A Tale of Two Armada’s .
Andre Willers .
17 Mar 2014 .
Synopsis :
The failure of the Spanish Armada (1588) was followed by the
failure of the English Armada (1589).
Discussion :
1.History is written by the victors , so the disasterous failure
of the English Armada in 1589 was airbrushed out .
2.It had major effects
3.The Spanish Armada :
See Appendix A
Well known .
A totalitarian empire’s forces were defeated by a
free-enterprise system is the spin .
4.The English Armada .
See Appendix B
A free-enterprise system was defeated by a totalitarian system.
The spin was to ignore it .
5.Both sides failed because of internal weaknesses of each
particular system .
But the common factor was the cackhanded incompetence of the
bureaucracies .
6.This is still with us today .
The offensive systems are weak because the bureaucracies
have a big vested interest in keeping things the way they are .
WW I is a good example of what happens when this breaks down
.
7. At present (2014) , banking bureaucracies have been
responsible for most of the problems since 1990’s .
8.Purging of bureaucracies .
This has happened in the past .
Usually spun as collapse , but also as removing the dead
hand of the past .
9.Unfortunately , a collapse now after depletion of so many
resources will probably mean extinction for Homo Sapiens .
See Appendix C for easy reference .
10.See GINI and the Rubble of Empire .
Notice the same emphasis on distribution of wealth (GINI) in
Appendix C , the NASA article .
11.Bureaucracies .
“Grasping all , they lose all”
I was hoping that Ostrum principles would act as a check ,
but humans seem sadly determined on their own extinction .
If the future does not feature humans ofany description ,
how can duty be heavier than a feather ?
Andre
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Appendix A
The Spanish Armada
Well known .
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Appendix B
The English Armada, also known as the Counter
Armada or the Drake-Norris Expedition, was a fleet of
warships sent to the Iberian Coast by QueenElizabeth
I of England in 1589, during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604)
and the Eighty
Years' War. It was led by Sir Francis Drake as admiral and Sir John Norreys as general, and failed to drive home the advantage
England had won upon the dispersal of the Spanish Armada in the previous year. The campaign resulted in the
defeat of the English fleet and eventually to a withdrawal with heavy losses
both in lives and ships. The Spanish victory marked a revival ofPhilip
II's naval power through the next decade.[1]
The expedition was floated as a joint stock
company, with capital of about £80,000 — one quarter to come from the Queen,
and one eighth from the Dutch, the balance to be made up by various noblemen,
merchants and guilds.
With the opportunity to strike a decisive blow against the
weakened Spanish navy lost, the failure of the expedition further depleted the
crown treasury that had been so carefully restored during the long reign of
Elizabeth I. The Anglo-Spanish war was very costly to
both sides, and Spain itself, also fighting France and
the United Provinces, had to default on its debt
repayments in 1596, following another raid on Cadiz. But the failure of
the English Armada was a turning point, and the fortunes of the various parties
to this complicated conflict fluctuated until the Treaty of London in 1604, when a peace
agreement was signed.
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Appendix C
LOVING life? Well, lap it up because the days of driving around in
comfy cars, feasting on fancy food and enjoying an aircon-cooled civilised
existence could be numbered.
With rising population,
depleting natural resources and stretching social divide, civilisation could be
facing collapse within the next few decades according to a scientific study funded
by NASA. And if you
think this is a load of scaremongering tosh, it’s happened before. Remember the
Roman Empire?
In the report conducted
by applied mathematician, Safa Motesharri, his ‘Human And Nature Dynamical’
(Handy) model claims “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent
cycle found throughout history”.
“The fall of the Roman
Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires,
as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact
that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilisations can be both
fragile and impermanent.”
Our modern world might
appear to be pretty sure of itself with advanced technologies helping people
live longer and revolutionising everyday life but this might be to blame. Using
his theoretical model Motesharri explored several factors and ran different
scenarios that could lead to the collapse of industrial civilisation and found
a break down of society could arise from global population growing rapidly and
unsustainable resource exploitation.
And as resources deplete,
they will become more expensive. This is where he further states that “economic
stratification” — where society is further divided based on wealth — will
create “Elites” (rich) and “Masses” (poor) with the Elites being responsible
for over consuming leaving the Masses in famine and collapsing social
structure.
But before you start
hoarding resources, the study does conclude that this scenario is not
inevitable and that in order to prevent such catastrophe it calls on action by
the Elites to share the wealth and to do their bit in restoring balance.
“Collapse can be avoided
and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of
nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a
reasonably equitable fashion”
It does serve as a wake
up call that if we don’t want to face disaster we need to seriously consider
how we manage resources, population growth and wealth. The end is not yet
nigh...if we can help it.
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