> What do you think the whole end state of this whole saga?

Honestly, I don’t know.

But I don’t think reform and collapse are the only two outcomes.

A lot of countries hobble along and simply live with their corruption for long periods of time.

I tell you what my answer isn’t. It’s not some cliched breathy end-times prediction where I make vague comparisons to the fall of Rome while parroting the same reasons every other ding dong has been parroting long before I was born (decline in morality, government spending, rising inflation)

I don’t know what’s going to happen and the people who have consistently predicted the wrong outcome for the last 5 decades are just as clueless.

Let’s start from a place of humility and tell ourselves we don’t know.

Most of us are so profoundly ignorant on the subject we’d do a lot better asking BASIC questions that reveal our ignorance rather than bloviating inane predictions.

I have so many basic questions that I’d love to ask much smarter people. Questions like:

* Are there inflection points in history we should study where people brought about meaning reform without huge social volatility? * How can societies depolarize themselves? How has it happened throughout history? * What questions should I be asking? (This one should be asked every day)

I will note that GP mentions "We the People" are fighting each other because the talking heads tell us to. I contend that this is on purpose. A casual glance through Rules for Radicals shows that social friction is a tool for social change. With that noted, let's talk end game.

There's a common (almost cliche) line of "bad times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make bad times", which appears superficially true. Consider the Weimar Republic, or Imperial Russia from about 2 centuries ago. Both appeared to follow that pattern. The fall of Rome kinda fits that, too, if you squint.

The hallmarks of "bad times" appear to be increased law and regulation, increase in law/regulation complexity, non-dependable money supply (inflation was an issue in all three of the above scenarios), dilution of national identity, and so on. I'd argue that what underpins those changes is eroding morality. A perfectly moral people need no law, and their money supply is uncorrupted. As morality decreases, the necessity of law becomes apparent, and so the increase in law and regulation. As graft increases (which drove the need for law and regulation) the money supply becomes corrupted, fiat.

The collapse of empires (make no mistake, the United States is a cultural economic empire) is typically sudden, violent, and bloody. All three scenarios all featured a lot of death in a very short amount of time.

The end for the United States will likely be the same. Inflation will destroy what's left of the propped up economy. People will start to go hungry, their housing and livelihoods will be threatened. As soon as the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy is in question, people start to rebel. You see some of that already with anti-vaccine riots. People believe their bodily autonomy is threatened. Definitely their livelihoods are threatened (this game of coercion -- get a vaccine, or you can't even work -- that Australia is playing and that the US seeks to implement -- is pushing people out of their comfort zones).

Are we in the end game? Dunno. We won't know until it is the end. Sudden, violent, bloody.

[edit] misplaced asterisks [/edit]

Yeah what you describe is basically on par with people like Michael Moore. I don't disagree but however let me bring up the British Empire. I've been interested in how the UK faired after its empire declined as that is one of the most recent examples of a Western decline and looking at the UK today it doesn't seem that bad. Do you feel that the US can just go through a "slow burn" and sort of end up like the UK? Maybe the UK never really collapsed an instead ended up being propped up in part by the US due to common ideals. Maybe we haven't seen the true collapse yet.

The thing I worry about is that the UK invested in its people after WW2 and formulated a robust safety net and for all their faults, if everything were to collapse they would likely have means to get back on their feet. They also have OK infrastructure and that is money already spent that can't be taken back.

Americans are in a situation where they have no real money (~40% live paycheck to paycheck), they have bad health thanks to the corn laden trash they have eaten their whole lives, no healthcare so a lot of preventative things have gone unaddressed and finally no real good infrastructure so that if everything were to collapse they would have nothing to fall back on as they rebuild. We spent all our precious resources on the wars and giving money to the rich.

On another note, who would even replace the US? After Evergrande I think a lot of people have realized that while China is full of talent and ambition they have serious structural problems that will prevent them from ever becoming #1 on the world stage.