"A Mountain of Debt"
by Joel Bowman
“An exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future...”
~ Thucydides, from his "History of the Peloponnesian War"
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "A time for peace, a time for war… a time of plenty, a time of few… a time for courage, a time for patience… What a time to be alive, dear reader! Standing on the brink of history, we are daily amazed as the world turns beneath our very feet.
In the newspapers we read reports of breathtaking technological marvels… alongside tales of war and waste. We see an age of unparalleled material abundance… on top of profound spiritual and philosophical emptiness. We learn of a future unfolding that is beyond our comprehension… even as we discover how little we know of our own past.
Take the recent story around the Herculaneum scrolls, for example, the only intact library to survive from the ancient Greco-Roman world. From The Smithsonian Magazine: "Scientists Have Deciphered the Surviving Fragments of a 2,000-Year-Old Philosophical Treatise Frozen in Time by Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption. The papyrus manuscript was part of a vast library preserved by volcanic ash. Now, the remaining passages - which examine ethics, knowledge and human nature - are accessible for the first time since 79 C.E.
Researchers working on the so-called Vesuvius Challenge used a combination of high-resolution scanning, sophisticated “virtual unwrapping” algorithms, and AI trained to detect tiny surface changes caused by ancient ink to access these texts, previously lost to time.
The library contains over 600 scrolls, potentially including missing works of stoic philosopher Chrysippus, lost dialogues by Aristotle, plus histories, plays and countless other treasures. It is not lost on us that the further we reach into the future – through technologies unimaginable barely a generation ago – the further we are able to gaze into the past. And yet, even as mankind labors meticulously to uncover lessons from ancient times… he is quick to forget those read to him just yesterday.
An Eruption of Debt: Witness the malignant creep of socialism in New York City, formerly the “capitalism capital” of the world. Notice the growing appetite for the State to “manage” whole industries – from grocery stores to A.I. to air conditioners and plenty besides – because, if nothing else, governments have proven themselves spectacularly competent at driving innovation, generating value and stewarding capital. (Ahem…)
Why, just take a look at the balance sheets of those very same nation states. Today, the ten most indebted nations on the planet account for 43% of the worlds entire GDP. Every single one of them – Japan, Greece, Italy, the USA, France, Canada Belgium, the UK, Spain and Portugal – carry debt-to-GDP ratios above 90%, the level economists used to consider the “danger zone.”
Click image for larger size.
One wonders, when future generations return to this corner of the universe, fresh and recharged from their interstellar vacations, what they will uncover from our primitive texts and primeval communications. Will they look at our collective store of knowledge with awe and wonder… or pity and shame? Have your say in the comments, below…"
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