the factual backgrounds of the original cases from which they arose, were made within the context of opposite-sex marriage. Thus far, this Court has not made any Interpretation on the issue of whether two persons of the same sex are allowed to marry each other. (3) Unspoused persons eligible to marry shall have their freedom to marry, which includes the freedom to decide “whether to marry” and “whom to marry” (see J.Y. Interpretation No. 362). Such decisional autonomy is vital to the sound development of personality and safeguarding of human dignity, and therefore is a fundamental right to be protected by Article 22 of the Constitution. (4) Creation of a permanent union of intimate and exclusive nature for the committed purpose of managing a life together by two persons of the same sex will not affect the application of the Marriage Chapter to the union of two persons of the opposite sex. Nor will it alter the social order established upon the existing opposite-sex marriage. Furthermore, the freedom of marriage for two persons of the same sex, once legally recognized, will constitute the collective basis, together with opposite-sex marriage, for a stable society. The need, capability, willingness and longing, in both physical and psychological senses, for creating such permanent unions of intimate and exclusive nature are equally essential to homosexuals and heterosexuals, given the importance of the freedom of marriage to the sound development of personality and safeguarding of human dignity. Both types of union shall be protected by the freedom of marriage under Article 22 of the Constitution. The current provisions of the Marriage Chapter do not allow two persons of the same sex to create a permanent union of intimate and exclusive nature for the committed purpose of managing a life together. This is obviously a gross legislative flaw. To such extent, the provisions of the Marriage Chapter are incompatible with the spirit and meaning of the freedom of marriage as protected by Article 22 of the Constitution. (5) Article 7 of the Constitution provides, “All citizens of the Republic of China, irrespective of sex, religion, race, class, or party affiliation, shall be equal before the law.” The five classifications of impermissible discrimination set forth in the said Article are only exemplified, neither enumerated nor exhausted. Therefore, different treatment based on other classifications, such as disability or sexual orientation, shall also be governed by the right to equality under the said Article. (6) Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic that is resistant to change. The contributing factors to sexual orientation may include physical and psychological elements, living experience, and the social environment. Major medical associations have stated that homosexuality is not a disease. In our country, homosexuals were once denied by social tradition and custom in the past. As a result, they have long been locked in the closet and suffered various forms of de facto or de jure exclusion or discrimination. Besides, homosexuals, because of the demographic structure, have been a discrete and insular minority in the society. Impacted by stereotypes, they have been among those lacking political power for a long time, unable to overturn their legally disadvantaged status through ordinary democratic process. Accordingly, in determining the constitutionality of different treatment based on sexual orientation, a heightened standard shall be applied. (7) The Marriage Chapter does not set forth the capability to procreate as a requirement for concluding an opposite-sex marriage. Nor does it provide that a marriage is void or voidable, or a divorce decree may be issued, if either party is unable or unwilling to procreate after marriage. Accordingly, reproduction is obviously not an essential element of marriage. The fact that two persons of the same sex are incapable of natural procreation is the same as the result of two opposite-sex persons’ inability, in an objective sense, or unwillingness, in a subjective sense, to procreate. Disallowing two persons of the same sex to marry, for the sake of their inability to reproduce, is a different treatment having no apparent rational basis. (8) The basic ethical orders built upon the existing institution of opposite-sex marriage will remain unaffected, even if we allow two persons of the same sex to enter into a legally recognized marriage pursuant to the formal and substantive requirements of the Marriage Chapter, as long as they are subject to the rights and obligations of both parties during the marriage and after the marriage ends. Disallowing two persons of the same sex to marry, for the sake of safeguarding basic ethical orders, is a different treatment, also obviously having no rational basis. Such different treatment is incompatible with the spirit and meaning of the right to equality as protected by Article 7 of the Constitution. (9) The authorities concerned shall complete the amendment or enactment of relevant laws in accordance with the ruling of this Interpretation, within two years after the announcement of this Interpretation. It is within the discretion of the authorities concerned to determine the formality (for example, revision of the Marriage Chapter, enactment of a special Chapter in Part IV on Family of the Civil Code, enactment of a special law, or other formality) for achieving the equal protection of the freedom of marriage for two persons of the same sex. (10) If the amendment or enactment of relevant laws is not completed within the said two-year timeframe, two persons of the same sex who intend to create a permanent union of intimate and exclusive nature for the committed purpose of managing a life together may, pursuant to the provisions of the Marriage Chapter, apply for marriage registration to the authorities in charge of household registration, by submitting a document signed by two or more witnesses. Any such two persons, once registered, shall be accorded the status of a legally recognized couple, and then enjoy the rights and bear the obligations arising on couples. Justice Jui-Ming Huang recused himself and took no part in the deliberation, oral arguments or the decision of this case. Justice Horng-Shya Huang filed a dissenting opinion in part. Justice Chen-Huan Wu filed a dissenting opinion.

https://sentinel.tw/taiwans-constitutional-court-rules-favor-sex-marriage/