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I am pretty certain, if our society manages to survive the current times, our attitude to centralization and globalization will change. On the surface, it incr

I am pretty certain, if our society manages to survive the current times, our attitude to centralization and globalization will change. On the surface, it increases efficiency through central management and automation, lowering the prices and making products more affordable. One layer deeper, it commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer. If you look even deeper, you see that when people are not spending their passion trading, making deals, and creating things others would want to buy, they instead turn on each other. If your work doesn't keep your mind busy, it finds a different outlet, that seems to be driven by some primal tribal instincts. Team up with the ones of your kind and go against the neighboring tribe. Call me paranoid, but we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes.

fabianhjr 6y ago
> commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer Commodification of people is treated extensibly in anticapitalist writings. ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Commodification https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Commodification ) > Call me paranoid, but we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes. There is a more moderate stance of American Decline ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/American_decline https://www.wikiwand.com/en/American_decline ) that has been a source of sourness to many US nationalists
- netcan 6y ago
  The word "capitalism," in our lifetime has two fairly distinct meanings. One meaning is marxist. Marx popularised the term and he implicitly defined it as an economic-political system and "that which we are fighting against." Most of his writing and communist contemporaries was about corruption and cruelty of this newly described system. In marxist capitalism, when a monopolist bribes a government official this is capitalism par excellence. The premise of the term is that "capital rules," so regulatory capture is assumed The other meaning is pro-capitalist. These mostly riff on Adam Smith. David Ricardo responded directly to marx and provides some technical ammo. By Ayn Rand, "capitalism" it has a full blown utopian definition like communism. Regulatory capture is seen as a corruption of "true" capitalism. Anyway... the two frames are highly related to eachother.
  - LeonB 6y ago
    I generally see people who describes themselves as capitalists in the “good” sense, act in accordance or in support of capitalism in the bad sense. They claim to like “the invisible hand” of the market etc, but don’t complain about monopolistic behavior or ever agree that healthy capitalism and efficient markets require regulation (as Smith, for example, was clear about.)
    - netcan 6y ago
      Hypocrisy is ever present. One thing in common to all ruling communist parties was establishing party members as a full-frills ruling class with their own schools, institutions, culture, etc. For my own "philosophy," I make a distinction between ideology and idealism. "Ideology" (in my personal lexicon) is to ideology as Orwell's "nationalism" was to nationalism. An ideal (a capitalist one) is Adam Smith's pin factory or village economy. Maybe Ayn Rand's dissenting heros like Howard Roark or Hank Rearden. An ideological take is to justify a fb or a google by insisting these are like a Smithian pin factory. Explaining good stuff in those term. Explaining bad stuff in terms of government (looters) involvement. Facebook's profits and market cap are reflective of the immense value that they provide society. An idealistic take is criticising fb because the aren't like a Smithian pin factory at all. In fact, they prevent such pin factories from existing. It's notable that an idealistic posture is easier and more common from a dissenting position. A ideological posture tends to be easier and more common in a defensive, incumbent position. That's probably why Ayn Rand reads as idealistic (despite being formulaically ideological) while modern pro-capitalists tend to come off as more ideological. Rosa Luxemburg the idealist vs Leon Trotsky, the ideologue. IMO, you can't deal in absolutes. FB is easy to pick on because they are so unimpressive technically or operationally. FB could literally be done on 1% of its budget. Google is a mixed bag, because they do have technical achievements. But, what makes google their money is search and adware. Tesla/Musk are an even more complex example. Musk is as close to a Randian hero as reality can offer. Obvious technical and operational achievements. Real, genuine risk taking. So far so good. The ideal does not appear to be trampled. But... what happens if recent investors are right? What if Tesla's data is giving them an unassailable edge in self driving cars for a generation. Does that give us a capitalist ideal of innovation, competition and efficiency or a capitalist antipattern of control, monopoly and lock-in? Reality is complex ideals are simple. Ideology is an attempt to square the circle by insisting on its squareness.
frankish 6y ago
IMO globalization is dangerous because it's putting all our eggs in one basket. We have it beyond good on the US compared to most places in the world.. And we still managed to have Trump, Hillary, and Biden be our presidential choices in these 2 elections. All it takes is one bad idea or leadership that takes the helm of an entire world government instead of several countries keeping each other in check and having different ideas/philosophies. I worry people actually want to be ruled by a king/monarch/dictator. I wish people would stop putting so much emphasis on the federal government and focus on local community politics. Higher level government should do less, not more.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  On the other hand the wheat harvest is down by 40% in the UK this year but that has barely warranted a mention in the media because there is a global market for grains.
  - frankish 6y ago
    I'm still for global, open markets; just not central government. Competition and differing views/ideas are extremely beneficial and this highlights an example of why.
shakezula 6y ago
That’s what 2020 has felt like to me. The fall of Rome. It’s like we had every single advantage we could have wanted and blundered it all. Maybe we just aren’t meant to be this connected, thus aware, this effective. We’re just not responsible enough to be so efficient at changing our world.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Actually I think the global side of things has held up remarkably well. There were brief shortages in supermarkets early on but when you consider the changes in our eating habits it wasn't much. The doomsayers would have had us eating each other by now.
082349872349872 6y ago
The historical Fall of Rome, having lasted from one to three centuries, was a tad more gradual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire#Timespan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi... As they don't say in the asteroid Belt: Da Rom na decho dewe im wang diye. (Rome didn't fall in a day) Edit: why even use earth days in the belt? maybe they'd count in shifts, maybe they'd use watches (of which there are many varieties, where the US submariners' reduce to shifts)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping
- roenxi 6y ago
  Things happen faster in the modern era. War in particular can happen very quickly now.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Under half an hour, depending upon where the boomers may be. But I've been reassured by HN that MAD is no longer a thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24662277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24662277 (Then again, assuming attacks these days are more likely economic than kinetic, it looks like it took two months, May-July 1997, to take down THB. The longest market manipulation of which I am aware lasted 5 years, but those were only a pair of billionaires, so presumably trillionaires' poker played between nation states might go longer until someone folds.)
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      THB?
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        ฿, thai baht. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Thailand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Th...
boomboomsubban 6y ago
>If your work doesn't keep your mind busy, it finds a different outlet, that seems to be driven by some primal tribal instincts. Team up with the ones of your kind and go against the neighboring tribe. You followed this statement with "call me paranoid, but we might see my tribe (presumably) fall out of dominance in our lifetime." The end of US hegemony is not some terrifying future, it's the US living like the rest of the world.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  > The end of US hegemony is not some terrifying future, it's the US living like the rest of the world The issue most of the world (outside the US) worries about is not the end of their hegemony but the power vacuum that they leave behind. Despite the near plutocratic state of the current US, they at least make an attempt at having core democratic values with checks and balances and a respect for rule of Law. It is unclear if those who crave to take that soft-power away from the US will share the same ideals.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    That and what impact a decline of democracy in would have on other western-style democracies would have.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      Removing US regime change could very well bolster other "western-style democracies,"
      - hef19898 6y ago
        Right now I am more worried about the boost right-wing populists will get from a second Trump term. And the boost the Russians will get of it.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    A century ago people in the UK were probably arguing about the terrible impact of the End of Empire on civilisation. Turns out that the world was rather better off without us trying to run a big chunk of it and we were better off as well. The US will be fine and might even become a better place once they stop being the most powerful country.
andy_ppp 6y ago
Let’s take a different view, America has periods of chaos before and it seems common, maybe this is just another period of change where we get to grips with technological change and nationalism and racism and come out the other side a more integrated, just and thoughtful society. One hopefully with better restraints for demagoguery.
- refurb 6y ago
  I always find it interesting when people think we're living in unique times. I don't know if it's just the human tendency to view the past with rose colored glasses or an opinion of younger folks who weren't around when things got crazy in the past. The US has been through periods like (and much worse) in the last 60 years: - 60's race riots across most major cities that resulted in the deaths of hundreds & Vietnam War where every opinion article lamented about "America's global leadership is over" - Watergate where a sitting president was forced from office due to truly breathtaking corruption and law breaking - The 80's when Japan was on the rise and people talked about the US falling behind and no longer being a major economic player (I remember people smashing Japan electronics on the Whitehouse lawn) - Gulf War, LA Riots, Clinton scandals, pre-9/11 terror attacks in the 90's - In the 2000's, 9/11, the financial crisis (aka "The End of Capitalism") It's always been like this.
  - ende 6y ago
    It’s a form of recency bias. Some people need to believe that the place and time they occupy is the most significant.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Welcome to the consequences of a world where history education has been underemphasized in favor of technology and ‘practicality.’ The world is always ending, the future is always impossible to predict, and everything is original, cutting-edge and new. Except...it isn’t. It’s all happened before, but we didn’t bother reading those books. America will be fine.
    - 6y ago
ponker 6y ago
Why would you be paranoid? If the US is Rome then the “Fall” has been happening for multiple decades now. No Rome stays “Rome” forever so I don’t know why people work themselves into a tizzy over the fact that it’s happening.
- kazagistar 6y ago
  Rome is empire and empire is violence. Let it fall and make room for a better future.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Past history shows that when an empire falls, there is more violence, followed by the rise of a new empire itself, as you say, based on the triumphs of its violence. Anyone who calls calls for the fall of empire, without explaining how we avoid the normal consequnces, is calling for more violence.
    - kazagistar 6y ago
      If reformation proves impossible then revolution is inevitable. What any individual wants is largely irrelevant.
      - zepto 6y ago
        True, but not relevant to my point. Empire is violence, and so is revolution. If you don’t have an alternative, and you support either one, then you are advocating for violence. You seem to be advocating for more violence.
netcan 6y ago
I tend to agree, but with some reservations. One difference between centralisation due to monopolies and centralization due to other things (government planning, industry-scale unions, etc.) is that monopolies are highly profitable regardless of efficiency. Going broke is what usually kills things. The macrofinancial situation, currently, is telling. We are obviously in the midst of a recession. Huge industries are in meltdown: hospitality, air travel, physical retail, etc. They are literally producing far fewer goods and services... stuff that people normally consume. OTOH indexes are up. Why, because the profits of H&M or RyanAir are miniscule compared to fb or amzn regardless. Consider what "increases efficiency .., lowering the prices and making products more affordable" means for fb or google. There are no prices, except ad prices. We can't even think about consumer benefits (more, better goods) in a meaningful way. What does more facebook even mean? Is it beneficial to anyone? This matters because "more resources to fb, less to Ryanair" is the market working normally. Since fb doesn't consumer capital, all that happens is a stock price change.
- esotericimpl 6y ago
  Indexes are up because the wealthy were bailed out with the “stimulus”, which was free money printed by the fed and given to people who don’t need it, lead them to just put it in the “market” since again there’s nothing to spend your money on currently other than stocks and real estate, this only leads to higher assets prices. The fact that the us government took zero equity positions despite bailing out the wealthy will be discussed for decades. TLDR money printer go brrrrrrrr
  - netcan 6y ago
    True also. This cycle has definitely a proven point now about how asset prices are a fungible for currency inflation. Every flavour is different though... with this kind of inflation, what what government y prints, government y receives. A central bank handles the deficit, but the asset inflation is global, not limited to a national currency. Probably destabilizing in a game theory sense. That said, there's also the fact that for amzn, 2020 has really made prospects X% better. X% of amzn makes up for a lot of Y% worse in companies that do worse in a pandemic. There's a definite correlation between company size and prospects in this crisis year. On government equity, I agree. Macroeconomics needs a do over. I think norway proves the principle of governments owning equity stakes pretty handily. Incidentally, Norway would probably have been (could still be) an even bigger success case if they adjusted even more boldly. A lot gets lost on regular price inflation.
antman 6y ago
Fall of Rome, a long running process that for the outskirts of the empire meant people lived and were fed better based on the increased bone density of their remains. So we have a metric of resources you need to keep people under control vs resources you would need to release to people if you did not control them. This number is currently very low through automation, fake news optimisation etc. So elites get all the resources secondly they give out to affiliates (Roman's debts forgiven, discount wheat for Romans, land to 75k Romans) then it becomes unsustainable because it has giveaways have no solid economic foundation, then affiliates become strong, then make everyone Roman so as to dilute power and then the former affiliated secondary elites stop helping and/or revolt and through their organizational capability also everybody else joins them, sometimes through unrelated incidents. But Rome has already fallen years ago, and after the actual rubber stamp, most people except those at the center of empire are better off. What is missed, is products of economies of scale, but people have already learnt to hate them along the insurmountable accompanying taxes.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >So elites get all the resources secondly they give out to affiliates (Roman's debts forgiven, discount wheat for Romans, land to 75k Romans) then it becomes unsustainable because it has giveaways have no solid economic foundation, then affiliates become strong, then make everyone Roman so as to dilute power and then the former affiliated secondary elites All of these events happened around the end of the Roman Republic. Blaming them for the "Fall of Rome" that happened around five hundred years later is just ridiculous. A rough equivalent would be blaming Columbus for America's current problems.
  - CamTin 6y ago
    A lot, if not most, of America's current problems are the result of the settler-colonial pattern that Columbus established.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      While this is broadly true, it's like saying Alexander Graham Bell is responsible for me dropping my cell phone. Yes, if Columbus had acted differently we might not have these problems, but there are countless other situations since then where a different choice may have alleviated though problems.
chewz 6y ago
> One layer deeper, it commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer. More or less you have summarized Karl Marx's conclusions in Das Kapital. "as capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse". The commoditization of peoples time is the way the capitalism extracts value from work. And yes, this last stage of capitalism will be the toughest for the people.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital,_Volume_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital,_Volume_I
SimonPStevens 6y ago
> we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes. The Western Roman empire took around 80 years to fall. From 395 to 476. The Eastern Roman empire lasted for several hundred years more. It's sometimes thought of as a quick obvious event, but it wasn't, it lasted a lifetime. We may already be in the period of time that future historians will refer to as 'the fall'. It may not be obvious from within what stage we are at, or when thee start was.
- chewz 6y ago
  Western Rome had pretty bad 3rd century as well. Luckily there were no serious contenders around. [1] As for Eastern Roman Empire it lasted for several centuries but after VII/VIII century and loss of Africa, Egypt, Syria (main sources of manpower and grain) it became only local power at best. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#:~:text=The%20Crisis%20of%20the%20Third,rebellions%2C%20political%20instability%20(with%20multiple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#:~...
Fnoord 6y ago
Fictional books such as Snow Crash and Jennifer Government explore the idea of non-governmental neighboring tribes.
onepointsixC 6y ago
Rome didn't just collapse, it was sacked. The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible. At the very worse you would see a return to a more insular America like it was before WW1. But even without American hegemony, the nation would still be a major power being the world's largest oil producer, the world's largest agricultural producer, and the world's largest consumer economy. The problem with any loss of American power is that potential great powers that could replace it, such as China, are deathly reliant on American lead order. China is neither energy nor food secure. How will they manage when their shipping isn't defended by the USN? How will they manage when climate change strains available resources? Especially when they are so geographically isolated from potential sources of those resources, and rivals are closer to those resources.
- _iyig 6y ago
  >The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible. That’s true if you look at America’s rivals on the world stage, i.e. Russia or China. But Rome wasn’t sacked by the Persians, or the Egyptians, or another Great Power of the time. It was sacked by tribal Gauls and migrating tribes of Visigoths.
  - disown 6y ago
    By that time, the gauls and the visigoths had gotten to be a greater military force than the romans. A few hundred years of battle against the romans had allowed the germanic barbarians to organize and weaponize to parity and beyond. Not too long after, the huns arrived and proved to be even more powerful and that pretty much ended the roman empire. For the last decades, the romans were pretty much paying the germanic tribes and the huns to stay away from rome. Certainly the germanic tribes as a whole can be considered a local "great power" and the huns certainly qualify as a great power.
bofenbref 6y ago
The person's deleted their tweets since then but it read something like > Thinking about how agricultural subsidies are like this classic example of inefficiency but also a big part of the reason the US still has a strong agricultural base.

fabianhjr 6y ago

> commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer Commodification of people is treated extensibly in anticapitalist writings. ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Commodification https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Commodification ) > Call me paranoid, but we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes. There is a more moderate stance of American Decline ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/American_decline https://www.wikiwand.com/en/American_decline ) that has been a source of sourness to many US nationalists

netcan 6y ago
The word "capitalism," in our lifetime has two fairly distinct meanings. One meaning is marxist. Marx popularised the term and he implicitly defined it as an economic-political system and "that which we are fighting against." Most of his writing and communist contemporaries was about corruption and cruelty of this newly described system. In marxist capitalism, when a monopolist bribes a government official this is capitalism par excellence. The premise of the term is that "capital rules," so regulatory capture is assumed The other meaning is pro-capitalist. These mostly riff on Adam Smith. David Ricardo responded directly to marx and provides some technical ammo. By Ayn Rand, "capitalism" it has a full blown utopian definition like communism. Regulatory capture is seen as a corruption of "true" capitalism. Anyway... the two frames are highly related to eachother.
- LeonB 6y ago
  I generally see people who describes themselves as capitalists in the “good” sense, act in accordance or in support of capitalism in the bad sense. They claim to like “the invisible hand” of the market etc, but don’t complain about monopolistic behavior or ever agree that healthy capitalism and efficient markets require regulation (as Smith, for example, was clear about.)
  - netcan 6y ago
    Hypocrisy is ever present. One thing in common to all ruling communist parties was establishing party members as a full-frills ruling class with their own schools, institutions, culture, etc. For my own "philosophy," I make a distinction between ideology and idealism. "Ideology" (in my personal lexicon) is to ideology as Orwell's "nationalism" was to nationalism. An ideal (a capitalist one) is Adam Smith's pin factory or village economy. Maybe Ayn Rand's dissenting heros like Howard Roark or Hank Rearden. An ideological take is to justify a fb or a google by insisting these are like a Smithian pin factory. Explaining good stuff in those term. Explaining bad stuff in terms of government (looters) involvement. Facebook's profits and market cap are reflective of the immense value that they provide society. An idealistic take is criticising fb because the aren't like a Smithian pin factory at all. In fact, they prevent such pin factories from existing. It's notable that an idealistic posture is easier and more common from a dissenting position. A ideological posture tends to be easier and more common in a defensive, incumbent position. That's probably why Ayn Rand reads as idealistic (despite being formulaically ideological) while modern pro-capitalists tend to come off as more ideological. Rosa Luxemburg the idealist vs Leon Trotsky, the ideologue. IMO, you can't deal in absolutes. FB is easy to pick on because they are so unimpressive technically or operationally. FB could literally be done on 1% of its budget. Google is a mixed bag, because they do have technical achievements. But, what makes google their money is search and adware. Tesla/Musk are an even more complex example. Musk is as close to a Randian hero as reality can offer. Obvious technical and operational achievements. Real, genuine risk taking. So far so good. The ideal does not appear to be trampled. But... what happens if recent investors are right? What if Tesla's data is giving them an unassailable edge in self driving cars for a generation. Does that give us a capitalist ideal of innovation, competition and efficiency or a capitalist antipattern of control, monopoly and lock-in? Reality is complex ideals are simple. Ideology is an attempt to square the circle by insisting on its squareness.

frankish 6y ago

IMO globalization is dangerous because it's putting all our eggs in one basket. We have it beyond good on the US compared to most places in the world.. And we still managed to have Trump, Hillary, and Biden be our presidential choices in these 2 elections. All it takes is one bad idea or leadership that takes the helm of an entire world government instead of several countries keeping each other in check and having different ideas/philosophies. I worry people actually want to be ruled by a king/monarch/dictator. I wish people would stop putting so much emphasis on the federal government and focus on local community politics. Higher level government should do less, not more.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
On the other hand the wheat harvest is down by 40% in the UK this year but that has barely warranted a mention in the media because there is a global market for grains.
- frankish 6y ago
  I'm still for global, open markets; just not central government. Competition and differing views/ideas are extremely beneficial and this highlights an example of why.

shakezula 6y ago

That’s what 2020 has felt like to me. The fall of Rome. It’s like we had every single advantage we could have wanted and blundered it all. Maybe we just aren’t meant to be this connected, thus aware, this effective. We’re just not responsible enough to be so efficient at changing our world.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Actually I think the global side of things has held up remarkably well. There were brief shortages in supermarkets early on but when you consider the changes in our eating habits it wasn't much. The doomsayers would have had us eating each other by now.

082349872349872 6y ago

The historical Fall of Rome, having lasted from one to three centuries, was a tad more gradual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire#Timespan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi... As they don't say in the asteroid Belt: Da Rom na decho dewe im wang diye. (Rome didn't fall in a day) Edit: why even use earth days in the belt? maybe they'd count in shifts, maybe they'd use watches (of which there are many varieties, where the US submariners' reduce to shifts)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchkeeping

roenxi 6y ago
Things happen faster in the modern era. War in particular can happen very quickly now.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Under half an hour, depending upon where the boomers may be. But I've been reassured by HN that MAD is no longer a thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24662277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24662277 (Then again, assuming attacks these days are more likely economic than kinetic, it looks like it took two months, May-July 1997, to take down THB. The longest market manipulation of which I am aware lasted 5 years, but those were only a pair of billionaires, so presumably trillionaires' poker played between nation states might go longer until someone folds.)
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    THB?
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      ฿, thai baht. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Thailand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Th...

boomboomsubban 6y ago

>If your work doesn't keep your mind busy, it finds a different outlet, that seems to be driven by some primal tribal instincts. Team up with the ones of your kind and go against the neighboring tribe. You followed this statement with "call me paranoid, but we might see my tribe (presumably) fall out of dominance in our lifetime." The end of US hegemony is not some terrifying future, it's the US living like the rest of the world.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
> The end of US hegemony is not some terrifying future, it's the US living like the rest of the world The issue most of the world (outside the US) worries about is not the end of their hegemony but the power vacuum that they leave behind. Despite the near plutocratic state of the current US, they at least make an attempt at having core democratic values with checks and balances and a respect for rule of Law. It is unclear if those who crave to take that soft-power away from the US will share the same ideals.
- hef19898 6y ago
  That and what impact a decline of democracy in would have on other western-style democracies would have.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Removing US regime change could very well bolster other "western-style democracies,"
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Right now I am more worried about the boost right-wing populists will get from a second Trump term. And the boost the Russians will get of it.
- arethuza 6y ago
  A century ago people in the UK were probably arguing about the terrible impact of the End of Empire on civilisation. Turns out that the world was rather better off without us trying to run a big chunk of it and we were better off as well. The US will be fine and might even become a better place once they stop being the most powerful country.

andy_ppp 6y ago

Let’s take a different view, America has periods of chaos before and it seems common, maybe this is just another period of change where we get to grips with technological change and nationalism and racism and come out the other side a more integrated, just and thoughtful society. One hopefully with better restraints for demagoguery.

refurb 6y ago
I always find it interesting when people think we're living in unique times. I don't know if it's just the human tendency to view the past with rose colored glasses or an opinion of younger folks who weren't around when things got crazy in the past. The US has been through periods like (and much worse) in the last 60 years: - 60's race riots across most major cities that resulted in the deaths of hundreds & Vietnam War where every opinion article lamented about "America's global leadership is over" - Watergate where a sitting president was forced from office due to truly breathtaking corruption and law breaking - The 80's when Japan was on the rise and people talked about the US falling behind and no longer being a major economic player (I remember people smashing Japan electronics on the Whitehouse lawn) - Gulf War, LA Riots, Clinton scandals, pre-9/11 terror attacks in the 90's - In the 2000's, 9/11, the financial crisis (aka "The End of Capitalism") It's always been like this.
- ende 6y ago
  It’s a form of recency bias. Some people need to believe that the place and time they occupy is the most significant.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Welcome to the consequences of a world where history education has been underemphasized in favor of technology and ‘practicality.’ The world is always ending, the future is always impossible to predict, and everything is original, cutting-edge and new. Except...it isn’t. It’s all happened before, but we didn’t bother reading those books. America will be fine.
  - 6y ago

ponker 6y ago

Why would you be paranoid? If the US is Rome then the “Fall” has been happening for multiple decades now. No Rome stays “Rome” forever so I don’t know why people work themselves into a tizzy over the fact that it’s happening.

kazagistar 6y ago
Rome is empire and empire is violence. Let it fall and make room for a better future.
- zepto 6y ago
  Past history shows that when an empire falls, there is more violence, followed by the rise of a new empire itself, as you say, based on the triumphs of its violence. Anyone who calls calls for the fall of empire, without explaining how we avoid the normal consequnces, is calling for more violence.
  - kazagistar 6y ago
    If reformation proves impossible then revolution is inevitable. What any individual wants is largely irrelevant.
    - zepto 6y ago
      True, but not relevant to my point. Empire is violence, and so is revolution. If you don’t have an alternative, and you support either one, then you are advocating for violence. You seem to be advocating for more violence.

netcan 6y ago

I tend to agree, but with some reservations. One difference between centralisation due to monopolies and centralization due to other things (government planning, industry-scale unions, etc.) is that monopolies are highly profitable regardless of efficiency. Going broke is what usually kills things. The macrofinancial situation, currently, is telling. We are obviously in the midst of a recession. Huge industries are in meltdown: hospitality, air travel, physical retail, etc. They are literally producing far fewer goods and services... stuff that people normally consume. OTOH indexes are up. Why, because the profits of H&M or RyanAir are miniscule compared to fb or amzn regardless. Consider what "increases efficiency .., lowering the prices and making products more affordable" means for fb or google. There are no prices, except ad prices. We can't even think about consumer benefits (more, better goods) in a meaningful way. What does more facebook even mean? Is it beneficial to anyone? This matters because "more resources to fb, less to Ryanair" is the market working normally. Since fb doesn't consumer capital, all that happens is a stock price change.

esotericimpl 6y ago
Indexes are up because the wealthy were bailed out with the “stimulus”, which was free money printed by the fed and given to people who don’t need it, lead them to just put it in the “market” since again there’s nothing to spend your money on currently other than stocks and real estate, this only leads to higher assets prices. The fact that the us government took zero equity positions despite bailing out the wealthy will be discussed for decades. TLDR money printer go brrrrrrrr
- netcan 6y ago
  True also. This cycle has definitely a proven point now about how asset prices are a fungible for currency inflation. Every flavour is different though... with this kind of inflation, what what government y prints, government y receives. A central bank handles the deficit, but the asset inflation is global, not limited to a national currency. Probably destabilizing in a game theory sense. That said, there's also the fact that for amzn, 2020 has really made prospects X% better. X% of amzn makes up for a lot of Y% worse in companies that do worse in a pandemic. There's a definite correlation between company size and prospects in this crisis year. On government equity, I agree. Macroeconomics needs a do over. I think norway proves the principle of governments owning equity stakes pretty handily. Incidentally, Norway would probably have been (could still be) an even bigger success case if they adjusted even more boldly. A lot gets lost on regular price inflation.

antman 6y ago

Fall of Rome, a long running process that for the outskirts of the empire meant people lived and were fed better based on the increased bone density of their remains. So we have a metric of resources you need to keep people under control vs resources you would need to release to people if you did not control them. This number is currently very low through automation, fake news optimisation etc. So elites get all the resources secondly they give out to affiliates (Roman's debts forgiven, discount wheat for Romans, land to 75k Romans) then it becomes unsustainable because it has giveaways have no solid economic foundation, then affiliates become strong, then make everyone Roman so as to dilute power and then the former affiliated secondary elites stop helping and/or revolt and through their organizational capability also everybody else joins them, sometimes through unrelated incidents. But Rome has already fallen years ago, and after the actual rubber stamp, most people except those at the center of empire are better off. What is missed, is products of economies of scale, but people have already learnt to hate them along the insurmountable accompanying taxes.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
>So elites get all the resources secondly they give out to affiliates (Roman's debts forgiven, discount wheat for Romans, land to 75k Romans) then it becomes unsustainable because it has giveaways have no solid economic foundation, then affiliates become strong, then make everyone Roman so as to dilute power and then the former affiliated secondary elites All of these events happened around the end of the Roman Republic. Blaming them for the "Fall of Rome" that happened around five hundred years later is just ridiculous. A rough equivalent would be blaming Columbus for America's current problems.
- CamTin 6y ago
  A lot, if not most, of America's current problems are the result of the settler-colonial pattern that Columbus established.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    While this is broadly true, it's like saying Alexander Graham Bell is responsible for me dropping my cell phone. Yes, if Columbus had acted differently we might not have these problems, but there are countless other situations since then where a different choice may have alleviated though problems.

chewz 6y ago

> One layer deeper, it commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer. More or less you have summarized Karl Marx's conclusions in Das Kapital. "as capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse". The commoditization of peoples time is the way the capitalism extracts value from work. And yes, this last stage of capitalism will be the toughest for the people.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital,_Volume_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital,_Volume_I

SimonPStevens 6y ago

> we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes. The Western Roman empire took around 80 years to fall. From 395 to 476. The Eastern Roman empire lasted for several hundred years more. It's sometimes thought of as a quick obvious event, but it wasn't, it lasted a lifetime. We may already be in the period of time that future historians will refer to as 'the fall'. It may not be obvious from within what stage we are at, or when thee start was.

chewz 6y ago
Western Rome had pretty bad 3rd century as well. Luckily there were no serious contenders around. [1] As for Eastern Roman Empire it lasted for several centuries but after VII/VIII century and loss of Africa, Egypt, Syria (main sources of manpower and grain) it became only local power at best. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#:~:text=The%20Crisis%20of%20the%20Third,rebellions%2C%20political%20instability%20(with%20multiple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#:~...

Fnoord 6y ago

Fictional books such as Snow Crash and Jennifer Government explore the idea of non-governmental neighboring tribes.

onepointsixC 6y ago

Rome didn't just collapse, it was sacked. The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible. At the very worse you would see a return to a more insular America like it was before WW1. But even without American hegemony, the nation would still be a major power being the world's largest oil producer, the world's largest agricultural producer, and the world's largest consumer economy. The problem with any loss of American power is that potential great powers that could replace it, such as China, are deathly reliant on American lead order. China is neither energy nor food secure. How will they manage when their shipping isn't defended by the USN? How will they manage when climate change strains available resources? Especially when they are so geographically isolated from potential sources of those resources, and rivals are closer to those resources.

_iyig 6y ago
>The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible. That’s true if you look at America’s rivals on the world stage, i.e. Russia or China. But Rome wasn’t sacked by the Persians, or the Egyptians, or another Great Power of the time. It was sacked by tribal Gauls and migrating tribes of Visigoths.
- disown 6y ago
  By that time, the gauls and the visigoths had gotten to be a greater military force than the romans. A few hundred years of battle against the romans had allowed the germanic barbarians to organize and weaponize to parity and beyond. Not too long after, the huns arrived and proved to be even more powerful and that pretty much ended the roman empire. For the last decades, the romans were pretty much paying the germanic tribes and the huns to stay away from rome. Certainly the germanic tribes as a whole can be considered a local "great power" and the huns certainly qualify as a great power.

bofenbref 6y ago

The person's deleted their tweets since then but it read something like > Thinking about how agricultural subsidies are like this classic example of inefficiency but also a big part of the reason the US still has a strong agricultural base.