if your world domination isn't profitable you will, eventually, stop being dominant.
...whereas, if it is profitable, you will also, eventually, stop being dominant.
How do you mean? Have you got an example from history?
Pretty much all of history is my example.
Do you have an example of any global hegemon that has NOT fallen from the number one spot?
Lasting a century as top dog is rare.
I think you're equating human common foibles with some sort of Marxist/structuralist law of inevitable decline.
The field of economics was created to study precisely this. The rules of empire follows some pretty standard rules.
1. There's a technological or social innovation.
2. A group manages to exploit this innovation to dominate it's neighbours. This is usually down to geography, ie, this group is better situated to take advantage of this innovation.
3. The group creates a kingdom and then an empire. So first dominates it's own ethnic group, and then other ethnic groups. Yes, I am aware this is a bit anacronistic when pushed back in time, but I think it works in general.
4. The culture starts inventing myths and explanations about their exeptionalism. Downplaying the actual factor or factors that brought them to power and allowed them to stay in power. While also ignoring innovating. Giving an upper hand to non dominant cultures giving them a chance to challenge and overtake.
Example: For republican Rome the social innovation was to make every citizen a stakeholder in the state which made them more willing to sacrifice themselves for the glory of Rome, which made the Roman legions more willing to keep fighting even when having taken huge casualities. Their enemy empires were abandonded the moment it started going south.
5. The culture starts investing heavily in things that do not keep the empire stable or the ruling elite in power. Eventually it shakes itself apart.
Rome lasted over a thousand years. Because it kept innovating. That's what the civil wars were about. They were essentially bloody elections. The people felt empowered and were always quit to revolt if unhappy. This btw is the historian Tom Holland's theory to why Rome lasted as long as it did. Also Anthony Kaldelis.
What eventually killed Rome was that the barbarians learned from Rome and copied their methods, diluting Rome's upper hand. When the power differences are smaller then it takes less to disrupt it. Which is why, towards the end it became harder and harder to keep it together. If the bubonic plague hadn't come in 541 the Roman empire would likely still be a country dominating east Europe and the Middle-East.
The genius of liberal democracy and free market capitalism is that it's a system with inbuilt regular revolutions and a economic system that continually push towards innovation. Soon after our culture starts getting delusional about why it all works, the market will crash.
What happened after England dominated the world with the British empire wasn't that Britain did anything wrong. It was simply that other cultures started copying Britain. When everyone is following the winning recipe then geography kicks in. USA is bigger than the UK and has oil. So while the UK didn't decline, it lost it's top spot. It lost it's relative dominance without doing anything wrong. That's a win win for everyone.
China now, is a likely contender to overtake everyone else, simply based on that it can copy the west while sitting on a geography that has put China on top in Asia for 10 000 years. That's a good run. India is a bit weak on natural resources. But once their thorium programme gets up and running, they're also in the race for the top spot .
I don't think the decline of dominant civilisations is inevitable. The winner will always be the most cynical and humble culture. USA wins on cynicism. But fails on humility. Which gives an opening to China and India.
Meanwhile, you can live well, or poorly; And if you sole focus is profitability and economics, you will live poorly.
I can't follow your logic
You can get rich by living on dogfood, but what is the point of being rich if you have to eat dogfood?
I still can't follow your logic. Then we should push for profitability so that nobody needs to eat dogfood?
You are aware that pushing for profitability generally means to make the economic value chain more efficient, ie everyone wins? You sound a bit zero sum Marxist now. Are you?
Austerity has been the watchword in the UK since the early '00s, and has been as brilliant a success in helping the UK recover from the GFC as the Smoot-Hawley Tarrif Act was at helping the US recover from the Wall Street Crash.
Isn't just "austerity" code for "reigning in unsustainable and idiotic socialist schemes"?
No, it is code for not letting anyone ever borrow money for anything.
Which is a truly stupid way to run anything.
The hallmark of austerity is the balanced budget. Couple that with the insane idea that cutting tax rates will increase total tax revenues, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Austerity isn't equated with Reaganomics. Austerity just means that we stop buying things we can't afford.
The logical mistake, we on the left, often do is that we see social welfare as a human right, and not what it is, a luxury. Social welfare should be seen as a luxury we can splurge on if and when we are taking care of the economy. Leftists often skip how we're supposed to pay for welfare.
Reaganomics works great for an economy that has been mismanaged for a long time, and what that country needs, more than anything is that the state just gets out of the way of commerce. Worked awesome in the UK under Thatcher and for Chile under Pinochet. Didn't deliver in USA. Because USA, at the time, was already an economy in excellent shape.
One of the problem's with the UK is that since the 50'ies the government put policies in place that kept coal mining town's from dying even though we'd moved away from a world powered primarily by coal. Thatcher broke the miners union and fixed the problem.
Mate, the miner's strike was one of the first political events that directly affected me at an age where I could understand it. I lived through it. Your one paragraph summary is an utter travesty and reflects none of the reality, other than that Thatcher set out to break the NUM, and succeeded.
She had to destroy the coal industry to do it, like the US Marines destroying Vietnamese villages to "save" them from communism.
During and after the strike, the UK imported German coal at nearly three times the cost delivered to the power stations; And the UK "moved away from a world powered primarily by coal" AFTER the strike (about two decades after).
I remember the USSR sent food aid to the miners. They needed it. I spent a lot of time collecting and distributing food to miners and their families, and their situation was truly dire.
I also remember looking for work in Yorkshire in 1988 and being
shortlisted onto a list of two hundred applicants - for one job. That was after they axed every applicant who didn't precisely meet every single criterion in the job ad.
There's many examples of this. Pinochet in Chile broke the socialists grip on power and now Chile has South Americas healthiest economy. I'm not condoning Pinochet's methods. But it worked. Thatcher was also a horrible person
You don't know the half of it.
And "it worked" depends on your criterion for success. Starving children isn't on my list of success criteria.
With "it worked" means that unsustainable businesses die and those workers (and their decendants) are freed up to work elsewhere.
I think it did. Are you arguing against that?
