anarchonomicon.com
An Epic length essay of mine in which I lay out my theory of history and why briefly summarized: The Age of the nation state is almost certainly coming to an end under the corroding forces of decentralizing military technology and institutional decay.
The future will not resemble post French Revolution centralized governments asserting their control over each other, but rather will slowly come to resemble the Greek City states (misnomer) or the Holy roman empire's vast network of thousands of polities and war making entities.
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Notes -
I think you’re leaving out that everyone wants services from a ‘big state’- stable currency, long range security, access to markets on favorable terms, etc. And America has, quite helpfully, lots of medium sized governments with major economies attached which can fill the void- bigger state level governments.
The median outcome for the federal government’s decline into irrelevance is federal assets defecting to Texas, California, etc which then become regional hegemons and solidify into major countries on their own right by cannibalizing nearby smaller communities. The ‘civil war’ then looks like conflicts defining the edge of each SOI. In the long run this is probably likely enough that it would be foolish for bigger state governments not to have specific plans to capitalize on it. But it being particularly likely in the next decade or so as opposed to the US being in for a rough couple decades? Maybe. I think we probably have enough assabiyah to pull together through another major crisis or two, and if rural areas have increasing control by non-state actors the system can deal with it in practice. I wouldn’t count out balkanization when the social security bill comes due either, but I still think you’re looking at regionally hegemonic empires which happen to be smaller than the current expanse of the USA.
Yeah, reading this post and encountering the section about the HRE, I'm surprised that Kulak did not simply predict that the US would devolve into a patchwork of "tollbooth kingdoms" just like what the HRE became.
Fundamentally, I think the challenge for the US in the future, and the solution to said challenge, ultimately comes down to culture, cf. the Noah Smith complaint about us not being a culture that builds. I think where I diverge with Kulak on this whole concept of "US dying of DEI globohomo" is that I think it eminently possible for culture to shift and for the US to get on some sort of "healthier" path of governance, of ditching unproductive ideas and ideological frameworks, before the US has to ditch them the hard way via total collapse.
I agree. The thing is, Kulak craves a collapse, he yearns for it. I've seen this before 100 times on /r/collapse and many other places on the right and the left. They couch it in concerned terms but what they really want is total collapse quickly so they can step out of their boring lives and into whatever post apocalyptic power fantasy YA literature has lead them to believe.
All roads lead to collapse in Kulaks eyes, because that is what he wants to happen. Zerohedge and Michael Burry and Silverbear, peak oil, clathrate gun, rapture, global warming, hard core preppers -on and on and on; they all suffer from the same sickness.
Sometimes it is because they build their brand and their income on it, sometimes it is just a wish for a different more exciting life free of the normal drudgery, sometimes it is because, "My ideology will arise triumphant from the ashes of the old world". It never happens like they predict, even when things get shitty in this world, it happens slowly in a larger area or quickly in an isolated location like a war or natural disaster.
All this is true. And yet, collapses actually happen, have happened recently, and are likely to continue to happen.
On a long enough timeframe the USA will collapse and Balkanize, that’s true. The thesis of this thread is that it’ll happen by 2030, which is less of an obvious statement(and that furthermore that Balkanization will result in a patchwork of tiny countries with no hegemon instead of massive empires with spheres of influence).
Why is that true? I think if anything the USA is becoming more powerful by the day. Our complete dominance of tech is only extending our cultural and military hegemony. There is an end game where tech becomes the only thing in the world that matters, if you're on top when that happens...it might be forever.
Do you think the USA will be a country in 3000 AD?
Oh so this is some kind of deep time speculation thing now? Ok. I think by 3000 AD that question won't have any meaning, but I think whatever our decedents (human/mechanical or mixed) are up to, and how far across the universe they have spread, hopefully some bot has a nostalgic subroutine and ablates their hull with the ol' stars and stripes. Shit if things work out weird over the next 40 years, it could be you!
I think on a long enough time scale it's inevitable that the USA collapses because that's just a thing that will eventually happen. I think that a confluence of crises in the neighborhood of 2030 is the most likely(this does not mean probable) near-term scenario for this, but I assign a >50% probability to the USA making it into the 22nd century in a form that is at least recognizable if probably distinctly different.
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