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If you look at far-right takeovers in history, they usually come after defeat in war or economic collapse. Both in the case of Germany. Italy technically won WW1, but they got suckered in the peace negotiations and were very angry about it.
Say China suplexes the US Navy, takes Taiwan plus makes some arrangement with South Korea where most of their semiconductors go to China. I'm confident that South Korea would start negotiating very quickly, they've got a land border, no nukes and no food security. Japan would be in a similar boat.
The West would face many economic crises in quick succession. You'd have the implosion of the high-tech economy, sudden currency crises, a huge political realignment as countries like Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia start switching ship, the housing market would probably implode, a lot of equities would fall significantly, debt crises, inflation... Every systemic economic problem we've been putting off would hit instantly. The whole political system would be systemically delegitimized if wages fell 20% overnight, in real terms. Greece briefly went far-right after the GFC and they were in the EU, constantly being pulled back to liberal democracy. What if there's nobody left to pull?
People would not be inclined to trust the old ways anymore, they would be very very angry. They'd stay angry as long as the economy was wrecked, which it would be for years and years. At this point, it would be a conflict between the far-left and far-right. The far-right has an advantage here since they can say 'our navies were all trained more for DEI than combat (there's actually a govt report that basically says this), those clowns lost us a war, plus the Chinese ARE communists - it's right there in the name'. They can say 'let's seize the wealth of these Jewish billionaires - Goldman Sachs and co invested so much in China, they're traitors, along with Blackrock and the NYT'. Every mainstream media org who said 'this war is justified and good and we'll win' will have a huge amount of egg on their face. And they'll all support the war because they always do.
What can the communists say? Seize everybody's wealth?
It'd certainly be tumultuous. But - implosion of the high-tech economy? TSMC getting wiped off the map wouldn't destroy existing computers or servers. There'd be a lot of pain in the half?-decade it'd take to get domestic fabs up to par, but we wouldn't stop using twitter, MS teams, or most of the hundred thousand specialized pieces of software that dot our economy and lives. It'd be a financial implosion - stocks would drop, companies would shed workers - but the industry itself would make it.
There'd still be a right-wing turn in politics, ofc, 9/11 is minor by comparison but still united the nation against a common enemy. But it'd be of a different character to weimar germany - no doomed political system, no clash between ancien regime and revolution, no paramilitaries fighting in the streets. And 'real wages falling by 20%' - if managed properly - doesn't mean anyone goes hungry. A decline in living standards today means - on average - less variety in food and products, less generous medical care . Which is altogether different from famine. Now, economic shocks hurt some a lot more than the 'average' - but effective redistribution could compensate. And a war economy provides exactly the jobs / economic stimulus to combat that depression.
Surely the effects of losing this kind of major war would be at least as bad for the US as what happened to Greece in the GFC? It got pretty bad in Greece, a lot of brain drain, suicide, closed businesses and so on.
The Greeks had been running 10-15% deficits due to the financial crisis and covering it up with dubious accounting practices. They were sitting at about 120% debt to GDP, the US is at about 120% debt to GDP (federal, government debt). The US has been running similarly large deficits 10% in 2021, 5% in 2022, 6% in 2023. Presumably wartime deficits will be much higher.
The problem was that the Greek economy nosedived, so their debt to GDP went up to 190% pretty quickly, so they had to raise taxes to pay it, so the economy got worse. It was pretty bad. It'd be a lot worse without bailouts. There's nobody willing or able to bail out the US. Who is going to buy US government bonds in this scenario, who is going to enable the US to spend itself out of a depression?
Without steady supplies of chips, modern economies are finished. Chips are needed for cars, for everything. I'll bet they're needed for semiconductor plants, and in large quantities. What is Apple without steady production of high quality chips - almost all of which come from Taiwan or South Korea? The whole company might as well disappear.
What about all the debt Americans are in? There are all these statistics floating around about how many Americans can't afford a sudden $1000 expense - can they afford the whole economy crashing, a currency crisis, enormous numbers of jobs lost...
Semiconductor factories can be blown up, but they can also be built. There's already a factory in Arizona capable of making M1 chips. If we get to hot war threatening South Korean semiconductor production or availability (extremely unlikely without going to full WWIII), the sorts of regulations that prevent expansion will either tend to melt away, or at worst more factories will be built just south of the US-Mexico border (and run by former Taiwanese, probably). This is regardless of who is in charge in the US, perhaps unless it is the California State Assembly (which isn't very likely for obvious reasons).
You've heard the old saw about "lies, damned lies, and statistics". That's that kind of statistic. Bankrate runs that survey on a regular basis and the media lies about the results every time.
The survey asks "If hit with a $1,000 expense for an emergency room visit or car repair, you would:"
One answer is "Pay the cost from your savings". This is 43%. This is then used to claim that 57% of Americans can't afford the sudden $1000 expense.
When the nybbler is biting back on the blackpill it significantly changes my priors.
Is the needle cooling?
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