Enzyte-Geist: Or, how to keep the status quo up for longer than four hours.

[WingDinger]

Once upon a time, all three Abrahamic religions spoke against Usury. One of them took it to heart. The Islamic world has ever since, required it's lenders to partner with business. This skin in the game, was a throttle of sorts. It limited the development potential. The other two hadn't those qualms. The proscription against usury was likely to rid religion of a competitor for leaching fortunes.

Lets go back just a bit further first. The original way to advance, as a nation state, was to take the stuff of other cultures. But this was a messy affair. Enter usury. To my knowledge, the first true bit of usury was when Jacob offered Esau a mess of porridge, in exchange for his birth rite. It would seem that such an underhanded trick, based on usury would not be rewarded. On the contrary, Jacob was loved of God, and Esau was hated. So started the endorsement of usury. While the Islamic world followed their silly book, the Jews used their cynicism and their geographical advantage to establish early examples of modern finance. And to keep that system from devolving into the aforementioned method of gain{war}, attached to commerce was rule of law. These concepts were repeated by those similarly led by the expanded version of the Jewish book. So started the western traditions.

Usury was so efficient at accumulating wealth, and distributing it upwards, that any other system was to become anathema. In addition, the more modern book even included ways to rid yourself of the guilt of the original proscription against usury. This became quite an elegant dodge, and soon enough, a few hail mary's and an our father, and you were scot free.

Those assemblages that aspired to empire status, studied the art of usury, to bleed the wealth of those outside the confines of those the empire served. This mimicked the Jewish system of burdening tourists with the bulk of social safety net expenditures. This was achieved by limiting the pathetic to begging only at the city gates.

This worked quite well, and allowed for a time an advanced lifestyle for those the empires served. Eventually, new blood was required, and so colonies were added. Soon though, limits of control saw rebellion amongst those fleeced. The fix, was to deem some of your own population less worthy. And so was created the investor class.

All things worked for the benefit almost exclusively, for these elite. Sure there were sops given to the prols. But only enough to stop them from catching on to the scam. The name for this system of governance was capitalism.

This system was for the benefit of the elite, yet spoke of great advantage to the common man. The cyclical nature of capitalism allowed periodic buyback, of all the common man earned from the elites. This was called the business cycle, and became the God they worshiped. Raising it to a deity, was to shield it from any scrutiny.

This system of governance, could not tolerate competition of other forms, so all opposition was demonized. Hateful labels were attached, and the original wealth accumulation tool was used to rid capitalism of it's competitors. Namely, war and threat of war.

Soon, advances in capitalism removed the necessity of actually owning a colony, or inhouse colony{slaves}, as efficient mechanisms were created to attach the wealth of others, without the responsibility of feeding and clothing them. Soon enough these resembled international loansharks. With acronym names like IMF and World Bank. And the biggest loanshark of all, the FED. The system of capitalism had a built in slave function. And it was hard to observe, only requiring any money created to not include the usury portion{interest}. This made rapacious expansion a do or die affair, and any alternative not only undesireable, but unimaginable. And so, the perfectly repeateable business cycle, and usury fleecing interest system did what it was designed to do. It accumulated ever more percentage of wealth to the investor class. And allowed those same to purchase at fire sale price what little those less than were able to hold onto.

This went swimmingly, until the earth became small. Rapacious expansion meant looking for any wealth not under capitalism. What better target for this expansion than those still allergic to usury. Those under the Koran would make perfect subjects. And so, shopping began. Iraq, being the islamic leader of infrastructure, became too tantalizing a target to ignore. Very little improvements were required, to begin the bleeding. It could even be declared as revenge against those that didn't want to become subjects and had said it with airliners.

Islamics weren't the only ones ripe for fleecing, due to being off the capitalist grid. Several Latin American countries also were ripe. And even could be considered enemies, as they had called our God names. Their epithet for God{capitalism], was gringo.

While we didn't like competition, a few were too strong and belligerent to tame. And they remained off the grid. What we didn't foresee, is that all those under our capitalist boot would suffer the business cycle downturn simultaneously. Those rogues that had resisted and were too strong to dominate, would be free to be the investor class to buy up all the possessions of those good little capitalists. At fire sale prices.

And so brings my tale to the present. Game theory could have predicted this end, to anyone not blinded by usury worship.

I am truly sorry, for I am a better historian than philosopher, and have not even the vocabulary to imagine the next upgrade. Unfortunately, that upgrade seems to be outside of our control and purview. And so, thru greed and shortsightedness, the colonizers become the colonized. Good day comrades. I must get back to work at the salt mines.