# Has pathological greed destroyed the Occident? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 15, 2016, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876 "2016-08-15T04:46:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/81 "2016-08-19T01:17:10Z")
> [@iLemming](#): > > . . . How this does not pique even a corpuscle of urine-fetid perspiration upon the simian brow of broader, bulging burger bourgeois, is testament unequivocal to the efficacy . . . G’wan, admit it: you’re throwing darts at a dictionary, right? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/82 "2016-08-19T01:44:52Z")
Maybe Pat Buchanan has a new hobby. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/83 "2016-08-19T02:29:41Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > G’wan, admit it: you’re throwing darts at a dictionary, right? Perchance thrusting flechettes at a Thesaurus… ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/84 "2016-08-19T04:56:32Z")
I think he’s using Google translate 5 times: English-Icelandic-Swedish-Gaelic-English or something. Maybe 10. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/85 "2016-08-19T09:38:08Z")
> [@iLemming](#): > > Please take the time out from your work-a-day, battery iHuman lives to watch the linked-to documentary. It’s less than 90 minutes of your lives invested into something that _will_ affect you and your progeny; like it or not. I’m supposed to spend an hour and a half watching something just for the purpose of arguing with someone on the Internet? ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2016, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/86 "2016-08-19T20:02:30Z")
> [@iLemming](#): > > Ahhh! The dulcet dirge of desperate disclaiming, droned by defeatist deadites, strikes as euphonious a refrain as ever! > > See, the thing is, not everyone is a prostrating nihilist **pause for incredulous gasp** ; and to assume that they are, not only makes an _ass_ out of yo_u_ and _me_, but evinces one’s own innate, self-immolatory inclinations. I guess that is why global vox populi surveys predominantly correlate to our very own “world police” as the most threatening element to the maintenance of world peace… ironically enough. > > Even by [your own war-hawk-ish, mawkish, machismo military’s estimates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_AJYN_NVkg), the U.S. could not ‘win’ a war with China–_today_–without “heavy” losses and to ultimately achieve little more than an “inconclusive” outcome. Extrapolate this conservative estimate over the coming years, where the technological “gap”[[citation needed] ](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1913442/chinas-military-closing-technology-gap-us-forces-says) will invariably decrease in leaps of magnitude, and you’re confronted with a scenario of not only a greed-induced economic nadir, but the only ace the U.S. ever had - post WW2, _ad hoc_ imperialism through armipotence-imposed hegemony - becoming little more than a nerf gun in the face of the chortling, teeming, predator-satiating, multitudinous Sino masses. Which, suffice it to say, speaks volumes for the $600 billion in disclosed military funding that, seemingly, gets poured down the pissoir per annum. > > **Sidebar:** Did ol’ Rumsy ever end up knowing where that unknown two trillion fiat$ was known to have been unknown of…? :rolleyes: > > How this does not pique even a corpuscle of urine-fetid perspiration upon the simian brow of broader, bulging burger bourgeois, is testament unequivocal to the efficacy the [Zionist wittol MSN’s dog-waging](https://twitter.com/HKX07/status/755375255422578688), the dulcifying properties of [high fructose corn syrup](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3892434/) and the cerebrum stultifying supplementation of [DNA-defiling Teflon carcinogens](https://theintercept.com/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-deception/) – in concert, having conspired to create an offensively obtuse, obnoxious opus of somnambulting simpletons; seduced into submissive sissification, in-keeping with the sadomasochistic stylings of their Satanic similarcurm, slave state subjugators. > > ‘_Come he slow or come he fast, > 'Tis but **Death** that comes at last!_’ ur dumb ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/87 "2016-08-20T15:01:28Z")
no u ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/88 "2016-08-20T17:35:40Z")
I _like_ saying “Occident” and “Orient.” Goes back to when I was a kid and read Richard Halliburton’s _Book of Marvels_. He separated the Marvels of the world into two parts that way. Guess it made more sense than doing “Northern Hemisphere” and “Southern Hemisphere.” > **[Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252454.Richard_Halliburton_s_Complete_Book_of_Marvels)** > > Discover and share books you love on Goodreads. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/89 "2016-08-20T20:10:46Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > [My font-size changes.] > > 1. 90 minutes is a large time commitment to ask of a stranger. > 2. I have no progeny. > 3. “Occident,” which is obsolescent if not obsolete, sounds like one of those words racists use as a thinly-disguised code for When the World Was White and Therefore Awesome (unless you’re not white, or a woman, or gay, etc.). The references to China in the OP did nothing to dispell that impression. If there’s a reason you’re using Occident instead of West that _isn’t_ covert racism, I’d appreciate a clarification. > > Also, _it’s_ is the contraction of “it is.” You want the possessive pronoun, which has no apostrophe. _No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee._ ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/90 "2016-08-20T20:38:30Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I _like_ saying “Occident” and “Orient.” > > Goes back to when I was a kid and read Richard Halliburton’s _Book of Marvels_. He separated the Marvels of the world into two parts that way. Guess it made more sense than doing “Northern Hemisphere” and “Southern Hemisphere.” > > [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252454.Richard\_Halliburton\_s\_Complete\_Book\_of\_Marvels](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252454.Richard_Halliburton_s_Complete_Book_of_Marvels) Occident would be Western Hemisphere, and Orient the Eastern, but point taken. I think it’s just an old fashioned usage. ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/91 "2016-08-20T21:05:53Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > _No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe…_ [Noman’s Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomans_Land_(Massachusetts)) ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/92 "2016-08-20T21:13:46Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Pathological greed was how the West became powerful in the first place.\*\* Spanish gold\*\*, pepper from India, tea from China, bananas from Nicaragua… The great empires of history are trade empires. > > What would you replace trade with? (emphasis mine, nitpickery also) Silver, akshully. Gold was for making baubles for European consumption, and incidentally fucking up their own currency in the process. But it only made up some 15ish% of the New World loot, all told (at least until the first American gold rush - but that came centuries later). In 1535 alone for example, Spain imported 1.6 tons of gold and 27.2 tons of silver from the Americas (factoring in shipwrecks, piracy and so forth). Silver was where it \*really \*was at - everybody else wanted it, because China wanted moar of it always and also because the Spanish silver \*real \*was the dependable international currency of the time, much like the dollar is today. But really, China was \*\*the \*\*hot topic of the 16th century. 75% of all the silver brought to Europe from the Americas found its way there eventually. Almost every metal exchange in the Indian ocean by Europeans involved silver - either giving it away for local goods “because you can sell it to the Chinese later” (local goods themselves to be further exchanged in convoluted supply chains for what Europeans _really_ craved - spices and Indian cloth), or exchanging it for Chinese goods directly. Hence the nightmare that was Potosi. Look it up sometime - the Nazis \*wish \*they’d worked people to death that efficiently - and profitably. The other hot topic was the Maluku Islands - but that got traded with lead, not silver. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2016, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/93 "2016-08-20T21:56:22Z")
> [@ddsun](#): > > Occident would be Western Hemisphere, and Orient the Eastern, but point taken. I think it’s just an old fashioned usage. I meant Halliburton went for the vertical slice rather than the horizontal. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/94 "2016-08-21T16:51:32Z")
Just was watching a Phoenix Wright LP, and it reminded me of this guy. [Redd White](http://aceattorney.wikia.com/wiki/Redd_White), why not go back to Bluecorp? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2016, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/95 "2016-08-21T19:10:14Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I meant Halliburton went for the vertical slice rather than the horizontal. I’ll take Paul Lynde to block … oh wait, that’s not what you meant. ---
**Author:** ![iLemming](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90db22/32.png) [@iLemming](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iLemming)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2016, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/96 "2016-08-22T09:41:57Z")
‘_What an anfractuous web of avarice weaved, By those yoked in profligacy’s terminal disease._’ [U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army-idUSKCN10U1IG) (Reuters) > [@](#): > > "\*\*\*The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced. > > The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up. > > As a result, the Army’s financial statements for 2015 were “materially misstated,” the report concluded. The “forced” adjustments rendered the statements useless because “DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.\*\*\*” Purporting to not know what is otherwise known - ‘the unknown’ - yet professing to be in full knowledge of what is indeed known _to know_ that which is unknown, is not a known or recognised field of knowledge – _i.e._, the realm of the '_known unknown knowledge of knowing_ '. Planting one’s head beneath the parched, arid, Californian desert sands - irrespective of how resoundingly hollow one’s dull dome may be or how much hot, flatulent air distends it - will inevitably lead to eventual suffocation. **Moral:** Subsisting upon the hydrogen-sulphide highs the bucket bongs of one’s own fetid farts of foolishness elicit, will only sustain a burger for so long, before its gnarled knee joints buckle, its rectitudinous retardation is rocked and finally it topples – tumbling down, like a three-score-and-ten-year tall pile of excreta; layer upon layer of Ponzi poo-poo–dewlaps of dopey degeneracy cascading–avalanche of arrogant adiposity–finally coming to rest in a septic pool of effervescing excrement. Forever to serve as didactic deterrent to the disastrous destiny dictated by dissolute decadence. ‘_The Burger; concentred all in self. Lurching, shall forfeit fair renowned. And triply engorged, shall fall down Into the vice and lust from whence it spawned – Uwept, unhonoured and forever unmourned._’ -Sir Wilted Snot ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2016, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/97 "2016-08-22T11:01:19Z")
Not bad when read in Booji Boy’s voice. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/W5dbEKYo6f4/hqdefault.jpg "Booji Boy") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5dbEKYo6f4) ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2016, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/98 "2016-08-22T15:10:29Z")
Well, _SOMETHING_ apparently did. I can’t even FIND it on a map… ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2016, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/99 "2016-08-22T17:16:47Z")
Troll or off his meds. Or both. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876/100 "2016-08-22T17:32:47Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Well, _SOMETHING_ apparently did. I can’t even FIND it on a map… You’re right. I thought I just had to _orient_ it correctly… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-pathological-greed-destroyed-the-occident/762876.md?page=6)