![]() ![]() And while not everyone will agree that use in war qualifies as "usefulness," I'm pretty sure that those who would otherwise have been on the losing side, or lost at sea in a tiny rubber raft, are likely to.įrom more than a 1,000 years ago there are accounts of kites flying at night carrying noise makers to frighten opposing soldiers. Many of these exceptions have to do with warfare. Kite use in religious ceremony fails this criterion also, and I don't believe that there's any possibility kites were used to build the pyramids either!īut kites undoubtedly have, at times, been used for purposes other than entertainment or play. Sure, kites do bring happiness to a lot of people (a fair amount of frustration too, as Charlie Brown will attest), but this is too touchy-feely to fit with my view of the world. Nor does "making happiness" qualify as being useful by my reckoning. Two and four-line demonstrations, and show kite displays are the essence of major kite festivals.īut they are "entertainments" that don't add any more value to the world than the Roman Circus did - or reality TV does now. Nor do kite displays at public events qualify by my definition, although they have some utility as tourist attractions. Kiteboarding, snow kiting, and kite buggying are established popular sports, but they are "play." At which point I thought: "whoops, I've just scored an own goal." But what is "useful"? Western democracies are arguably heading in the same direction judging by the rise and rise of the number and power of "public servants" with their protected employment status and pensions.Īnother cause of cost disease is that the gradual accumulation of regulations mires everything in a bureaucratic bog.īut my suggestion was/is that citizens of stable countries, reacting to wealth and security, gradually lose focus on what's useful and put their energies into entertainment and play instead. The Ottoman empire fell because of this, and the privileged "Nomenklatura" contributed to the USSR's fall, while entrenchment of the ruling Mandarin class in pre-modern China was the main cause of China's weakness in the 19th century. One cause is that state functionaries hijack the apparatus of government to get sinecures and protected status for themselves. There are various theories as to what causes cost diseases to take hold of stable countries and empires. And they are to blame for the "century of shame" when China became so dysfunctional that foreigners bullied them unmercifully (which China is now determined to exact revenge for). ![]() And India during the Mogul era (allowing easy conquest by England). Countries, empires, and civilizations with cost diseases eventually choke on their own inefficiencies.Ĭost diseases did it for Rome and the Ottomans. ![]()
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