Adam Smith missed on predicting a culinary trend

"It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and impossible to store them like corn, for two or three years together. The fear of not being able to sell them before they rot, discourages their cultivation, and is, perhaps, the chief obstacle to their ever becoming in any great country, like bread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranks of the people."

Little did he know that sautéd potatoes were already becoming popular in Flanders. Little did he know that huge fast food chains would be created using deep fried potatoes as one of their staples. And little did he know that those deep fried potatoes could be frozen for years.

Have we become like imperial Rome?

Sometimes I wonder.  Bread, circuses, and foreign wars!

When I read about all the jockeying to get the public to pay for yet another stadium in the Twin Cities, I wondered about our future.

We are paying a lot for welfare for the less fortunate and even for the more fortunate.  We are paying huge sums to athletes and even more to build huge, luxurious stadiums for games.  And we fight wars around the globe; wars that hardly touch the vast majority of our population.

And many of the extremely wealthy are going to extremes to not pay for any of this.  If and when our empire collapses, will these same people plunder the public buildings for materials to build their country villas?