I was just telling someone the other day how all the talk of civil wars and unrest were overblown, Americans will never resort to that with the economy the way it is. Even in the '08 recession (and even worse scenarios), recovery was a possibility. There would be no jobs at the time, but you can reasonably expect them to be created in a few years. You could go to school and switch careers.
But I think right now there is a dreadful perfect storm of sorts.
- It's not just LLMs, the social/political environment just doesn't favor risk taking, which means less opportunities.
- The US will be alienated from all its good trade partners for a decade plus at best. They'll still do trade, but the era of relying on US companies, or relying on a stable US consumer base is over.
- The dollar will decline, by how much I don't know but it will. Less buying power for American companies.
- Education is in shambles, and skilled & educated immigrants who can leave the US are doing so in droves. Brain drain will be real, the pipeline to replace them will take a generation, and that is if it was fixed today.
- Historically, there is a natural re-balancing of powers that happens as a result of people getting upset and organizing change or some sort. But the ability of the population to organize meaningfully is curtailed because tech, moderation and surveillance capitalism.
- I won't say too much about the current admin, but things are really scary. Not as in "i'm upset about this" or "so much for democracy" but more like "i'm scared for my life" levels of scary.
- Erosion of trust is huge, you don't take risks if you don't have some trust. consumer spending, loans, business spending,etc... and the erosion of trust is fundamental and hard to repair. Trust is also heavily asymmetric, it costs a lot to obtain, but it takes little to lose it. Once lost, gaining it again is usually orders of magnitude more costly.
let me stop there for brevity, but my point was how the US has never truly been in a situation where the economy is doing bad, and the politics is untenable. You have people who are in power and well incentivized to make things even worse, you can cancel elections and deploy troops better if things are really and truly "bad". When people stop having their basic needs met (and I don't mean health care and affordable houses - but food and shelter), I'm concerned there will not be many ways left where the rule of law and peace can be sustained.
It's one of those things, like "you can't unspill the milk". If things get as bad as I fear, right now, today is as good as it will ever get in the US. What scares me is that Americans aren't terrified enough, those that know better are in catatonic state of "what can i possibly do about it?" - and I mean all Americans regardless of politics.