I guess we’ll see.
The difference between recession and collapse is a bounce back on the other side.
Banking system is already vulnerable to real estate prices. Commercial real estate has been in zombie mode with banks hiding their losses on the sector. The US government has already unsustainable debt levels that can’t afford major adventures or catastrophes. Adventures include mass deportations or wars. The problem with austerity measures for the non-oligarchs is strong degrowth and crime from multiplier effects.
While Trump is likely to be extremely divisive and angering socially, it is economics and geopolitics that will collapse the US. Deregulating banks is letting the fractional reserve system use a riskier lower fraction. Biden was very good at strengthening the subjugation of US colonies, but he pushed away majority of the world. There is major risk that Trump pushes away colonies without making the world more trusting of US. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/requiem-for-an-empire.html
What destroys America is the hubris of thinking it is winning, and that it can win over the world. Fighting China instead of getting cheap stuff is a mistake. Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake. Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won’t do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what’s left.
Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn’t avert the path to collapse in any way.
The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.
Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake.
I hope that’s not your opinion of nuclear energy. People criticizing it miss the fact that a grid has to support some baseline.
All things are good and needed, which are not about burning fossil fuels (and sometimes even those, if getting “greener” energy somewhere pollutes more than just taking a canister of gasoline or diesel fuel). And the more diverse energy supply is, the smaller is each particular environmental impact, be it from greenhouse gases, lithium, ruining watersheds when building hydroelectric stations, similar impacts of wind farms, oil spills, escaping gases, toxic liquids, plastics, … .
People miss that nuance. You make humanity sustainable again by diversifying as much as possible, so that any particular kind of harm would be minimized, and so that no particular industry would possess strategic power. Not by dividing energy into holy and unholy and burning witches. It’s just math.
Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won’t do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what’s left.
Promising won’t because promising ain’t doing.
But input is leverage, and leverage is power. Look how “free” input from corporations into Linux gave them control over it. So if reindustrialization really-really happens, it will improve politics of your country. It’s the way it works. When you live off cheap Chinese labor, your economy depends less on your own.
Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn’t avert the path to collapse in any way.
Agreed.
The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.
I personally have doubts about UBI. It requires fiscal discipline that no recent US government had. Otherwise it speeds up inflation. Not significantly if we compare it to corporate bailouts, but still.
Peace is always good. But war is a symptom of problems that still would exist if there were no war.
I’ve recently watched an interview by Bill Joy (the Sun founder) where he mentions how clear water access has done much more to reduce mortality in the world than antibiotics. I think it’s the same with accessible good automation vs “AI” and other hype phenomena. I think non-oligopolized tech industry and non-oligopolized Web would do hell of a lot more for all kinds of abundance than any new magic wand like “AI”.
Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake.
Nuclear energy is not quite climate terrorism, because it is clean, but it’s purpose is to serve climate terrorists and warmongers instead of being a climate solution. It takes too long to build out, and is too expensive. Baseload was never a necessity. It usually made a giant continuous operating plant the cheapest energy. Batteries and transitioning existing FF plants for standby/peaker use is far cheaper than nuclear, and renewables, batteries, and hydrogen can achieve 100% clean energy with 0 additional nuclear. The insurmountable problem with deciding that you need extra GW of baseload in 15 years, is that you need to suppress renewables to still need it by then. Uninsurable and unbankable, and always overbudget in part because political bribes, in a collapsing corrupt dystopia, is only path to building any.
When you live off cheap Chinese labor, your economy depends less on your own.
One of the reasons the US can’t reindustrialize or even build affordable housing, is tariffs on steel/metals and lumber. Forces high material prices in addition to labour. For cars, China’s advantage is not just steel, and factory building, it is automation. Robotics gets developed close to where the customers are, and US industrialization is going to rely on minimal labour to have a chance. While the US is deeply committed to its oligarchy, inviting Chinese expertise in key industries, with their robotics, is a path to a future relevant America. Instead of tariffs, strategic reserves of domestically purchased steel/metal, solar, batteries that may be sold to US industry at a loss, is a path to having domestic supply resilience while encouraging FDI for abundance purposes.
I personally have doubts about UBI. It requires fiscal discipline that no recent US government had. Otherwise it speeds up inflation. Not significantly if we compare it to corporate bailouts, but still.
Inflation is a market adjustment between supply and demand. You can escape inflation by substituting goods, and you only lose from inflation if 1. you have too much cash, or 2. your income rises slower than inflation. Slavery is good anti-inflation policy that provides high productivity. If inflation is your most important consideration in life, then slavery is excellent path for reducing it. UBI by empowering people to work less if they want to, means that everyone gets 5 recruiter calls per day, and has a very easy time of finding a good paying job if they want it, and there is huge demand for labour because everyone has more money to buy stuff, and you need to work/sell to them to take their money and trickle it back up to the employers.
So UBI is a massive economic/prosperity boost above and beyond inflation. Eliminates poverty and crime, reduces the need for savings, and so multiplies more money into economy, and importantly disempowers “false promise/prophet heroes” trying to tell you Israel first with “working class angle” politicians vs “pro oligarchy slavery full employment” angle. UBI lowers deficits and debt, because it is just tax credits between rich and poor, without making rich any poorer. Significant program cuts means less “tax collection”. More program cuts means higher UBI. Politicians can no longer lie their way past even an idiocracy that understands “I like money”.
clear water access has done much more to reduce mortality in the world than antibiotics. I think it’s the same with accessible good automation vs “AI”
An AI developer can make more money from a pro-Empire AI than a humanist AI. The Empire can also JFK/MLK the humanist, or threaten it with compliance to the empire’s regulations of preventing humanity from prospering on national security grounds. It would be treason if your AI suggests the empire is not pure good, and Israel has done something wrong, and contradicts the CIA/media disinformation plan. As Netanyahu says, if you don’t kill everyone Netanyahu wants dead, then Iran wins. You want to support anti-semitic Iranian/China/Russian/DPRK agent AI development? Netanyahu will say you need one of his pagers.
You can escape inflation by substituting goods, and you only lose from inflation if 1. you have too much cash, or 2. your income rises slower than inflation.
If you have enough cash for it to grow faster than inflation, you win and those who have less lose compared to you. So your relative power grows.
Inflation makes the poor poorer faster than it makes the rich poorer, actually it doesn’t do that.
And by “inflation” specifically people usually mean devaluation of money due to growth of monetary mass, which itself is a result of closing budget holes with emission.
So UBI is a massive economic/prosperity boost above and beyond inflation. Eliminates poverty and crime, reduces the need for savings,
Eliminates small crime. Superprofits from selling cocaine working together with corrupt officials will not really change with UBI.
Politicians can no longer lie their way past even an idiocracy that understands “I like money”.
There’s never enough money.
More program cuts means higher UBI.
Only if politicians act as you want them to.
It would be treason if your AI suggests the empire is not pure good, and Israel has done something wrong, and contradicts the CIA/media disinformation plan.
The problem here is not with what you are describing, but that you are seriously considering treating a computer program as an oracle, that can ask questions about good and evil.
Inflation makes the poor poorer faster than it makes the rich poorer, actually it doesn’t do that.
This is the big lie. Inflation hurts the rich when bond rates are at an insufficient premium to inflation rate. Those who don’t have savings, can complain that their work wages are not rising fast enough, but that is a complaint towards their employer who is raising prices enough to pay higher wages if they weren’t oppressing their workers.
Corporatist/Republican media helped swing election to most genocidal supportive candidate over this lie. But a war on Russia made the inflation self inflicted.
Eliminates small crime. Superprofits from selling cocaine working together with corrupt officials will not really change with UBI.
Goal shouldn’t be that profits can’t exist. It should be poverty elimination, easier life for everyone, and inherent resistance to having profits used to rule over you more harshly.
Only if politicians act as you want them to.
It is not power hungry DNC or RNC who will ever provide UBI. It is candidates who want to disempower Israel first wars and rulership. A campaign for UBI is first and foremost an extermination of the corrupt rulership, replacing it with the empowerment of individuals.
The problem here is not with what you are describing, but that you are seriously considering treating a computer program as an oracle, that can ask questions about good and evil.
AI, including current LLMs, as a humanist oracle, has the power to make you/us less stupid if its mission/programming is truth. If its programming is to serve the same empire media disinformation, then surely, it will tell you to support a war on Iran. Any assistance to governance or empire will be how to best conduct a war on Iran. If an AI has a humanist instead of empire domination programming, you can trust it to both advise good/productive policy that is also truthful. If individual people are evil, and have pure evil biases, they can still override their personal AI to provide advice on how to support their evil, so as to make the AI most useful to them, but the default must be humanist/truthful.
Regulating AI for “national security domination” is inherently coopting that oracle function. Google/reddit/lemmy has been such a function of filtering up answers for you to digest for many years already. AI, Internet and other media are all tools that can choose to disinform you into being stupider, or make you smarter and more informed.
This is the big lie. Inflation hurts the rich when bond rates are at an insufficient premium to inflation rate. Those who don’t have savings, can complain that their work wages are not rising fast enough, but that is a complaint towards their employer who is raising prices enough to pay higher wages if they weren’t oppressing their workers.
I don’t understand this paragraph. Maybe it’s correct, but the way you use words confuses me. Inflation means that the same real world items cost more of conditional units, that is, money. The bigger proportion of your interactions is done with money and the smaller frequency is, the more you lose from inflation.
Corporatist/Republican media helped swing election to most genocidal supportive candidate over this lie. But a war on Russia made the inflation self inflicted.
What war on Russia? Russia invaded a sovereign nation, leveled cities, killed civilians in droves.
Goal shouldn’t be that profits can’t exist. It should be poverty elimination, easier life for everyone, and inherent resistance to having profits used to rule over you more harshly.
With superprofits from cocaine, prostitution and other forbidden things going to mafia groups associated with politicians - yeah, one would think such profits shouldn’t exist. Whichever path you like most, you won’t be allowed to tread it while people with the opposing interest have so much power.
It is not power hungry DNC or RNC who will ever provide UBI. It is candidates who want to disempower Israel first wars and rulership. A campaign for UBI is first and foremost an extermination of the corrupt rulership, replacing it with the empowerment of individuals.
So how are you going to do that?
It’s like elaborating in detail what you are going to do when we settle Mars and build safe dome cities, without any plan at all how you are going to make that economically plausible.
AI, including current LLMs, as a humanist oracle, has the power to make you/us less stupid if its mission/programming is truth.
No it doesn’t, it won’t ever be smarter than the dumbest human and also however many oracles you consult, you still bear full responsibility for your own decisions.
Regulating AI for “national security domination” is inherently coopting that oracle function. Google/reddit/lemmy has been such a function of filtering up answers for you to digest for many years already.
Once again, treating these technologies as ever possibly acceptable to tell people what to think is nuts. These are glorified predictors. Their role is to fill the holes where you don’t have anything better. These are by definition worse than anything dedicated. And of course they can’t think.
I don’t understand this paragraph. Maybe it’s correct, but the way you use words confuses me. Inflation means that the same real world items cost more of conditional units, that is, money. The bigger proportion of your interactions is done with money and the smaller frequency is, the more you lose from inflation.
If your income is rising less than the cost increases of things you are forced to buy, then you lose. The usual blame for your income rising less is that you are desperately beholden to a single employer. Blaming the government for inflation, as hurting the poor, is the oligarchy deflecting blame for their greedflation and war.
What war on Russia? Russia invaded a sovereign nation, leveled cities, killed civilians in droves.
Seems like the popular conviction that they did all of that for no reason at all.
It’s like elaborating in detail what you are going to do when we settle Mars and build safe dome cities, without any plan at all how you are going to make that economically plausible.
A UBI only democratic political platform can promise a net tax cut for 90% of population in addition to elimination of crime, poverty, create massive prosperous economic growth for workers and investors. The only reason to oppose UBI, and it is an important reason, is your political power or willingness to suck up to political power requires misery, despair, and collapse in order to hold it.
If you are saying that Americans are too stupid to not favour UBI over corrupt rulership meant to diminish them, then that history is correct. But the disinformation arguments against UBI that you have repeated are entirely and purely based on “we need slavery” and the rulership that imposes it. There would seem to be some logical hope that the stupidity level required to oppose UBI is not permanent. The message can overcome the well funded disinformation in favour of corrupt evil.
Supporting the DNC after their next leadership election to double down on zionist neocon supremacist rule over US is not the offramp to collapse.
Every moment is a point of no return, unfortunately.
I’m 14 and this is deep?
🤣 yes
May I suggest that you give Vlad Vexler’s youtube a listen? He describes this as a period of dlweaking democracy, but explains why all is not lost.
Democracy dlweaks in darkness
Is thia Democracy in the room with us right now?
No. Just the next chapter in the story.
Rome had a final chapter.
The Germans are good at ending things, aren’t they?
It might be for some stuff. I’m worried that it’ll have a lasting impact on women inside the USA as well as outside. Inside, they’ll have their rights taken away over time. Outside, morale will be impacted. But I’m hoping it’ll cause an uprising rather than the other way around.
👊
Doubt it.
The rest of the world isn’t lucky enough to never have to hear about the perpetual US election cycle again, and frankly there’s just too much money in it for them to give it up.
It’ll be a fucking clown show for the next four years though.
Not really. Not to be dismissive of the harms of a 2nd term trump.
But you have to understand what American history has been.
People were literally enslaved in the early days, then the country was literally at war with itself over slavery. Then Jim Crow and Segregation. Black people were lynched. White mobs would kill black people.
Chinese people were targeted by the Chinese Exclusion Act and banned from entry, some were US Citizens too and they weren’t except either.
The US had a major economic crash in 1929. Got into 2 world wars. American Citizens of Japanese ancestry were literally arrested and held in camps because of their ancestry. Went through cols war, the red scare, mccathyism. People randomly getting accused of being “communists” and arrested. Unions get cracked down. Protests were brutally suppressed, more violently than in modern day. Black people protesting for their rights and took a bus down south got burned. Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. literally got assassinated.
That is the American history.
And here we are, through such a shitty history, democracy survived, and voting rights expanded to so many people. First to Black people, then to Women.
Back then a majority of the population supported segregation, institutionalized racism. But today, a majority of people are okay with interracial marriage.
I have high hopes we can survive another trump term.
It won’t be pleasent, but we’ll survive.
I think the problem here is the concurrent effects of climate change. The US couldn’t have picked a worse time to move from flirting with facism to full-on marrying it.
You can deal with one crisis if you’re coordinated enough but the chaos that’s already occurring with the climate - and is set to become exponentially worse - doesn’t give me much hope for a harmonious conclusion to this. Obviously, I hope I’m wrong and you’re right.
Dont forget the trail of tears.
The US has been through a lot and will likely recover, but it would be nice to avoid making the same mistakes again. How many more people have to get hurt before humanity learns?
How do you replenish the oceans and maintain life for any ecosystem humanity lives off of? Most of America is set to be desert by 4 degrees c average warmth increase. You won’t grow crops outdoors. We know we are guaranteed to blow past 1.5 now without being able to stop it as are actions are to late. Yet we are saying “drill baby drill”. The topographical map will change drastically.
The part about our history you’re forgetting is that we never, through any of that, gleefully elected a guy that has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t give a fuck about democracy and will work to subvert or destroy it if it doesn’t suit him.
This is new territory.
And we’re about to experience the deconstruction of things that will be very difficult to build back.
Your point is that we’ve been around for a few hundred years, so we can bounce back. But history would like to point out that nations that were around much longer than us have ceased to exist many times over.
I wish I had your optimism.
It should be noted that through all this people fought for those rights. So don’t fall asleep, dear America, because organizing even within small communities will make a difference.
If done correctly, massive change can happen. Dream big so that those who fear negotiate back down to the levels you’ll accept.
The Beastie Boys certainly did.
I feel like a lot of people online need to read this comment, go outside, and live their life. This is not defeatist, and it’s not unreal optimism. Thank you for this.
one difference today is that govt/establishment/utra-rich have centralised way more power than anytime in human history.
add that with extreme surveillance & automated weaponry, “govt” can do basically anything they want. 1% can easily crush any opposition to them with no matter how strongly united the rest of us are. dnc just ignored its entire voter base to continue a genocide & support fracking while letting corporate greed run rampant for last 4 years.
with ai+drones it will become way worse. it’s not unimaginable what’s happening to palestinian will happen to the non-white population here in next 10-15 years.
On the other hand, do keep in mind that mighty empires have fallen. We cannot say for sure that things will be fine just because in the past the USA has survived
democracy survived
LMAO!!
Choosing between two candidate picked by lobbyists/corporations, and anyone else not having a slightest chance in hell isn’t a democracy, but hey, you do you.
It’s slightly better than China/Russia having a single candidate and everyone else is just for show.
It is a democracy.
Not a good type, but still a democracy.
Remember, Democracy and Autocracy isnt binary states of its either a Full Totalitarian Regime or a Full Direct Flawless Democracy.
There’s a sliding scale in between.
We don’t just go from Monarchies to a perfect Utopian Flawless Democratic system overnight. Change is incremental.
I do agree with the sentiment that 2 party system isn’t really a good idea, that very much need to be changed.
But its not like the constitution says “The United States shall be a 2-party system”, its an emergent property of First-Past-The-Post electoral systems. But unfortunately, human brains always look for the first thing they think of, I mean “Most Votes Win” sounds simple right. People never thought about the fact that “Most” doesn’t mean majority, but by the time people realize, its too late, people go too used to it.
But its still a democracy, a very very flawed democracy. But if you argue that First-Past-The-Post isn’t a democracy, then most of the world are living in dictatorships.
I share your broader view and cautious optimism. In fact I think that some of what we are seeing are death spasms of that white hegemony that used to lynch blacks at will. They lost their “hard” power long ago with the end of Jim Crow. And they have been losing their “soft” power ever since. Demographic trends point to white people in America eventually becoming a minority. Religion is also dying out. So much of what we see is a panic of a dying group that was once dominant. There is no way that’s ever going to be pretty, anywhere, at any time. But look at the trend behind it and it’s an encouraging one, even if the death spasms are incredibly difficult. TBH if the Democrats could just provide some real leadership into this future, America could flip into a totally different country, much like the liberal democracies of Europe (but way stronger) inside of 20 years. This is the reality that the old guard are scared shitless of, and why they are pulling out all the stops to go the other way.
I think the real answer is that we end up kind of like the UK – going from the worlds ultra-dominant superpower to a sort of slow regression to the mean, as China, India and others take the spotlight.
When you look at what China is doing with their Belt and Road Initiative, and their move to dominate the transportation infrastructure of developing nations – the US isn’t anywhere near equipped to counter that. We’re still in a cold war mentality thinking that we will dominate as the world’s police force.
Meanwhile, all the actual economies will be run by Chinese companies operating with state support.
Maybe. US history is full of crazy fucked up shit that the nation has made its way through thus far. This kind of situation hasn’t really happened in the US before though, and historically these kinds of situations do not work out well. We are past the point of no return in that the status quo Washington Consensus or whatever you want to call the previous era is gone now, whatever is coming is something new and different and the US role and position in the world are never going back to what they were before. Really I would say this process started with Bush II but there is no reversing it now that Trump has won a convincing electoral victory. Whether we’re past the point of no return for the US constitutional order isn’t really clear yet but it’s not looking good.
Appreciate your measured response. I’m wondering how long it will take folks to stop coping out of self preservation and say out loud that this isn’t anything we’ve seen before - it’s brand new and can go as far as has been threatened.
We don’t know.
The US came back from a US president hiring private goons to spy on his political opponents.
The US came back from a US president illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund right wing militias in South America.
The US came back from a US cabinet member taking literal bribes from oil companies to give them oil drilling rights on federal land.
The US came back from a US president illegally firing a cabinet member and installing his own lackey.
But it didn’t HAVE to.
I don’t think there’s really such a thing as a ‘point of no return’ for a Democracy. But it is possible to get to a point after which you don’t return.
The next line of defense is 3/4 of state legislatures.
No. It will be bad and might set us back a few decades, but we will fight back or die trying.
We’ll be fine. It will be a hard 4 years but based on last time trump will spend a fuck load of money to keep the masses happy. 2028 and on are going to be harder because trump will get some bullshit tax cuts passed that will target the middle class when he’s out of office.
We won’t be fine, this is meaningfully different
It’s my point of no return. Leaving in two weeks forever. Good luck.
Congratulations. Did you already have citizenship somewhere else?
Australia, thank God
Where ya goin? And why there?
I’ve been trying to figure out the most popular countries where people are fleeing to, but I couldn’t figure out how to search for this.
Popular is irrelevant, you need to match your personality and skills with where you can thrive. Easy and familiar isn’t necessarily good.
Citizen of Australia, never been more valuable than now
Yeah. Looks like Australia has had their shit together lately
Trump is all but a speck of dust in the grand scheme of time, luck gooded
He’s a whole lot more than a speck of dust in the grand scheme of a person’s life.
Even just his 8 years is about 10% for most people. Then you have to add on the extra years of trailing effects…
Too right. The groundswell of antipathy in the U.S. is the real reason I am leaving
Hope you’re okay and this is a move to another country being discussed?
Thanks, I’m good! An Aussie
Bogan
Strewth
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It’s unlikely.
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That’s hard to impossible to answer in the moment but easier for historians to determine in retrospect.
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