The Fall of the American Empire

By Kevin Grant

America is entering a period of social and economic crisis. In this book, we examine causes, cures, and ways to mitigate the damage if the crisis turns out to be unavoidable. We explore how the actions of government have influenced events. Finally, we put the crisis into a larger context, that of the historical cycle of empire, and discuss how we can break the cycle once and for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Grant
• Release date: Apr 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370555925

Book preview

To the professors who have made such a difference in my intellectual life. Yes, I knew all along that I was a difficult (okay, extremely difficult) student, but I couldn't say that at the time. Plus, if it makes a difference, I'm told that I'm at least twice as difficult to work with now. Hopefully, now that it’s all over, it was worth it. Sorry about the extra gray hairs. These include:

Dr. Donald Hanks (1934 – March 1, 2014), Philosophy, University of New Orleans, my philosophy professor. Still a legend at UNO, and among his many, many students. Unique.

Dr. Mahdi Abdelguerfi, Computer Science, University of New Orleans, my thesis advisor. Has the most encyclopedic knowledge of database practice and theory that I've ever encountered. My hand still has cramps from the amount of material that he can write on a whiteboard, without notes, in every single class.

Dr. Jianhua Chen, Computer Science, Louisiana State University, my dissertation advisor. The most tolerant professor in the world. Most people will take this as a joke, even though I'm genuinely serious. She put up with me for years. People who know me will understand this. That's really hard to do.

Dr. Sukhamay Kundu, Computer Science, Louisiana State University, one of my committee members. The most brilliant person I've met in my entire life.

Dr. Robert Mathews, Psychology, Louisiana State University, my minor professor. The courageous experimentalist. One hundred years from now, he'll still be creating and testing new ways to teach students, even from beyond the grave.

To the medical doctors (and their staffs) who’ve combined forces to keep me alive and kicking everyone within reach:

Dr. Robert Fortier-Bensen, Functional Medicine, the best doctor I ever had, and a model for what medicine could be like, if only we had the will.

Dr. James Denney, Psychiatry, the doctor who managed to keep me sane for several consecutive years.

Dr. Wade Estopinal, Emergency Medicine, the doctor I run to when things suddenly go wrong.

Dr. Diana Gillmore, General Surgery, the doctor I trust to open me up with a scalpel when parts of me need to be taken out or stitched up.

The first two are retired, (and I swear it wasn't my fault). The new ones will have to wait for the next book to get a dedication. Perhaps this will provide them with extra incentive to keep me going for a little while longer.

Table of Contents

Dedications

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Battle

1.01: The Fall of the American Empire

1.02: The Way Out

1.03: The First Hurdles

Chapter 2: Fighting the Battle

2.01: Guidelines for Change

2.02: Changing the Constitution

2.03: Changing the Law

Chapter 3: Big Brother is Already Here

3.01: Privacy in Public Spaces

3.02: The Uses of Metadata

3.03: What Can They Know?

3.04: What Can They Do?

3.05: Can They Violate The Limits That We Set?

3.06: The Next Step, Controlling the Public

3.07: The Brave New World

3.08: What They Should Do (But Won't)

3.09: What We Can Do

Chapter 4: Surviving the Fall

4.01: Before the Fall

4.02: During the Fall

4.03: After the Fall

Chapter 5: The War

5.01: The Liberty Trap

5.02: The Spiral of Empire

Chapter 6: Fighting the War

6.01: 3D Printers and the Liberator Pistol

6.02: A New Approach

6.03: People, Not Government

6.04: The First Move

6.05: Culture War

Conclusion

Appendix: Adventures with the Fed

Appendix: The Surveillance Bill of Rights

Endnotes

About the Author

Introduction

America is entering a period of self-induced crisis. Many factors contribute to this. The most important of these are:

Ignorance: Most American citizens are the victims of a public education system that has no interest in educating them about how any non-physical part of the world really works, and most people are too apathetic to correct this situation on their own after the fact. As a result of this, many Americans don’t understand how government policies affect their own lives. For example, how does our extensive debt indicate that we’re not really a rich nation, and thus unable to afford policies that involve absorbing large numbers of low-skilled immigrants, or supporting a huge entitlement state? After all, we certainly look like a rich nation, don’t we?

Short-sightedness: Most special interest groups have a one to three year horizon line on worrying about the consequences of their own actions. This is because groups are composed of individuals, and that’s about how long most cogs have to worry about being held responsible for the consequences of their actions by the rest of the machine. After that much time has passed, the whole issue of who was responsible for what will have muddied, or everyone will believe that whatever bad thing wound up happening wasn’t predictable so far back. So clearly what our special interest group should do today is to lobby for more of the system-destroying cronyism that benefits us right now. After all, it doesn't look like the damage that we're doing to the system will cause a crash right now.

Selfishness: Most politicians generally have both real-world knowledge of the system, and a long-term view, but they also have a conflict of interest such that they benefit personally from screwing the rest of us over. For example, if I’m an ethical politician then trading a few destructive favors for the money that I and my party need to stay in office is a good thing, right? After all, how can we stay here to do good things if we don’t do the bad things that are necessary to get us reelected? And if I’m an unethical politician, then as long as I and my party get to stay in power, why should we care what happens to the rest of the country? Either way, we spend most of our time doing bad things.

All of which has led us to where we are today. Unfortunately, it’s rarely possible for us to predict the future more than a few years ahead with any specificity and confidence. But hindsight is 20/20, as the old saying goes, and now that we’re so close to the cliff it’s easy to look backwards and spot the influences that brought us here, and that are about to push us over the edge.

Our Problems Today

So let's get specific. The worst of the problems that have gotten us where we are today are:

Excessive Government Spending: Excessive government spending has created impossible government debt, while the taxation that’s used to fund it is causing widespread personal debt, and even poverty.

Excessive Regulation: Excessive government regulation is crushing businesses and destroying jobs.

Unconstitutional Surveillance: Unconstitutional government surveillance is eroding our civil rights and moving our government towards tyranny.

Ineffective Border Control: Politicized border control has brought in millions of legal immigrants and illegal aliens who are draining our resources.

Corporate Welfare: Decades of corporate welfare and payoffs have drained trillions of dollars from the economy, in exchange for goods and services that the public doesn’t need, and sometimes for nothing at all.

Forced Unionization: Forced unionization of the workforce (now reversed in right-to-work states), and overly generous public sector union pension plans, have now caused so much economic damage that it’s driving cities in forced-union-membership states across the country into bankruptcy.

Weak Foreign Policy: And finally, lack of a well-designed, clearly stated, and forcefully implemented foreign policy has seriously lessened our influence around the world.

Where Our Problems Originated

It’s harder to trace the problems back to their beginnings, but necessary to do so if we’re to understand what’s happening and take action against it. Representative political systems naturally decay over time, until they either undergo a catastrophic reset or degenerate permanently. This happens because people are naturally self-serving and corrupt. Representative political systems allow such people to reach positions of power, and the damage caused by their continual abuses accumulates over time until the system collapses. Here’s how the specific factors listed above serve corrupt interests.

Excessive Government Spending: Government spending buys votes and influence for incumbent politicians.

Excessive Regulation: Government regulation is useful as either a means to repay political favors from private businesses (regulate away the competition), extort favors from same (Help me or I’ll regulate you away next.), or get support from liberal anti-corporatists (Don’t worry; we’ll just regulate the businesses to death! Viva socialism!).

Unconstitutional Surveillance: Government surveillance increases government authority, which is then abused to keep incumbent politicians and bureaucrats in office and expand their power (think Watergate, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, or more recently the IRS’s attacks on the tax status of conservative lobbying groups).

Ineffective Border Control: Lax border control allows in millions of illegal aliens, many of whom are either related to the powerful Hispanic voting bloc, or likely to become employees for low-skilled, labor-intensive businesses that want the higher profits that come from hiring low, or even below-minimum-wage labor with no benefits.

Corporate Welfare: Monetary and regulatory giveaways to corporations eventually make their way back to politicians and parties in the form of political donations.

Forced Unionization: Unions distort the economy by driving wages and prices far outside of their free-market ranges. Once they’ve accumulated sufficient political power unions become parasitic, and begin distorting the government itself in order to increase their own ability to abuse the system. They do this by donating money to politicians, who create ever more union-friendly legislation.

Weak Foreign Policy: And finally, we give foreign aid, and sell arms, to countries that openly announce their intent to destroy us and our way of life, while refusing to strongly back long-time allies with Western values, all in the name of short-term political expediency. Or, in simpler terms, our enemies have a lot of oil, a lot of our debt, and the ability to threaten the American dollar’s reserve currency status by such methods as ceasing to use American dollars (the petrodollar) to trade oil. So our cowardly politicians are going to kiss-up no matter how bad the long-term consequences for us are likely to be.

Falling In Slow Motion

We’re now so close to the edge that there are any number of things that could trigger a sudden fall. Here are some examples:

The Economy: Either America or the EU could slip economically.

The Petrodollar: Either the Middle East oil states or any of their larger clients could deliberately end their support of the petrodollar.

The Debt: Other countries, particularly China, could start selling significant quantities of our debt. The Saudi government has already threatened to do this over our passing legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government for its alleged involvement.

A Military Threat: Iran could precipitate a crisis by either getting too close to having nuclear weapons and thus triggering an attack by Israel, or by placing short-range missiles in Venezuela to threaten us.

The Most Likely Trigger

But what’s probably going to do it is that other countries are going to stop buying significant amounts of American debt, because they simply can’t afford to do so any more. Note that they won’t have to start selling what they already have, just stop buying. This is because until recently the American government was borrowing about one third of its yearly revenues from other countries via treasury sales, and we can’t generate enough domestic tax revenues to fund our own huge entitlement programs for very long. So when our ability to borrow stops, we’ll be hit with a sudden inability to pay out enough entitlement money to keep all of our dependent population fed. Large numbers of unfed people equals social collapse.

We’ve been putting this off since 2009 (about the time President Obama took office) by means of a Federal Reserve policy of itself buying large quantities of American treasuries. But the only way to fund all of this treasury buying has been to print more and more money, and they can’t keep that up for much longer. When the Federal Reserve prints money, the value of the new money is taken from all of the old money, which is then worth less, so it buys less stuff. This manifests as increased prices, and is the reason why prices have increased so much over the last few years (the methods used to generate government inflation figures were manipulated into uselessness years ago, so the fact that they show little inflation is meaningless). It doesn’t matter whether you have no dollars, or the dollars that you do have aren’t worth enough to buy food. Too much currency devaluation will cause starvation just as certainly as lack of entitlement payouts. Either way, we crash.

Signs of the End

This, in fact, will probably be the best sign that we’re about to enter the next phase of the currently slow-motion crash that we’re undergoing now. Right now the government is using two methods to fund its largess, other than excessive, obvious taxation.

Borrowing: By getting new creditors (e.g. Japan) to buy the treasuries that our old creditors (e.g. China) are no longer buying.

Money Printing: By printing more money with which to buy some of our own treasures to make up the difference.

Unfortunately, Japan isn’t buying as much of our debt as China was, that amount is decreasing, and the Fed’s continual money printing is bringing us closer and closer to the danger point, inflation-wise. Our government will play out these mechanisms for as long as they can, but they won’t work forever. The problem with each of these mechanisms is:

Borrowing: Eventually there will be no one left who can or will buy any significant part of our debt.

Money Printing: The constant money-printing will have inflated prices to the breaking point, relative to salary levels.

Watch for these two signs as you attempt to make your own decisions regarding when things are about to take a major turn for the worse.

At that point the government will probably start moving into panic-mode, as it’s forced to take extreme measures in order to kick the can a little further down the road. Measures such as:

Taxation: Draconian, economy-destroying taxes levied against any person or corporation that has any money left.

Nationalization: Nationalizing private pension funds (public pension funds have already been drained and filled with treasuries).

Theft: Raiding private bank accounts, like the supposedly one-time raid carried out by the Cypriot government during their recent economic crisis.

Socialism: And possibly even socialist-style wage and price controls.

All of this will be carefully hidden and spun so as to make it as palatable as possible to people who prefer living in a capitalist economy. Attempts to spin such obvious maneuvers won’t work, and the adoption of such measures will, for the first time, part the mists and make the economic cliff and our rush towards it visible to the general public. This will cause the beginnings of a general sense of defeatism and resentment, shading towards panic, and possibly even a physical backlash. The fear of this is probably a major reason why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has recently been buying, and distributing to local law enforcement, so many urban assault vehicles, weapons, and ammo.

No Way Out

Unfortunately, the few methods with which we might still be able to escape our fate are unlikely to work. For example:

Technological Advance: There’s no technological mechanism by which our rush towards the cliff can be slowed, barring the discovery of a new technology that sharply increases our Gross National Product by radically increasing the productivity of the average American worker. The only technology in sight that has even the smallest chance of having that kind of potential is 3D printers, and they’re at least a decade (or even two or three) away from that kind of development.

Integrity: Aside from the occasional Band-Aid, neither our politicians, nor our bureaucrats, nor any of the special interests that own them, are going to do anything useful to end the problems that will cause us to go over a fiscal cliff. This is because there are enough of them benefiting from our problems, and the massive government overspending that drives them, to make it more profitable for them if the problems continue to exist for as long as possible. So while there are a few political solutions that seem hopeful, like draconian decreases in taxation, regulation, and government spending, and the adoption of a commodity-backed currency, nothing like that is likely to happen.

Social Movement: There’s no way that the unwashed masses are going to clean up this mess. There’re now too many individual citizens who are dependent on government entitlement programs, or otherwise benefiting from the current state of affairs, for that to happen. Very few welfare recipients are going to vote against increases in welfare, particularly when they're in such a bad financial situation themselves. And by the time you consider other forms of entitlement, like social security and Medicare, you see that almost everybody has their noses in the trough for something, and many are helpless to do anything about it.

Religious Revival: Nor will some sort of religious revival or cultural revolution help. It doesn’t matter how, or how fast, our culture changes for the better, what’s going to drag us down isn’t our culture, it’s our debt (including the government’s domestic financial obligations, like government pension funds), and our mass dependency on government entitlements, for survival. The external debt (which already totals over $18 trillion) can’t be defaulted on without ruining our nation’s credit for decades to come, and the domestic obligations (which total over $70 trillion) are too large to ever be paid. Our dependency on entitlements is the result of other problems that would take too long to remedy, such as the sheer number of people who are inadequately educated and have no job skills. Long before some sort of cultural revolution can overcome problems like that, we’ll already have gone under.

Going Down

So, one way or another, we’re going through the rabbit hole, and probably soon. You’ll find that I take a somewhat Seldonesque view of the crash (don’t worry if you don’t get the reference, I’ll give it to you in the next section); that the crash is inevitable, and that the best we can do now is to position ourselves to survive as best we can, and to make the best possible recovery afterwards. I’m speaking to you through this book in the hopes of helping all of us (including myself) to understand the coming Fall of the American Empire, what’s causing it, what we can do about it, and what comes after. I make no special claims to expertise. I’m neither an economist, nor a political scientist. I’m a computer scientist, and what understanding I’ve gained is purely the result of a layman’s attempt to educate himself about the nature of the problems facing our nation today.

There’s an old cliché about speaking truth to power. The idea behind it is that speaking the truth to a powerful elite that doesn’t want to hear it is somehow a noble activity. In reality it’s a waste of time. If you really want to frighten the establishment, and create change, then speak truth to the powerless. The powerful already know, and they don’t care.

Kevin Grant

Slidell, Louisiana

Chapter 1: The Battle

Somewhere in the fifty years just past is where historians of the future will place an arbitrary line and say: ‘This marks the Fall of the Galactic Empire.’

—Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1951)

It would be nice to be able to give you a simple answer to the question Why is the American Empire falling?, and then support my case by pointing to some convincing similarity between what’s happening to us now, and what happened to some other great empire taken from world history. But that’s not going to happen. Historical problems rarely admit of simple explanations, and you’re unlikely to ever experience the luxury of being able to use the same explanation twice. For example, in his book Der Fall Roms, historiographer Alexander Demandt documents 210 different possible explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire that occur in the writings of other historians. Explanations include centralization, decentralization, celibacy, sexuality, totalitarianism, individualism, militarism, pacifism, plague, foreign attack, civil war, homosexuality, and so forth.

Empires are extremely complex systems, embedded within the even more complex system of the world itself. They contain social, political, economic, and other aspects, few of which can be quantitatively modeled, making definitive conclusions hard to come by. This isn’t to say that the study of history can’t be helpful in diagnosing modern problems, only that you’re unlikely to be able to point to some magic moment in the past, like the oft mentioned fall of the Roman Empire, and say The same thing is happening now! Systems change over time, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, and sometimes so radically that afterwards we can point to some part of the system that was previously dominating its form and function and say That part is no longer important. And if the system is the world itself, and the part that fell from grace was a cohesive political unit, then we can point to it and say The empire has fallen.

What we can also do, if we’re so unfortunate as to be close to the action, is to use our knowledge of history, and our common sense, to try to make some kind of sense of what’s happening, and then to shield ourselves from the worst of the shrapnel when the bomb goes off.

Section 1.01: The Fall of the American Empire

In case I don’t get the chance to go back and put an about the author section into this book, or perhaps I do and you just didn’t bother to read it, I’m not a historian. In fact, history was my second most hated subject in school (after foreign languages), which is no doubt why God has chosen to punish me by making it so relevant to what I’m writing now. Nevertheless, the cliff is pretty easy to see just before you fall off, or while you’re on your way down, so I’ll flatter myself by saying that the sequence of steps that I provide below is probably a pretty good description of the process that’s finally about to send us over the edge (your empire may vary). Let’s start at the very beginning.

Step One: Bang!

A social big bang occurs, after which our society exists. Actually it doesn’t matter how it comes about, we just need a society for our model, and we have to start somewhere. In the beginning (sorry, I couldn’t resist) our society is very simple, having no government, no taxation, etc. Just a loose association of individuals who have joined forces for mutual benefit. We’ll call the members of this society citizens. Most, if not all, citizens create value. We’ll call citizens who create value makers.

Step Two: Send in the Clowns

In order to maintain social stability, citizens’ behavior must occasionally be coerced. In order to do this, a subset of the population must be selected to implement a legal system. We’ll call this subset of the population, and their activities, government, and we’ll call members of the government politicians.

Step Three: Start the Taxation

We’ve got politicians, so you know the next thing that’s going to show up is taxes. The expenses of government must be paid. Since any selfish citizen would prefer to reap the benefits of government without paying for it, the government must possess the ability to coerce payment. We’ll call government coercion of payment taxation.

Step Four: Start the Corruption

When you’ve got both politicians and taxes, you know corruption can’t be far behind. Politicians possess a privileged position in society, as they have the power to coerce the behavior of, and payment from, other citizens. Thus, they’ll act so as to maintain their privileged status. In a country with a representative form of government, continuation of a politician’s status relies on either popular support, or the support of various special interest groups, or both. As with the provision of any other good or service, the provision of political support must be paid for. We’ll call those who sell their political support takers.

Step Five: Start Borrowing

Politicians want as much money as possible, and excessive taxation tends to cause a political backlash from the voters. So as production increases, and government credit increases, the government begins supplementing its tax revenues by borrowing.

Step Six: Redistribution of Wealth

Now the explanations are going to start getting longer. Politicians pay for the political support of takers with government funds that are either taken from makers via excessive taxation, or borrowed. We’ll call this process redistribution of wealth, and it’s done by politicians for the benefit of themselves, not for the benefit of citizens. As redistribution of wealth proceeds, a (slow) vicious cycle forms, containing the following four steps.

More redistribution of wealth: Increased redistribution of wealth by politicians results in increased political support for politicians.

More support for politicians: Increased political support for politicians results in increased political power for politicians.

More power for politicians: Increased political power for politicians results in increased borrowing and taxation by politicians.

More borrowing and taxation: Increased borrowing and taxation by politicians results in increased redistribution of wealth by politicians.

And then back to the beginning. As the cycle continues to execute, the following five events occur, in order. [Beach120208]

Taking becomes more profitable: It becomes increasingly profitable to be a taker rather than a maker.

More people become takers: Because taking is a more attractive choice, an ever-increasing number of citizens transform from makers into takers.

Society produces less value: As the number of makers decreases, society as a whole produces less value, so the GDP grows less, or stops growing, or even shrinks. Although seeing this might be difficult, as one of the government's strategies to keep the economy looking good is to monkey around with the way the figures are computed.

Society produces fewer jobs: Because makers also make jobs, as the number of makers decreases, the number of jobs that they make decreases too.

Taking becomes embedded in the culture: An ever-larger subculture of takers, with few job skills, is formed. Being a taker becomes socially acceptable, and the larger subgroups of takers become permanently embedded in the culture.

And then back to the beginning. As the cycle continues, these factors get worse and worse. Eventually, government borrowing and taxation reach unsustainable levels against the redistribution-damaged economy.

There are more steps coming, but at this point I’m going to start including graphs with my explanations. The graphs below were generated from data that was originally denominated in dollars. The problem with such graphs is that multi-year analysis requires proper inflation adjustment, and the government-provided inflation estimates that we have available to us today are so distorted as to be useless. To compensate for this I expressed the data in terms of percentage of GDP. This is far from perfect, but better than using inflation estimates that may be more than 7% low (more on that later).

The first two graphs below show the growth in government spending and debt over the last 200 years. It might seem to be more relevant to show the figures for welfare programs, but so much of what our government spends today qualifies as buying political support that the figures for welfare alone