"on the disparity between these two types of men, the fate of all subsequent civilization has hinged"

Happy birthday, Mom.

Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay. "Full book available" at Google Books. 

"The Law of Civilization and Decay is a book written by Brooks Adams in 1895. His intention was to prove that the rise and fall of civilizations follows a definite cycle of centralization and decay..."

 - Wikipedia

 
From the chapter on Rome:

Chapter 1: The Romans

When the Romans first emerged from the mist of fable, they were already a race of land-owners who held their property in severalty, and, as the right of alienation was established, the formation of relatively large estates had begun. The ordinary family, however, held perhaps twelve acres, and, as the land was arable, and the staple grain, it supported a dense rural population...

The Latins had little economic versatility; they lacked the instinct of the Greeks for commerce, or of the Syrians and Hindoos for manufactures. They were essentially land-owners, and, when endowed with the acquisitive faculty, usurers. The latter early developed into a distinct species, at once more subtle of intellect and more tenacious of life than the farmers, and on the disparity between these two types of men, the fate of all subsequent civilization has hinged. At a remote antiquity Roman society divided into creditors and debtors; as it consolidated, the power of the former increased, thus intensifying the pressure on the weak, until, when centralization culminated under the Caesars, reproduction slackened, disintegration set in, and, after some centuries of decline, the Middle Ages began.

It could have been written today, but it wasn't. It could be written about us, and one day, the way things are going, it will be.

In the book's Preface, Adams writes:

In offering to the public a second edition of The Law of Civilization and Decay I take the opportunity to say emphatically that such value as the essay may have lies in its freedom from any preconceived bias. All theories contained in the book, whether religious or economic, are the effect, and not the cause, of the way in which the facts unfolded themselves. I have been passive.

I like that. And I know just what Adams means; I do economics the same way: Look at the data a thousand times, until it starts to tell a story; then look at the data even more, to see how that story stands up. My task is to do my best to understand what the economy is telling me: to understand what it is telling me. Perhaps this is why I say that to solve problems like unemployment, problems that trouble people, we must correct the imbalances that trouble the economy. It's not personification for effect. It is the way the economic system works.

The economy and civilization

I spent July writing about the economy and civilization, and half of June or more working up to it, and half of August so far trying to disentangle myself from all that. Every morning I try to write, and by the next morning I have to abandon what I wrote and start again. Meanwhile, I can't even bring myself to read the July posts and tie up loose ends.

The other day I googled the economy and civilization but I couldn't read any of that, either.

Eh, I get like this sometimes.

What I do want to say is that if we could fix the economy, we wouldn't have to worry about civilization. And that if we don't fix the economy, worrying about civilization isn't going to help.

 

That's it, I guess. I thought I had more to say.

Notes on the Biden Inaugural

Quotes from the Inaugural transcript at Politico, followed by my remarks.

President Biden:

I understand that many Americans view the future with some fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs, about taking care of their families, about what comes next. I get it.

But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you do, or worship the way you do, or don’t get their news from the same sources you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.

I understand that Biden's main theme was unity, and I certainly acknowledge that unity is a high priority. I'm not sure, from reading Biden's speech, if the people he wants to bring into the fold will be enticed by what he's offering. I don't think I'd be comfortable with it, if I was one of them.

But in the words quoted above, Biden says people are worried "about their jobs, about taking care of their families, about what comes next." These are economic concerns. You're not going to solve our economic problems be being unified. You need a plan. More than that: You need some version of the right plan. You can only solve our economic problems if you understand what's causing them and if you shut down the problem at the source. 

For the record: the federal debt isn't the problem. It's a consequence of the problem. It will be easy to keep the federal debt in check if we solve the real problem, which is the rest of the debt -- debt other than federal. It's the private sector that needs to grow, so it's private sector debt that has to be reduced, by hook or by crook. 

Most especially by policy. We just need a little creativity. Look at it this way: They make laws that encourage borrowing, but they don't make laws that encourage repayment of debt. So debt accumulates. That's the problem that must be fixed.

What, you thought the problem that created the Financial Crisis was solved?

 

Again, Biden:

Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.

Not sure how long a period of time Biden has in mind when he says "the one we're in now." Short, probably. Since 6 January? The last four years, perhaps? Surely not decades.

We'd be lucky if it's only decades. Ian Hall writes of Arnold J. Toynbee:

The modern West, he believed, was past its genesis and growth phases, and was now in breakdown—indeed, it was now in a ‘Time of Troubles’ from which only a resurgence of ‘creativity’ could liberate it.

Not sure about this; I'm no expert on Toynbee. But it occurs to me to wonder if perhaps the "Time of Troubles" of our civilization is the whole of the "capitalism" phase of the cycle of civilization. The timing is right: 

Toynbee argues that our own time of troubles began during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

Ian Hall writes: "the most obvious symptom" of a Time of Troubles is "persistent, unlimited war"; the kind of war that "threatened the existence of the civilization." World wars; nuclear weapons; chemical weapons; biological warfare. 

Ian Hall on the Time of Troubles:

The causes of this development, Toynbee argued, were many and varied. First, there was a palpable loss of creativity, of the ability to respond to new challenges. 

Loss of "the ability to respond to new challenges": Our inability to solve perennial and long-term problems such as economic depression and the decline of growth.

Second, he observed that each civilization had seen a [schism] between the ‘dominant minority’ and the ‘internal proletariat’. 

Came to a head on the sixth of January, didn't it. Turns out Trump's people are the internal proletariat.

Third, he noted the presence in each case of an ‘external proletariat’ of barbarians or foreigners from a different civilization, which threatened the civilization from beyond its walls. 

Osama bin Laden and Iran and all that, and the Islamic civilization.

Last, Toynbee detected a ‘Schism in the Soul’ of each civilization which led to such social evils as a longing for a lost past or an unattainable future, a loss of individual or collective self-control, a rise in ‘truancy and martyrdom’, a tendency to fatalism, and an upsurge in cultural, sartorial, linguistic and sexual promiscuity.

A longing for a lost past? Perhaps like "Make America Great Again"? As for the rest, you probably know better than I.

"they lacked both writing and city life"

From page 81 in The Evolution of Civilizations (PDF, 425 pages) by Carroll Quigley:

Leaving aside for the moment the two civilizations found in the New World, we can arrange the fourteen Old World civilizations into a pattern to show their chief cultural connections. Many other connections, which we do not show on the diagram, exist in fact and can be inserted by the cognizant reader. It is to be noted that four of the early civilizations are cultural descendants of the Neolithic Garden cultures, which were not themselves civilizations (since they lacked both writing and city life):

I liked Quigley's diagram immediately, as it reminds me of Toynbee's work. But the diagram made it to the blog today because the paragraph is incomplete without it. And the paragraph made it to the blog because it tells a way to distinguish civilizations from more rudimentary forms of human society: civilizations have writing and cities. Writing, and cities.

Two thoughts on cities:

• from Let's Go Surfing Now:
  

  The cycle of civilization is a cycle in the dispersion and concentration of wealth. The inequality that troubles Piketty and the Pope is evidence of that cycle. The growth and decay of cities and nation-states is evidence of that cycle. The saucer-shaped pattern traced by interest rates during the course of ancient civilizations is evidence of that cycle.

• and from Civilization:
  

  Civilization may be seen in the rise and fall of cities, but it is measured in the rise and fall of the standard of value.

As far as writing goes, my impression is that writing first developed as a way to keep track of business transactions, financial obligations, inventory, and such.

These thoughts suggest that both writing and cities have economic ties to civilization. And that is related to the idea that the cycle of civilization is a business cycle which is driven by the concentration and dispersion of wealth.