"Jarg" wrote in message . com...
"Tamas Feher" wrote in message ...

Envy is an ugly thing.


And we're starting to feel it. I mean the whole "Why is *our* oil un-
der *their* sand, way over there?!" thing.


The US has been such a paradise of relative tranquility because of
their great wealth and their vast natural resources. It didn't pay
to squabble over them because there was enough for everyone.

But squabbles did occur. Native Americans were genocided and evicted
into barren wastelands because greedy immigrant settlers looked at
their land in envy. The Irish lowly workers of two centuries ago hat-
ed the blacks squeezing into their niche. There was slavery, the Civ-
il War...

Yet overall it's been a paradisical state, while the rest of the
world, exploited, populated, and divided into tribes and nations for
millennia had a lot more unrest to deal with when riches from colonies
far away suddenly became an important issue.

Why did the US never pursue colonialism? Because they had everything
they needed right at home, that's why...


But precisely because of that tranquility they're also extremely naive
and inexperienced about what to do if things change. What do you do
if resources run out, peak, become more expensive to "produce" (i.e.
to pump out of the ground), have to be imported from far away all of a
sudden?

That is the point in history we've arrived at right now...



--
__ “A good leader knows when it’s best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture.” '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'