I’ve finally started educating myself on the current economic crisis. However we move past this current credit crunch (soft landing vs. hard landing), the fact is that Americans will likely face a lower standard of living within our lifetimes. You might not have believed that the decline of the American Empire had begun up until 2008, but it’s clearly in motion now.

Unfortunately, the imperial decline could have dire effects, worldwide. Whatever your opinion on the fairness of an empire, one thing it can promote is stability. If our capacity to service our national debt diminishes to the point where we have to remove our military presence from the hundred or so nations where we have bases, we may see scores of regional wars in the power vacuum.

Additionally, an empire in decline has few resources to devote to stewardship of the enviroment (or, put more simply, long-term planning.) We can elect as progressive a government, come November. The US may simply be unable to withstand the political and economic costs of raising energy prices in order to combat global warming.

Perhaps another nation will take up the role of “global policeman.” Perhaps dramatic new technologies will save our GHG-saturated climate. The future is unknown, but the dire scenarios are looking worse and more likely than ever.

Certain products that enjoy economies of scale enjoy the highest quality at a low cost, which means that the best available item of its sort is available to most people.

John Gruber touches on this while gushing about the iPhone. The example of Coca Cola was interesting for its time, but modern consumer electronics really are the end-point for this idea:

“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
— Andy Warhol

So too with the iPhone. A billionaire can buy homes, cars, clothes that the rest of us cannot afford. But he cannot buy a better phone, at any price, than the iPhone that you can have in your pocket today.