{"id":42949,"date":"2019-01-19T07:39:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T12:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42949"},"modified":"2019-01-19T07:39:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-19T12:39:51","slug":"the-price-of-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42949","title":{"rendered":"The Price of\u00a0Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Price of\u00a0Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n

Why America and Britain Are Self-Destructing (And What the World Can Learn From\u00a0it)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

It\u2019s a striking fact of today\u2019s world that the two rich societies in shocking, swift, sharp decline are America and Britain. Nowhere else in the world, for example, are real income, life expectancy, happiness, and trust all plummeting, apart from maybe Venezuela (No, \u201cbut at least we\u2019re not Venezuela!\u201d is not the bar to aim for, my friends.) Their downfall is, of course, a self-inflicted catastrophe. But the interesting question is: why? And what does it tell us about what it takes to prosper and thrive in the 21st century, which is something that America and Britain clearly aren\u2019t doing, and maybe aren\u2019t capable of doing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an equally curious observation. America and Britain aren\u2019t just any countries. They are the former hegemons of the world\u2019s most powerful empires. Britain, until the first half of the 20th century, and America, picking up where Britain left off. Is this just a strange cosmic coincidence\u200a\u2014\u200athat it is the two greatest empires of the most recent past who are the ones seemingly most incapable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century? There aren\u2019t coincidences that great, my friends. Such tides of history always whisper lessons to be learned. What is this one trying to urgently teach us?<\/p>\n

That there is a price to empire. A grave and ruinous one. And that price has grown over the centuries\u200a\u2014\u200aso high that now, it is not worth paying anymore.<\/span>Let me explain what I mean\u200a\u2014\u200abecause it is not just about spending too much money and grasping too high. Not at all. It is about the kind of a place and people such a country ends up limited to being\u200a\u2014\u200aand perhaps can then never really easily outgrow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Price of\u00a0Empire Why America and Britain Are Self-Destructing (And What the World Can Learn From\u00a0it) It\u2019s a striking fact of today\u2019s world that the two rich societies in shocking, swift, sharp decline are America and Britain. Nowhere else in the world, for example, are real income, life expectancy, happiness, and trust all plummeting, apart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[259,4413,16981,827],"class_list":["post-42949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-empire","tag-great-britain","tag-umair-haque","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42950,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42949\/revisions\/42950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}