national economics reliant on space weapons and triffids

It is a rainy afternoon, I am having a cuppa and my usual afternoon-ly random trawl of the web.

Today's topic is 'carnivorous plants' which brings us to triffids, and to the linked gem of an essay.

For example, this paragraph:

"The Nazis were first encouraged by big business to limit the political Left; the Nazis then started to control industry; war when it came allowed a cover the exterminations; the extermination camps provided labour for industry, and for wealth to be stolen and re-cycled. Ultimately the war economy was going to be destroyed, weakened from the inside by the need for soldiers to guard the camps etc, making them unavailable to fight, but the destruction was an integral part of the process of:- big business encouraging Nazism, encouraging war, devaluing life, the destruction of Europe, the destruction of Nazism. One part re-enforces the other. It has happened elsewhere but this was the example that both authors had seen at first hand."

From 'Day of the Triffids' through 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four' to what happens to civilizations that allow themselves to be ruled by blocs.

Fascinating reading, if a little bleak.