Originally Posted by
jungle
This was not posted to vent silly left/right screed, but more in light of history and what we have really learned about declines in civilization.
There is a lot of history on this, even quite recently with Arab springs, Ukrainian spring and some other interesting current events.
So what really causes decline?
I can think of two examples - over consuming elites leading to the collapse of a civilization. The first is Bourbon France prior to the revolution of 1789 while the second is the Soviet Union prior to its collapse. In both cases the elites caused the "over consumption of resources" through forcing economic misallocation meant to maintain their own power; just like current day communist China and, arguably, Obama's transformed United States.