Most of us tend to agree that a major destabilization if not total collapse of the US is imminent, but little has been said about what form this collapse or radical reshaping will take. While I don't think many of us actually expect any Holla Forumsyp fantasy of outright civil war, '30s styled authoritarianism, or Balkanization to take hold, I've also had a hard time imaging alternate outcomes. What are you guys expecting?
At the moment I'm sorta predicting a groucho authoritarianism a la Italy under the guise of Neo-Reganism, with flourishes of a heavier police state to be the most likely. I'm expecting the 70s and 20s, not the 30s.
Global conventional oil supplies peaked in 2006 according to the IEA, and our consumption has been massively above our new well discoveries for decades. Shale will pad that out a bit for the US, but to understand how the US will fair in our shared global de-growth we need to understand how the rest of the world will be faring as well.
Combine shrinking oil supplies with a planet that is unrelentingly hotter and hotter every year (leading to crop failures) - with stronger and less predictable, possibly more frequent storms (more crop failures in more places) - with a diminishing supply of fertilizers necessary for the scale of industrialized farming necessary to keep billions fed.
The largest migrations and famines in human history will occur this century, comrades. The world isn't ready for what that will entail.
Politically speaking however, because I believe this was the thrust of what you were asking, I think the US will find itself becoming more and more conservative as resources diminish. When supplies are scarce and global tensions are high (you thought the European immigration issue was bad now?) people tend to embrace your typical fascistic 'strong-daddy' leaders whom they perceive will keep them safe. Not to mention the already exceptionally wealthy ruling class will be trying harder than ever to hold on to what they've got once knowledge of global resource decline is more-or-less common knowledge and to deny it further would be foolish.
Will there be civil war? Not in so many words, at least in my opinion. There will probably be massacres on the part of the police (Waco events) where pockets of resistance (left and right) are butchered in their infancy to prevent the organization necessary to pose a significant enough threat to the country's infrastructure that it might be crippled in the midst of global resource depletion.
I'd say that's probably about right. Watch for the messaging of faux-prosperity as the US, as well as the rest of the world, burns, starves, and kills itself more and more every day. It's going to be hilarious.
Xavier Rogers
How do you feel about China's rapidly accelerating green energy projects? I've been imagining accepted, if not explicitly demanded, Chinese neo-imperialism enveloping the majority of the second and third world to the chagrin of the Saudis and US.
Nathaniel Taylor
I feel like people like Orban and Erdogan are a vision of the future. Neoliberal conservatives who use xenophobic authoritarianism to keep capital aloft and distract the workers.
Asher Adams
The big question for me is if Britain goes full socialist within the next couple decades.
Xavier Morales
Where MTW right all along?
Liam Hall
Who?
Noah Green
Maoist third worldist. i.e Unruhe
Christopher Davis
Maoist third worldists
Adrian Morgan
The progress that the Chinese have made on green technology is indeed admirable. In conjunction with the fact that their flavor of neo-imperialism is a lot less bomb-heavy than that of their Western counterparts will, I think, go a long way in solidifying their relationship as the accepted global hegemon with nations which lack traditional energy resources.
That's in the short term, however. I'm not sure what kind of play China will make as the rest of the world's governments struggle to manage their burgeoning populations with accelerated resource scarcity. The potential for global conflict escalates more as time goes on.
It should be noted as well, even though China is developing green tech. faster than everyone else right now that may not be enough to ensure their safety and prosperity in the 21st century.
John Butler
It horrifies me to think that I will die either during the fostering of a new left leaning international world order, or die under Totalitarianism or war. Shit keeps me up at night. I want out.
Nathan Jackson
I'm worried about the ramifications an American Collapse will have on Canada, seeing as how I'm a leaf.
Brayden King
Why's that bad?
Adam Hughes
Because I won't be able to live in it.
Brayden Lee
Me too, given that I want to move there and build an earthship in the Yukon
Wyatt Miller
Ah. Yeah, that would suck. Glad I don't give too much of a fuck about a "better society"
Aiden Green
...
Julian Reyes
I'm usually not an alarmist, and I'm not expecting the apocalypse or any shit, but the neoliberal world order sustained by US hegemony is undeniably crumbling.
Brody Myers
well fuck.
James Davis
frankly you deserve to be mulched
Luke Lewis
bump
Caleb Mitchell
Anyone else feel like we're actually living in the end times? I don't know how to stop feeling like it, but I just do.
Ryder Rivera
It's because we are.
John Rodriguez
What the hell is this?
Charles Howard
this. am i looking at an insane pork?
Tyler Perry
The conflict between the left and right is not likely to slow down. I strongly suspect a twin insurgency conflict with an ever growing police state to be a major third actor. A large amount of "moderates" are going to find that they're being pushed with their backs to the wall by one group or another and steadily trickle into more and more radical sects, fuelling the police state and insurgency conflicts further.
John Sanchez
Isn't that the guy which wanted to buy 4chan?
Landon Cruz
Because you're all a bunch of fucking idiots who want to tell yourselves that your lazy conformist lifestyle is acceptable because "capitalism will fall on it own man!" "the empire is crumbling man!", which means you don't have to do anything, because things will magically happen on their own, right?
Caleb Gutierrez
Yeah it is, but I literally don't understand what I'm looking at.
Ryder Lee
see: >>>Holla Forums10530861
Jason Sanders
Yeah it is, but I literally don't understand what I'm looking at.
Henry Collins
Bump
Juan Cooper
that metric is irrelevant now that we have hydraulic fracturing
James Wood
Thanks, I love you too.
Hunter Nelson
Only in certain places around the equator. Much of the world will get more temperate climates that are better for agriculture. Also higher atmospheric CO2 levels will create higher crop yields. see pic related (source nasa.gov)
Worse natural disasters because of global warming is a bullshit narrative that isn't actually supported by data. Stop listening to Al Gore. As a percent of global GDP, damage from natural disasters is falling.
John Lopez
Shit makes me want to live in a small biodome on the moon. So long as I have food, one left leaning friendo to tag along, and a shit load of pencils and paper, I could be happy.
Charles Ortiz
That's how I feel. I feel totally trapped in a dying world and I can't take it. I just want to find a safe peaceful and isolated country.
Gabriel Kelly
we got a genius over here
Camden Taylor
...
Xavier Jenkins
Unfortunately, things are likely going to stay the same. We get ourselves hyped up, thinking that current tensions are going to erupt, but they never do The overwhelming majority of people don't want a change in the status quo The few of us who would actually rise to the occasion if shit started going down would be unable to galvanize the rest of the populace who are happy with their bread and circuses
I imagine balkanization and 5 years or so of utter chaos. The thing about the US is that there aren't a lot of natural places to draw borders according to ideology any more. Lot of brother against brother type of violence is coming I figure. How things go down will depend a lot on three groups: the military (largely classcucked reactionaries), the veterans (largely disillusioned anti-establishment types), and the cops (need I say more?). All three of these groups are populous, spread across the country, and have military training or at least quasi military training (cops). All are specifically trained so they can shoot to kill (which gives them a huge advantage over everyone else).
What I really want to know though is what happens outside the US when our military hegemony collapses.
Anthony Morales
If this stuff happens, what i fear is that the psychosis reaches europe through internet. In some way, this is what happened with brexit, but with your scenario, it would be far more severe.
In my opinion, nothing drastic will happen until climate change starts having serious consequences on agriculture and food supply.
Nathan Russell
The thing we need to understand here is the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) from fracking is exceptionally low compared to conventional wells - especially historically speaking.
Similarly with what Canada is doing with its tar sands production.
Here, let's do a little bit of historical comparison. The first real oil well in the US was the Drake Well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well Created in 1859 and operational until 1861 It extends 21 meters into the earth. It was basically the first well that drilled specifically for oil - whereas prior to this oil and natural gas were basically unwanted byproducts of well drilling.
The Drake Well's EROEI was, while hard to calculate given the metrics of the time, well over 1000:1 - meaning that, say, for every 1 calorie of energy used to operate the well you could expect to receive over 1000 calories of energy in return.
Fracking and tar sand extraction can barely break a 5:1 ratio on EROEI. And look at what passes for conventional drilling now. Look at Deep Water drilling. Instead of a mere 70ft or so into the ground, you're needing to build piping though ~4000 meters of water before drilling 2000+ meters into the earth to begin extracting, and that's assuming you've already built a massive anchored exaction platform above the water. It's a HUGE energy investment just to get all of the shit in place to begin extracting - and then you have to ship the shit somewhere else to get processed (requiring more energy, more chemical byproducts), and then ship it somewhere else (more energy, more byproducts) so that it can be used in manufacturing or transportation (more energy and more chemical byproducts).
I've heard fracking be compared to a junkie at a club sniffing and licking the tops of toilet tanks to try and pick up a bit of the residual coke-dust that occasionally gets left behind.
This is also before we talk about the ecological damage that pumping chemicals underground (sitting them underneath the water tables necessary for clean water that sustains ecosystems, flora, fauna, human) can have.
Indeed, I encourage everyone to read about the history of fracking technology - it was invented in the 50s but wasn't really put into practice until the early 2010s because of the way that OPEC was attempting to control the world oil reserve. Fracking allowed the US to continue influencing the world energy market (though thankfully this is one of the few times the US has influenced a market without bombing the fuck out of somewhere, so there's that).
I've heard your opinion echoed before - that now that we have fracking we are effectively energy independent (forever?). This is not the case. Fracking is a last-ditch effort to keep things running the way they are - business as usual. It too will inevitably become too costly to be worth exacting. Likely sooner than most of us think.
Jonathan Russell
It's going to depend a lot on if/how Trump leaves office. Impeachment will accelerate any destabilization, while perhaps self-absorbed resignation ("Mission Accomplished" style) may return things to the status quo and prolong it. It'll also depend on the form the incoming recession takes: is it the 70s or the 30s?
Gavin Howard
It's going to start in Europe. The next economic crash is due somewhere between 2018 and 2020, and the EU is the least well placed polity to deal with the fallout.
Landon Mitchell
Perhaps. However, I fear that a lot of the fear and anger during this time of crisis will be directed at figures like Corbyn and Macron, as well as the labor seats that were picked up after the UK special election. People are reactionary, if they have it in their head that labor won power and then the economy tanked they likely will be primed to vote against whatever changed most recently. Just a speculation, dunno how things will play out, but that's my fear.
This might work in reverse in the US, where that anger will be directed squarely at Trump and the republicans. That could happen before or after the mid-term elections in 2018 - though it could set us up for a fascinating 2020 presidential election while the economy is in ruins. Plans to fix it will be the talking points, which will be interesting to see, what the shills come up with.
Adam Ortiz
I don't want to sound like a reactionary conservitard but should I be obtaining more guns? I already have one but it's a bolt action, not really good for home defense If shit's going to come down to the far left vs the far right, the far right is going to have way more guns because they aren't anti-gun pussy liberals
Dominic Walker
this is what I see more signs of. it's set to happen, and the conflict between left and right, real or imagined, will serve mostly to justify it
Matthew Ward
sauce me, please
Nolan White
Thankfully Corbyn probably won't be in power when the crash comes.
Christian Moore
Not to do the bidding of the fun-companies, but yeah, if there's ever an incident, natural or otherwise, that keeps food trucks from running to your town for more than a few days, having a decent handgun as well as basic competence with it is going to make you feel a lot better.
Seriously, if you've never been in a situation or place where there is no electricity for an extended period of time and you start hearing people move around outside after like 10pm, in the pitch dark, gripping a gun with a light on it is about the best possible feeling in the world.
Baring natural disaster however, you should remember that in the US at least, Right Wing Death Squads have been around for a long-ass time. And sure, a lot of what you see online are LARP types, but if there's ever a situation which allows them to be violent towards you without immediate recourse, they'll probably take it.
I mean, you're probably more likely to run into someone that just wants to rob you than kill you for political reasons, but sometimes the two overlap.
Tyler Reyes
The Zuccesidency by 2020 United Megacorps of America by 2021
Jaxson Anderson
I don't care as long as it doesn't happen within the next two years. I want out.
