Gringinho wrote......
The population of a democracy gets alienated from the political process because of the current flawed execution of the democratic models - open to special interests and corruption. By increasing the complexity of the political process on top of increasing the number of laws and regulations, the population is further distanced from seeing any effect - or even choice - in any election. Change gets more difficult as the social systems get progressively more encumbered, and this results in protests.
The call for "stop complaining, do something" is an indication of this trend - and at the same time it's getting more and more difficult to do anything. There is only one realistic way to offload this complexity - make society less encumbered and offer more freedom, less corruption and better trust. It's the same method being employed in many business models to handle similar problems - by moving the trust-models over on to a technological platform. That works for elections, bureaucratic processes, business and any process where you need flexibility, adaptability and solid trust-models for an efficient, fair system.
USA has the world's largest economy, largest deficit, largest debt, largest subsidies, largest consumption... and so on.
Increased population age, dependency on pension funds and health services further exacerbates the challenges.
The move from USD pegged to gold was all part of enabling this growth. Now the US has large creditors in the Japanese, Chinese and others. The system and the stress on it's structure is getting bigger and bigger - so will the protracted periods; any change will become more difficult while quick fixes are increasing the burden.
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One way of viewing progress, or just the opposite is a matter of leverage....
The US has become a highly levered country in that an individual who has a job has a lot of credit choices.....
Leverage mainly being...
Houses......30 year low interest debt
Cars..........multiyear debt
Credit cards....revolving debt
etc...etc...
An individual magnifies his cash buying power by a rather significant multiple.....
In many developing countries, low cost credit is largely unavailable....
Thus a "developed country individual" could make $50,000 and be able to consume many times $50,0000 in goods and services.....whereas a "developing country individual" can make $50,000 and only consume $50,000.....
Thus the leveraging of stable property rights is mostly responsible for the success of significant money flows in the developed countries.....
However, leverage is a double edged sword.....
Severe interuptions that destablize a developed economy such as severe cost strains in inelastic goods prices, can cause debilitating economic swings......as compared to the relative disruptions in developing countries that never had the credit windows.....