How Countries Obtain And Sustain Dominance In The World

[guest post from EngineerofKnowledge]

I was having a conversation last week with one of my intellectual friends and we were pondering and analyzing why the British Empire had acquired so much power and influential dominance within their time period of over 200 years. Although small in area and population, Britain still was able to dominate the world’s political and economic demographics for almost 200 years. An example comes to mind of the modern counties of Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc, were created due to Britain’s influence in the world.

I have a personal collection set of Harvard University Classics books one which is titled, “The Wealth of Nations.” Short version summation of this book is the country that imports raw materials and performs the value added aspect, is the one who really controls the economy. The countries that export the raw material are the one’s that are subservient (third world) to those whom convert the raw material into products to be purchased, many times by the country that supplied the raw materials in the first place. Being able to control another country’s economy, you can control their politics and policies.

Reviewing Britain’s historical road to dominance is noted by the fact that they were one of the first countries to industrialize. Britain’s industrial revolution started first by dominating the textile industries, followed by iron and steel manufacturing. Britain was so protective of their technological lead in textiles that even people of the machinist trade working in the textile trades were not allowed to leave the country. It was not until those, based on religious freedoms, were allowed to come to the New England area of the American Colonies that the knowledge of British textile manufacturing technologies migrated into another country for competition.

Even today, traditionally the first industry that starts the industrialization of a country is the textile industry. Low educated work force is all that is required to start but all the while, bring up the education level in manufacturing of this work force as time progresses. This better educated work force is soon able to move into others areas.

Last week I had read in an economical report that noted a U.S. national statistics making the following observation. “Scrap meal was one of America’s most valuable exports last year, thanks to the rapid growth in China and India, where it is used in construction materials.” In a sense, China’s and India’s industrial might is being created out of our own ruins.

Just go to any clothing store and see how much dominance China and India have in our once textile industries. You will be challenged to find anything made in the U.S. at the retail dominating Wal-Mart stores.

As our domestic automobile industry is dying in the U.S., Ford Motors is opening up an automobile engine manufacturing plant in India. These engines are to be used in all of Ford’s products throughout the world. Ford is investing billions of dollars in this manufacturing plant, while they are closing the same type of facility in the U.S. and laying off American workers.

Some will say that it was the Unions that ruined the manufacturing aspect in this country but I counter that the McDonald’s part time high school student’s wage scale is not able to compete with the manufacturing labor rates in China and India.

It is usually good news for domestic products when the U.S. currency is devalued on the foreign exchange because it makes our manufactured goods cheaper for people in foreign countries to afford. The problem with this today is that for the last seven years we have aggressively dismantled our manufacturing infrastructure in this country and the multi-national corporations have setup new production plants in the Far East Pacific Rim. We no longer truly manufacture, the value added aspect, many products in this country so we cannot capitalize on the dollar being devalued on the world market. All we have is the higher cost paid for the products manufactured in the other countries. The record cost of oil and gold are a good examples of what is referred to Barometer Commodities.

Watching the Bloomberg financial report, the comment was made that our economy has not been this bad since the depression of the 1930’s. Job losses, bank failures, repossession of families’ homes, etc. were given as the examples. I would like to point out that we still had a stable manufacturing base in the 1930’s that we no longer have today.

So in summation, the policies of this administration have lead us into the worst finical, political, and long term devastation that will take decades to correct. It has never been more important for the citizens of this country to choose wisely this November, at all levels of government, if we are going to recover from the devastation of the “What’s My Cut On This Contract” and Pad my Pockets” policies of the last eight years.