6 ms·

I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more likely, esp

I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more likely, especially as budget issues prevent the US from deploying the same overwhelming military power all over the globe. America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you- when push comes to shove, we'll always fund Social Security over another aircraft carrier or 30,000 troops in South Korea. So, a slow fadeout seems way, way more likely. Plus, declining birth rates & declining business dynamism. The states that actually collapse are the more rigid, authoritarian ones like the USSR or the Ottoman Empire. Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. No offense but I have to roll my eyes a bit at these disaster fetishists. Orlov is apparently a foreign-born one, but we have tens of thousands of domestic ones here in the states, this is a very old belief system. (Hell, my parents were back to the land hippies fleeing Nixon & the imminent nuclear apocalypse!)

traes 6y ago
> Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Rome?
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  The Roman Empire, in its various forms, lasted for 1000 years.
  - blululu 6y ago
    Indeed, and even after the fall of Constantinople there were various Byzantine Rump Staes in places like Trebizond. There is some historical chicanery in the classic Western European telling of the story of the 'Byzantine Empire'. No such country ever existed as such - the name was applied to the Eastern Roman Empire by German historians after the fall of Constantinople. While it still existed, the Eastern Roman Empire was referred to as the Roman Empire (or Roman Kingdom or simply Romania).
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  The decline and fall of the Roman Empire (the western half) took centuries. The eastern half of the empire took an additional thousand years or so to follow a similar trajectory.
zozbot234 6y ago
Our countries may not be authoritarian but they're certainly rigid in the sense of having a huge amount of accumulated "technical debt" in their social organization, that by definition is simply not amenable to gradual change. A collapse of some sort is then the only feasible form of restructuring, and is a natural consequence of such circumstances especially given outside stressors. So I would definitely not put it beyond the realm of possibility.
- pfraze 6y ago
  I do agree that the US is rigid in its thinking. We accumulated a lot of wealth in the mid-20th century and a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about undertaking new national ventures to bring in significant new wealth. It's understandable to a degree - we have a lot to risk by taking big national projects - but it feeds into our distribution problems because we want to be capitalist but we don't have enough new frontiers for capitalism to create opportunities for the younger generations. I'd argue we're in a preservative/cost-cutting mindset rather than a generative/competitive mindset, which can be seen reflected in anti-trust policies. The philosophy has been to focus anti-trust around consumer benefit (eg lower prices) rather than to ensure competitive markets. We're more concerned with consumers' purchasing power than producers' opportunities.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about [creating] significant new wealth This is a marker of a failed country - one where the collective political discourse is no longer geared towards actual social benefit but has been taken over by competing votebanks of entitled moochers, led by their uber-mooching enablers in the policy-making "elite". Acemoglu's How Nations Fail is a clear and comprehensive discussion of these dynamics.
  - addHocker 6y ago
    Those who have wealth, have entrenched interests. Why would a coach manufactur support the automobil or the production of parts for automobils. Now, take the strucutural design flow that is privatized pensions, meaning a whole part of society can be hijacked to support openly or cladestine these entrenched interests, and the result is a political landscape that is enraged by those living outside this system - hanged up to dry. And those within, basically seeing no way they can change it, without having significant risk and loss of quality of life. Privatization has hidden costs, when applied to infrastructure. He who buys your water pipes, can hold you hostage..
rumanator 6y ago
> America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you Do you have a source that supports your statement?
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...
- Der_Einzige 6y ago
  It's common knowledge. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone account for more than half of the total federal budget (before covid) Progressives will tell you that these are expensive programs. Progressive wants to significantly cut the military, and replace medicare/medicaid with a single-payer universal system which would be far cheaper. They also want higher taxes to help fund these programs and redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor.
  - diag 6y ago
    Medicare is hardly a wealth redistribution scheme. Everybody needs healthcare. While a fully organized single payer health system is obviously a massive expense, it is still the more financially moderate option compared to what we have today.
- eel 6y ago
  The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic for 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example, social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for defense.
  - pinkfoot 6y ago
munificent 6y ago
> Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. That's exactly what we're seeing right now with COVID-19. Since Trump and his troop of baboons have done nothing but throw their own poop around, state governors have stepped up to provide executive leadership. The US has never looked more like a union of independent states to me than it has in the past couple of months.
- rplst8 6y ago
  In some ways, this could be considered beneficial. There are multiple layers to our government and can be a check on each others' power.
  - munificent 6y ago
    That was supposed to be the job of the legislative and judicial branches, but the Republican Party has reached a point where they would rather undermine the US than give up power.
zelon88 6y ago
> Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. The fed gets it's money from GDP producing states. There are far more GDP draining states the further inland you go. If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch which is the only one that really matters during such conditions.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Care to name these "GDP draining states"?
  - zelon88 6y ago
    Kentucky [1] [1] https://www.wkyufm.org/post/kentucky-second-most-dependent-state-federal-money https://www.wkyufm.org/post/kentucky-second-most-dependent-s...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- hash872 6y ago
  Eh, I don't really agree with that. All the states really need are a paramilitary branch- the state police, local police, and maybe the local National Guard. You need rough men with guns to stop looting, bandits, etc.- and they'd probably do some bad stuff as well, but I mean that's the most fundamental level of civilization: the guys with guns. Judicial branch is quite a bit further up there on a Maslow-like hierarchy. Plus the red states mostly grow their own food, which would be pretty huge
- frank2 6y ago
  >If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch Your phrase "GDP draining" probably refers to the fact that some states receive more in federal services than their population pays in federal taxes, which has nothing to do with whether such a state will be able to continue to fund and administer its own "state" court. Most matters, e.g., most murder trials, are adjudicated in the 50 state courts, not in the US federal court. When OJ Simpson was put on trial for the murders of Ron Goldman and Nichole Brown Simpson, for example, he was put on trial in a state court.
empath75 6y ago
The UK itself didn't collapse, but the end of the British Empire resulted in an unbelievable amount of war and violence as they withdrew -- the Indian partition alone had up to 2 million deaths. > Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. It would not be unheard of for those local state leaders to go to war with each other -- they've done it once before, after all. The point is that once power centers fail, the consequences aren't predictable.
routerl 6y ago
Portugal absolutely collapsed, due to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Voltaire wrote about this[1]. The Portuguese Empire couldn't cope with the near total destruction of their capital, and never recovered. During the Napoleonic wars, the emperial court moved to Brazil and, basically, hid. They were a shadow of themselves. The United Kingdom, similarly, collapsed, under the weight of two world wars. Europe as a whole was devastated, and the whole world started to coalesce around the only remaining global powers. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sastre_de_Lisbonne https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sas...
- bobmcbobface 6y ago
  The UK didn't collapse. It's still here. Just the idea of colonialism went out of fashion for everyone involved.

traes 6y ago

> Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Rome?

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
The Roman Empire, in its various forms, lasted for 1000 years.
- blululu 6y ago
  Indeed, and even after the fall of Constantinople there were various Byzantine Rump Staes in places like Trebizond. There is some historical chicanery in the classic Western European telling of the story of the 'Byzantine Empire'. No such country ever existed as such - the name was applied to the Eastern Roman Empire by German historians after the fall of Constantinople. While it still existed, the Eastern Roman Empire was referred to as the Roman Empire (or Roman Kingdom or simply Romania).
dodobirdlord 6y ago
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire (the western half) took centuries. The eastern half of the empire took an additional thousand years or so to follow a similar trajectory.

zozbot234 6y ago

Our countries may not be authoritarian but they're certainly rigid in the sense of having a huge amount of accumulated "technical debt" in their social organization, that by definition is simply not amenable to gradual change. A collapse of some sort is then the only feasible form of restructuring, and is a natural consequence of such circumstances especially given outside stressors. So I would definitely not put it beyond the realm of possibility.

pfraze 6y ago
I do agree that the US is rigid in its thinking. We accumulated a lot of wealth in the mid-20th century and a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about undertaking new national ventures to bring in significant new wealth. It's understandable to a degree - we have a lot to risk by taking big national projects - but it feeds into our distribution problems because we want to be capitalist but we don't have enough new frontiers for capitalism to create opportunities for the younger generations. I'd argue we're in a preservative/cost-cutting mindset rather than a generative/competitive mindset, which can be seen reflected in anti-trust policies. The philosophy has been to focus anti-trust around consumer benefit (eg lower prices) rather than to ensure competitive markets. We're more concerned with consumers' purchasing power than producers' opportunities.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about [creating] significant new wealth This is a marker of a failed country - one where the collective political discourse is no longer geared towards actual social benefit but has been taken over by competing votebanks of entitled moochers, led by their uber-mooching enablers in the policy-making "elite". Acemoglu's How Nations Fail is a clear and comprehensive discussion of these dynamics.
- addHocker 6y ago
  Those who have wealth, have entrenched interests. Why would a coach manufactur support the automobil or the production of parts for automobils. Now, take the strucutural design flow that is privatized pensions, meaning a whole part of society can be hijacked to support openly or cladestine these entrenched interests, and the result is a political landscape that is enraged by those living outside this system - hanged up to dry. And those within, basically seeing no way they can change it, without having significant risk and loss of quality of life. Privatization has hidden costs, when applied to infrastructure. He who buys your water pipes, can hold you hostage..

rumanator 6y ago

> America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you Do you have a source that supports your statement?

MattGaiser 6y ago
Here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...
Der_Einzige 6y ago
It's common knowledge. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone account for more than half of the total federal budget (before covid) Progressives will tell you that these are expensive programs. Progressive wants to significantly cut the military, and replace medicare/medicaid with a single-payer universal system which would be far cheaper. They also want higher taxes to help fund these programs and redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor.
- diag 6y ago
  Medicare is hardly a wealth redistribution scheme. Everybody needs healthcare. While a fully organized single payer health system is obviously a massive expense, it is still the more financially moderate option compared to what we have today.
eel 6y ago
The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic for 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example, social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for defense.
- pinkfoot 6y ago

munificent 6y ago

> Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. That's exactly what we're seeing right now with COVID-19. Since Trump and his troop of baboons have done nothing but throw their own poop around, state governors have stepped up to provide executive leadership. The US has never looked more like a union of independent states to me than it has in the past couple of months.

rplst8 6y ago
In some ways, this could be considered beneficial. There are multiple layers to our government and can be a check on each others' power.
- munificent 6y ago
  That was supposed to be the job of the legislative and judicial branches, but the Republican Party has reached a point where they would rather undermine the US than give up power.

zelon88 6y ago

> Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. The fed gets it's money from GDP producing states. There are far more GDP draining states the further inland you go. If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch which is the only one that really matters during such conditions.

rmrfstar 6y ago
Care to name these "GDP draining states"?
- zelon88 6y ago
  Kentucky [1] [1] https://www.wkyufm.org/post/kentucky-second-most-dependent-state-federal-money https://www.wkyufm.org/post/kentucky-second-most-dependent-s...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
hash872 6y ago
Eh, I don't really agree with that. All the states really need are a paramilitary branch- the state police, local police, and maybe the local National Guard. You need rough men with guns to stop looting, bandits, etc.- and they'd probably do some bad stuff as well, but I mean that's the most fundamental level of civilization: the guys with guns. Judicial branch is quite a bit further up there on a Maslow-like hierarchy. Plus the red states mostly grow their own food, which would be pretty huge
frank2 6y ago
>If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch Your phrase "GDP draining" probably refers to the fact that some states receive more in federal services than their population pays in federal taxes, which has nothing to do with whether such a state will be able to continue to fund and administer its own "state" court. Most matters, e.g., most murder trials, are adjudicated in the 50 state courts, not in the US federal court. When OJ Simpson was put on trial for the murders of Ron Goldman and Nichole Brown Simpson, for example, he was put on trial in a state court.

empath75 6y ago

The UK itself didn't collapse, but the end of the British Empire resulted in an unbelievable amount of war and violence as they withdrew -- the Indian partition alone had up to 2 million deaths. > Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. It would not be unheard of for those local state leaders to go to war with each other -- they've done it once before, after all. The point is that once power centers fail, the consequences aren't predictable.

routerl 6y ago

Portugal absolutely collapsed, due to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Voltaire wrote about this[1]. The Portuguese Empire couldn't cope with the near total destruction of their capital, and never recovered. During the Napoleonic wars, the emperial court moved to Brazil and, basically, hid. They were a shadow of themselves. The United Kingdom, similarly, collapsed, under the weight of two world wars. Europe as a whole was devastated, and the whole world started to coalesce around the only remaining global powers. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sastre_de_Lisbonne https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sas...

bobmcbobface 6y ago
The UK didn't collapse. It's still here. Just the idea of colonialism went out of fashion for everyone involved.