United by Money

Pragmatically Distributed predicted that the election of Macron would result in a civil war in France within five years. What we're seeing now is civil unrest, not civil war, although we're not yet even two years into his tenure. Even if Macron is forced to step down it won't constitute a civil war. A war, a real literal war, requires armed groups of people trying to kill each other.

It has long been my opinion that money is the only thing that holds us together as a nation. After that, we share a language - which is certainly important - and then pop culture. So once the money goes away, we quickly will find ourself scraping at the bottom of the barrel of common interest. America is not a tribe. That much should be clear. That ended in 1965 when Congress decided we should prioritize immigration from those not of western European heritage. They might as well have renamed the United States of America to the Multicultural States of America while they were at it. MSA! MSA! I guess it just didn't have the same ring to it.

A nation divided cannot stand. That much has been known for some time. But our superiors insisted we could still be nation, a proposition nation, where the proposition was that I won't infringe your rights if you don't infringe mine. It all sounds good, but the obvious question arises: what happens if the proposition dies? If there's anything we've learned in the past few years, it's that the proposition of America is a mere fiction. Not all get the same rights. Elections can be nullified. It's just a power struggle. Lee Kuan Yew warned that multicultural democracies collapse into competing ethnic & religious voting blocs. In America, we have a bitter struggle between the party that gets 2/3 of white votes and the party that gets 3/4 of non-white votes. Put America into the category of evidence that supports the Yew hypothesis.

We still have money, so we still have unity. I predict that once the economy collapses, the rest will go too. The French have a lot of reasons to be angry, but they seem to be protesting about money. French GDP growth per capita has been around or slightly above 1% for the past few years. It is outpaced by both inflation of the Euro and increases in government spending, each at about 2% a year. The typical French worker is losing income each year, yet being tasked to fund a perpetually growing government. It's why the prediction was made that Macron's election would cause civil war - although I suspect he overestimates how much reform would really happen under the nationalist socialist versus the globalist socialist. [For reference, what has really been reformed under two years of Trump?] In fact, the riots were in response to Macron's attempts to reign in social welfare spending, and a gas tax increase. Does anyone suspect they wouldn't riot against Le Pen for doing the same? Many from the right joined in the festivities - and are probably venting decades-long disdain for their government - but still nothing happened until the financial squeeze was on.

So keep all that in mind. A nation divided will stand until the money gets tight. Then it becomes a powder keg. A lifetime of resentments will come to a boil. I consider it quite possible that this country will dissolve, in some fashion, in my lifetime. Think about it, you'd be crazy not to carry fire insurance, right? I did the numbers some time ago, and found that the average time to inferno for a US home was something like five or six hundred years. Yet, you get the insurance in case it happens in the years that you own the home. Look at where we're at, do you really think this can go on for five or six hundred years? To believe that would be far crazier than winging it without insurance. From here on out, each economic downturn will come with a significant risk of social collapse.