USA=Rome (a mini book review by HOBO POTHEAD)

From the book, The Betrayal of American Prosperity by Clyde Prestowitz.

Introduction: Loads of Dung

“Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia Road (Ostia was Rome’s seaport) was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the Marble of Asia Minor, the Timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt – and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo.” – Winwood Reade, the Martyrdom of Man

What, you may ask, does the state of Rome and Roman trade have to do with the condition of the United States Today? Anyone who visits Long Beach, California, will quickly understand the answer. The port of Long Beach is where most of the hulking container ships that carry the goods of Asia to the American market are unloaded. To the inexperienced eye, it is a vast expanse of cranes, stacked containers, and parking lots waiting to accommodate the millions of imported cars that roll off specialized Asian auto ships destined for the American consumer.

Long Beach is the Ostia of our day, the gateway to the great American market. Even more striking than the size of the port and the armada of ships is the contrast between the cargo that’s off-loaded and the cargo being loaded for the return trip to Osaka, Busan, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. The imports are as numerous as the sands on the nearby beach, including everything from shoes and shirts to computers, autos, advanced telecommunications gear, and photo voltaic panels for generating solar energy, The Exports, though, are few, consisting mostly of scrap metal and waste paper – this millennium’s dung, you might say.

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