61–70 of 250 posts
"as government loses control of its monopoly on violence."
but I can't articulate why...
Maybe something to do with a comparison to organized crime as a competition to a (possibly separately corrupt) government?
Perhaps not entire civilization collapse, pending nuclear arsenals unleashed, but I think we are edging ever closer to massive social upheaval, what shape of this I am unsure about. To quote an adjacent article that was mentioned in this one: How Western Civilization Could Collapse > Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the e…
As a US citizen, I've been wondering for almost 10 years now if we're edging towards a new civil war. In the past 5 or so, I've been worrying almost equally about the state of global affairs setting the stage for potential world war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have been in a relatively stable world (9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan notwithstanding -- none of them world war scale), but it now feels ever les…
This is not only a terrible American exceptionalism thing to say, but also probably wrong if you look at history of failing states. The Russian emipre was it the brink of collapse before WW1, participation in that war lead to its collapse sooner then it probably would have.
From an outside view much of the world is long since tired of American exceptionalism, and American influence on the rest of the world. For many people the collapse of America would be a preferable option over the status quo. Me personally would prefer no war at all (neither civil nor world). However I would love to see American influence dwindle in favor of a more global solidarity of the workers of the world (including American workers).
I'm an amateur historian at best, but I'm not aware of any era that has not expected the world to end soon. The Christians have done it for 20 centuries now, as one example. During my life, it has always been a common expectation, though the expected cause has shifted a few times. My hunch is that maybe we're hard wired to expect the world to end, for some undiscovered reason. Again, I remind you of my amateur status…
I don't think there is any problem with inequality. Inequality may be increasing within individual countries, but it's decreasing worldwide because of decreasing inequality between countries. Similarly, i can't see a problem with East/West divide. "Eastearn" civilisations are rising only as long as they adopt Western principles. It's not as much of a disadvantage of a Western civilisation, it's simply that it's losin…
I think this ignores a few realities: 1) the largest of the economies rising in Asia, being China, is funded in large part by state subsidies to this day . That won’t last forever. Few wholly Chinese companies that weren’t in Hong Kong before China took it back over have proven they can compete without these subsidies either. 2) As a result of the above, for instance, free market isn’t really “free” and I argue this…
People say this all the time to try to sound wise, but in reality it's sort of a meaningless distinction.
There's a wide range of functioning models for democracy, and a democratic republic is just one form of representative democracy:
Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy; for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy), India (a federal parliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic).
“By 476, the empire’s reach was zero.” I stopped reading right here. The Western Empire fell in 476 (for many reasons). The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) lasted until 1453. Even that isn’t a perfect way of articulating it, given the continued influence of the Catholic Church had well into the 1500’s (Luther). In some ways one could argue civilization has never ended, but paused in different areas of the wor…
Further. The empire ending didn’t mean civilization did as the Kingdom of Italy continued to exist and the empire was simply replaced with German kingdoms.
The Kingdom of Italy also maintained Roman institutions like the consuls and Roman senate, which continued to exist as an organization until the 7th century.
With Odoacer acknowledging Nepos as the nominal ruler, referring to himself with Roman honorifics (usually as a patrician), and Roman institutions being preserved, I bet the average Roman civilian wouldn’t have experienced too big of a difference between 474 and 478 even if the Western Roman Empire had already been ‘replaced’ by the Kingdom of Italy.
I'm an amateur historian at best, but I'm not aware of any era that has not expected the world to end soon. The Christians have done it for 20 centuries now, as one example. During my life, it has always been a common expectation, though the expected cause has shifted a few times. My hunch is that maybe we're hard wired to expect the world to end, for some undiscovered reason. Again, I remind you of my amateur status…
This is my general feeling as well. People enjoy catastrophizing, and also fail to appreciate that we as a species are actually fairly good at solving problems.
I'm an amateur historian at best, but I'm not aware of any era that has not expected the world to end soon. The Christians have done it for 20 centuries now, as one example. During my life, it has always been a common expectation, though the expected cause has shifted a few times. My hunch is that maybe we're hard wired to expect the world to end, for some undiscovered reason. Again, I remind you of my amateur status…
The topic is the end of a civilization, not the world. Plenty of civilizations have collapsed in the last 20 centuries, but it depends on how you define a collapse. The fall of the Roman and Aztec empires would be the benchmarks. Would we also consider the more recent Nazi Germany or Ottoman Empire falls as collapses?
Oh and don’t forget the French Empire fell in the 1700’s.
But does that count or did thet just evolve into a new form?
I'm an amateur historian at best, but I'm not aware of any era that has not expected the world to end soon. The Christians have done it for 20 centuries now, as one example. During my life, it has always been a common expectation, though the expected cause has shifted a few times. My hunch is that maybe we're hard wired to expect the world to end, for some undiscovered reason. Again, I remind you of my amateur status…
Keep in mind that in the last two centuries we’ve grown and expanded more or less exponentially. The destruction to the environment was proportional to it. Not saying we are going to self destruct, I don’t have a crystal ball to predict that, but it seems to me that right now we’re right on track towards it and the trainwreck is becoming harder and harder to avoid. Global warming and climate change is becoming more a…
The pressure we are putting on other species and flora is immense but humanity’s future has never been so certain.
The only way to claim civilization collapse is to move the goal posts to a population decimation. But even that would still only put us where we were less than 200 years ago.
I liked seeing this concept "as government loses control of its monopoly on violence." but I can't articulate why... Maybe something to do with a comparison to organized crime as a competition to a (possibly separately corrupt) government?