Repost Of Moral Decay

Global Guerrillas

"Moral decay is often cited as a reason for why empires/civilizations collapse. The slow failure of the US mortgage market, the largest debt market in the world and the shining jewel of the US economic/financial system, is a good example of moral decay at work.

Why is this market failing? It's being gutted -- from wholesale fraud and ruthless profiteering at the bank/servicer level to strategic defaults at the homeowner level -- because a relatively efficient and effective moral system is being replaced by a burdensome and ineffective one. What shift? Our previous moral system featured trust, loyalty, reputation, responsibility, belief, fairness, etc. While these features were sometimes in short supply, on the whole it provided us with an underlying and nearly costless structure to our social and economic interactions.

Our new moral system is that of the dominant global marketplace. This new system emphasizes transactional, short-term interactions rather than long-term relationships. All interactions are intensely legalistic, as in: nothing is assumed except what is spelled out in the contract. Goodness is solely based on transactional success and therefore anything goes, as long as you don't get punished for it.

In this moral system, every social and economic interaction becomes increasingly costly due to a need to contractually defend yourself against cheating, fraud, and theft. Worse, when legalistic punishment is absent/lax, rampant looting and fraud occurs.

Given the costs and dangers of moral decay, it's not hard to see why it can cause a complex empire/civilization to collapse."

A Visiting Ex-Rhodesian On Collectivism, The Dangers We Face, And How We CanTriumph

I have had an interesting visitor from South Africa. He owns the website "African Crisis," and has written a book called "Government by Deception" about the Communist takeover of Rhodesia, where he lived. He and many other Rhodesians fled the country and now he lives in S.A. I wrote some of the things he told us here Visiting America Part I. Like a modern de Tocqueville, he observed many things about common Americans and their land. He stayed with the people and ate with them rather than getting hotels or eating out, and also broadcast on a few radio stations.

Lydia, SWR

JOURNAL: Moral Decay?

"Our previous moral system featured trust, loyalty, reputation, responsibility, belief, fairness, etc. While these features were sometimes in short supply, on the whole it provided us with an underlying and nearly costless structure to our social and economic interactions.

Our new moral system is that of the dominant global marketplace. This new system emphasizes transactional, short-term interactions rather than long-term relationships. All interactions are intensely legalistic, as in: nothing is assumed except what is spelled out in the contract. Goodness is solely based on transactional success and therefore anything goes, as long as you don't get punished for it. "

Kaitlyn Amos: Women, Soccer, And Faith

"The following story is an account a young college woman’s love of soccer, but an even more important account of her faith–when the game was taken away from her"