51–60 of 89 posts
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Chernobyl wasn't the cause of Soviet Union collapse. Arguably, the over-reach in Afghanistan was more important.
Chernobyl cost enormous amounts of money and Soviet Union collapsed shortly after, in part because it simply ran out of money dealing with Chernobyl
I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more likely, especially as budget issues prevent the US from deploying the same overwhelming military power all over the globe. America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you- when push comes to…
> Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders.
It would not be unheard of for those local state leaders to go to war with each other -- they've done it once before, after all. The point is that once power centers fail, the consequences aren't predictable.
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> Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Rome?
The Roman Empire, in its various forms, lasted for 1000 years.
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Our countries may not be authoritarian but they're certainly rigid in the sense of having a huge amount of accumulated "technical debt" in their social organization, that by definition is simply not amenable to gradual change. A collapse of some sort is then the only feasible form of restructuring, and is a natural consequence of such circumstances especially given outside stressors. So I would definitely not put it…
I do agree that the US is rigid in its thinking. We accumulated a lot of wealth in the mid-20th century and a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about undertaking new national ventures to bring in significant new wealth. It's understandable to a degree - we have a lot to risk by taking big national projects - but it feeds into our distribution problems because we want…
This is a marker of a failed country - one where the collective political discourse is no longer geared towards actual social benefit but has been taken over by competing votebanks of entitled moochers, led by their uber-mooching enablers in the policy-making "elite". Acemoglu's How Nations Fail is a clear and comprehensive discussion of these dynamics.
I guess China would fall apart next. It's a country that's stitched together by force and propaganda. It doesn't seem to have the ability to shift its internal borders. So its collapse would be more dramatic than the US.
I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more likely, especially as budget issues prevent the US from deploying the same overwhelming military power all over the globe. America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you- when push comes to…
> Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders. The fed gets it's money from GDP producing states. There are far more GDP draining states the further inland you go. If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch which is the only on…
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Russia totally recovered by any metric you can pick, from household income to average life expectancy. Heck, moscow in 80's looked like dumpster fire. Now it looks like a proper european capital city. EDIT: to prove my point, russian life expectancy from fed -- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qTgj
In space industry prowess, it continues a slow decline (although they had a more robust system to begin with, so it has been managed fairly well).
Germany has nothing to show in space industry prowess, but it is nice, wealthy country which focuses on problems at hand.
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> America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you Do you have a source that supports your statement?
The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic for 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example, social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for defense.
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Chernobyl cost enormous amounts of money and Soviet Union collapsed shortly after, in part because it simply ran out of money dealing with Chernobyl
Had very little to do with Chernobyl and Afghanistan, which were minor interventions. Had everything to do with Gorbachev's policies and underlying LONG-TERM economic problems.
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I know you’re referring to Bush v. Gore and the 2016 electoral / popular vote inversion, both of which benefited Republicans. We’re there any scenarios in recent history of the sort that benefited Democrats? I can’t think of any. That said, the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College. This can be done either by Constitutional amendment, or by the agreement of a certain number of states [0]. What…
> the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College This would certainly benefit the Democrats, but I don't see it as a "solution". It would give states without large urban areas even less political leverage than they have now. Presidential campaigns would not even bother visiting most states, since locking up enough votes in large urban areas (all of which are solidly Democratic) would be sufficient…