Actually, I think it's fair to say that China has imploded and been re-born ala the Phoenix a number of times.

So, you think the US would be better off if we adopted the EU / EMU as a model, then?

True, I didn't think of that. Not that small countries don't also have wars, and problems, but it seems like it would be much easier to govern correctly. Compared to a country as large as ours with different geographical regions where the people and land differ so greatly.

Better off, who's to say. I don't claim to know what I'm talking about in this regard, it just seems pretty logical to me that smaller in this regard is better. In every other aspect of life, smaller is easier to maintain and manage and much more efficient, be it car, house, farm, store, city, ect. I can't see country being any different. You have politicians completely out of touch with people they are trying to govern thousands of miles away, and national organizations and companies trying to keep up with far too much over too large of a spread.

Attachment 239412

You are right! I am going to put in a row each of orange and grapefruit trees just as soon as the snow is finished melting:giggle:

Well< Rome certain outgrew its ability to be effectively governed... Still, I wonder if the developments in electronic communication of the 20th and 21st centuries will, in the perspective of history, prove to be a paradigm-changing technology? Really, a territory is only as large as the time required for information to cross it.

Well, in some ways yes, and in other ways no.

One big country is definitely better in terms of having a strong and cohesive military. The US and Russia were the Big Dogs in WWII because we had enormous armies and navies, and sufficient infrastructure to keep them supplied.

It's also better in terms of resource self-sufficiency. We have oil in the southeast, coal in the north, timber in the north-central and northwest regions, cotton in the south, lots of good agricultural land in the west, etc. Because we're all one country, it's easier to move resources around from place to place than it would have been were we all split up like Europe. (This is one big reason why the EU and EMU were such a hit- it made it easier for Europe to pretend to be the US from an agro-industrial standpoint.) Germany and Japan, to pick two countries completely at random, might have fared differently in the mid 20th century if they had significant oil-producing capability of their own.

It's unlikely that the Internet itself would ever had been invented were it not for the need to create a fault-tolerant computer network that spanned an entire continent from coast-to-coast. 50 individual countries would not have had that requirement.

Etc.


So, yeah. Pluses and minuses.

"There are no solutions...there are only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell

Come on, don't be like that. Not everything can be grown local of course, but a lot of things can. And not even just growing local, but people eating local produce, whatever is available.

All true points. I guess it's all a matter of what one finds important. I wish we had a weaker military that we spent FAR FAR less money on. It was needed in WWII, but we never backed down, and kept expanding and growing our military might. We don't need it. I still think internet would have been invented, just maybe not when and why.

Still, whether or not there would be a net gain or loss in quality of life, it's all up for debate.

Well, maybe, and maybe not.

It's impossible to say what would have happened in the latter half of the 20th century had the US dismantled its military after WWII, while the Soviet Union continued to grow, right alongside other potentially belligerent nations. We might have already had World Wars 3 and 4 by this point- Alaska and western Canada might be part of the USSR, Hawaii might be owned by China, most of the OPEC nations by Iraq, etc.

Precisely. Maybe, maybe not. And I wasn't suggesting dismantling totally, just not expanding out of control, to where we end up with the disgustingly overpowered military we have today. The worlds bully.

The thing about bullies is that there's always going to be one. Best-case, you just hope that he's relatively even-tempered and on your side.

He is sort of even tempered I guess, I'm not sure how much on "our side" they are actually.

Fun fact: Having someone on your ignore list is rendered largely moot if (almost) every one of their posts in a given thread is quoted.

Why U no like Joe?

I have tickets for my son and I to see Dave Chappelle on thursday night here in Jax. Woot.

You may now return to The Eeyore Show.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1387255821

meh.

nothing to write home about.

though i could be subject to QOS.

Fa reel son? I think that was targeted at me. :giggle:

My Wife was driving home from work about midnight tonight and some Asshole decided to turn left in front of her at an intersection. She plowed into him at about 50 mph. She's going to be ok. Our Mazda5 is totalled. I hope she killed the fucker.

Someone has the Christmas spirit. I'm very glad your wife is going to be alright. I hope the other person is, too. I wouldn't want someone to lose a wife, mother, father, son, daughter due to an accident, much less right before Christmas. I'm sure the other person didn't want to have the accident either. I understand your frustration, though.