"Balance" goes through the fall of economic powers

 

Gino Frobel




This book talks about past economic world powers and the steps they took to undo their own influence and power in the world. It is kinda of a dull economic book with a libertarian slant but it has a whole chapter on California that I found interesting. California is a state that has really fallen in my lifetime and the budget mess is something else. The basic problem with how California fell is it grew too much and too fast allowing all these refugees and illegals to squat and proliferate in the state costing it millions. This book only shortly goes through this and the high costs of people moving further away from cities and immigrants is a classic case of how sprawl will ruin a country and in this case a state. The free market allowed all these farm and orange groves to be redeveloped into subdivisions and destroyed a part of the classic traditional California economy that helped it to fucking rise to begin with. California was at one time the eighth largest GDP in the world and allowing a million Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon didn't help the Golden state remain golden and prosperous. In fact, it helped drive it in the opposite direction and then you had all these white government workers that demanded fatter contracts so they can live farther away from the barrios and little Cambodia.
   Other chapters go through Japan,Europe, and of course the best case for a empire that collapsed under its own mismanagement and foolishness. Spain is so far from a world power one has to think eventually people will look at the collection of states that existed as a world power in North America and how their foolishness and stubborn pride spending money on oversea oil reserves pushed it on the brink of collapse and fortunately a short existence as the only world power tat its time. They can all look at California for a quick look at how this country deservedly fell apart.