Take the "bad money pushes out the good". What's good and what's bad ? We don't know, all we know is that the primary unit of account does not circulate, but instead pushes all the secondary units of account into movement in its stead.

It's not a well defined concept, but it is apparent to a variety of different approaches. Who's the boss ? The one sitting. What's the primate currency ? The one in which you save. Or, who's the boss ? The one that can explain the others. What's the primate currency ? The one of superior meaning ; the one of superior abstraction ; the one that's a superset of the others. On and on, in this manner, it's an empirical concept.

> the timing of events is not seriously treated by you

I daresay timing can not be seriously considered in this case. You get a sort of Heisenbergian choice, either get the specifics exact or the times exact. Asking for more violates pecuniodynamics.

The financial blast zone reference was the specific event that triggered the unwinding of Chicago's interest rate 'swaps' agreements as its creditworthiness was (finally) recognized as junk. This predictably will reduce law enforcement ability and make Chicago a significantly more dangerous place for me and mine as, on a nice day, walking to the border of the city was a reasonable exercise program at my old place of residence.

The financial troubles of Chicago are played out on the order of years, and if things go really wrong, decades. The Sun, however, plays out its processes on considerably longer periods than that, several orders of magnitude longer in fact.

While I recognize the theoretical similarities, reaching out to the Sun as a counterexample demonstrates my point, that the timing of events is not seriously treated by you because while I may very well live to see my local/national fiat die, I am highly unlikely to see the Sun die.

Here's the problem with the general theory of blast zone avoidance : inasmuch as the Sun is a total blast zone, and insamuch as the Earth is far enough from it to avoid the worst effects, it is nevertheless false that the Earth will stay habitable once the issues of the Sun's administration are fixed, either through political reform, demographic adaptation or pure and simple blasting itself out. In the latter case some of that blastout will surely reach you as far out as the Earth and ruin your constructive paradise, but in all cases the following cold will serve the same office.

So no, the notion that Indiana can be an example or a basis of discussion is untenable. It exists as it exists BECAUSE of the Chicago blast area, no matter what it may wish to think or dream itself into. Blair has more on this topic, also.

Gaddafi's Lybia was a very good example, or for that matter Mubarak's Egypt. These failed approximately for the same reason gifted students end up bullied in inner city schools - the curve of socialism doth not wish to be thrown.

> arbitrarily eliminate key US advantages?

Some advantages are more defensible than others. When we eliminate advantages (which is exactly what a simulation of conflict does, incidentally), we start with the weakest.

> the mainstream

This means nothing. What "mainstream" ? There isn't even one for low energy topics such as pop culture, let alone heavy duty items as contemplated here.

Amusingly enough, the USG has pluriously refused to accept its own debts in settlement of tax. By your repudiation-based definition, it's dead already.

To my eyes, a currency is dead once it no longer satisfies the primacy requirement. This has happened to all fiats cca 2010s, with the introduction of Bitcoin.