I think you've probably hit the nail on the head, Lozart.
The govt will always talk up "economic recovery" but anyone who knows anything about economics knows that if you make nothing, you earn nothing, unless of course you can make people make stuff for you to sell and prevent them from selling it to whomever they like, for whatever currency they like, themselves. That is a strategy we see unravelling around us, which is again obvious, since the means of coercion ultimately has to come down to military force, which is expensive in not just treasure but political support, as the body count racks up.
Govt.s can lie their way through the process all they like, but it doesn't matter whether people understand the interminable euphemisms and jargon, at a basic level they do understand that when lives are being spent, we had better be getting something palpable in return for them. If people suspect that our leaders would rather spend the lives of young people than the money of their cronies for nothing more than the status quo, which will thus require more lives as soon as the situation normalises after any given surge in conflict, then support flows away like water in a holey bucket. In fact it's a situation that often produces civil unrest.
This is a cyclical state of affairs which, so far, has been managed in the west, but in the global game of Risk there are no little countries left to subjugate. Any territory which can be forced to produce something and prevented from selling it themselves to whomever they like is already under the control, by one means or another, of a large faction with both the means and, more importantly, the need, to defend that control.
WTF does this have to do with dirty boots you may ask? The global situation we are in has no exact precedent but those who study the periodicity of cyclical economics such as K-waves have predicted a confluence of downward trends which would create conditions worse than The Great Depression. But as I say, cycles of economics may no longer be reliable, since those who make the decisions which cause them are now aware of them, the world market potential is close to being maxed out, and the consequences of losing territory are now so much more final. Which brings us back to base principles: if you make nothing, you earn nothing.
Historically the only way that any capitalist economy has ever recovered from an economic slump is by direct top down investment in the kind of infrastructure which improves ordinary peoples' lives. The reasons are many and complex but can be summed up by saying that the profit from investing in such infrastructure is severely reduced if it is taken in cash for the use of that infrastructure, but is rather far better measured in the increased productivity and business opportunities created by healthier, happier, wealthier, ordinary people. This is a philosophy which conservative monetarists are dead set against. Even though all evidence is against them...
So wtf this has to do with dirty boots is just this - there is no other political philosophy with enough followers to achieve any significant power. Even the so called 'left' do not dispute the monetarist principle that nothing has any value other than what somebody is prepared to pay for it, right there and then, at the moment of analysis. So we in the west can look forward to nothing actually changing until such time as something happens which is so bad that we are forced to reconsider what drives our economic and political decisions. Thus we will be on the point of economic collapse, only held off by military occupation and threat, for the foreseeable future. It is very likely that our throwaway culture will have to change, because wages are only going to continue to fall, in comparison to the cost of living, and military expenditure is going to become such a millstone around any chancellor's neck, compared to falling tax revenue, that surplus will no longer be sold off for a pittance.
