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Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

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Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#91

Post by Gormo »

kennysoona wrote: post #36
mingus88 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don’t see how that is compatible with a capitalist society. Money is power and politics is the exercise of power.

The answer is regulation.

Regulation doesn't work. It's usually co-opted by the very parties it's intended to regulate, and used as a means to entrench rather than limit their power. In the worst case, it actually makes things far worse by allowing established interests to manipulate regulation to create barriers to entry for competition, produce collusive outcomes that would otherwise be illegal, and replace common-law liability for the actual consequences of their behavior with prescriptive rules that they can comply with performatively.

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#92

Post by icegreentea2 »

zmgsabst wrote: post #73
icegreentea2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair enough, but I feel like more modern examples are probably more relevant than Ancient Rome or China. The modern world offers significantly more ways for rival powers to assert influence in periods of weakness. I'd also argue that for most people anxious right now, the idea that America might be in a transitional period of turmoil, but that it'll emerge stronger in 20 years (I made up that number) is of col…

China is also a modern example: they endured a political collapse and century of humiliation, but successfully reconstituted themselves into a world power comparable in many ways to imperial China. Russia at the end of the USSR has also successfully endured a period of collapse, during which Putin rose to power and successfully navigated to being an influential country. (Though, less so than China and with remaining…

That's cool, I didn't understand that about the movement. I'm honestly very skeptical and dismayed about many aspects of the movement. For example, I'm instinctively skeptical that the timescale and depth of turmoil and rebirth is truly understood and accepted amongst the majority of movement supporters. And I'm afraid of the tools being unleashed to achieve and lock in changes.

But it was also clear that there were many aspects of status quo that were deeply problematic. So I understand the urge at least.

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#93

Post by Gormo »

FiniteField wrote: post #82

Carl Sagan died the year after this quote. With the greatest respect to him as a science communicator, he has not lived to see an entire generation of politics. When he died, the liberal capitalist post-historical consensus was in full swing. World leaders believed that all notions of identity and nationhood would gently fade away, to be replaced by a world of fungible, peaceful shoppers, administered by an all-knowi…

> The election of Trump (especially Trump 2.0) is a ground-up repudiation of this consensus by ordinary people

Or maybe it's just a reaction to the "class of technocratic managers" becoming corrupt and dysfunctional, and attempting to control things that were far outside of the role that the "liberal capitalist post-historical consensus" had defined for them.

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#94

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

Gormo wrote: post #70
vlan0 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bernie said it best. Get money out of politics. Full stop.

That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence. Money is just a tool. The resources and incentives that the money is being spent on already exist, and it's being used to further ambitions and goals that were always present. Getting "money out of politics" in a formalistic way will just lead to corrupt ambitions being facilitated via some other means. Bernie's ideas are very dan…

> That's a vague slogan, not a meaningful strategy to accomplish anything of consequence

And "Make America Great Again" is as well, but over 70 million people rallied behind it

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#95

Post by s_dev »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #55
kennysoona wrote: post #39

I think the only people denying the decline of the US are the same people that think the US can be as powerful and respected as it was in the 50s, i.e. not the most well informed crowd. It really is crazy to see the way the US is going. I remember reading every time in history an emerging superpower was replacing a declining power, the declining power got antsy and shot first, leading to them getting whooped by the e…

Who is going to replace US? China? Its economy is on the decline with deflation, debts, real estates problem...etc. Europe? Japan?

>Who is going to replace US?

There doesn't have to be a replacement. Just like nobody replaced the USSR after the Cold War ended leaving the US as the worlds lone super power.

A world can exist with no super powers and with multiple conventional powers.

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#96

Post by FiniteField »

muglug wrote: post #90
FiniteField wrote: post #82

Carl Sagan died the year after this quote. With the greatest respect to him as a science communicator, he has not lived to see an entire generation of politics. When he died, the liberal capitalist post-historical consensus was in full swing. World leaders believed that all notions of identity and nationhood would gently fade away, to be replaced by a world of fungible, peaceful shoppers, administered by an all-knowi…

> For decades, academia has been part of an ongoing anti-democratic, elitist movement to effectively take control away from common people When you declare that "studying things" is elitist, that's when you know your argument is cooked. A PhD student earning $40k a year is not, in any sense, part of the elite.

This is the kind of dishonest motte-and-bailey framing that is all too common in academia, that my post was trying to highlight. There are many aspects and fields of academia that are very obviously ideologically captured, whether that's "studies" in economics and sociology that are obvious attempts to reify the modern consensus of human beings as identical, fungible, latently-liberal economic units. Or it could be well-known physicists being taken to task about how their research on cosmological inflation contributes to the cause of diversity [0].

When such things are rightly levied in criticisms of academic ideological capture, the discussion reverts to the idea that the entire industry is nothing more than "studying things", as you put it, for knowledge and knowledge alone.

>A PhD student earning $40k a year is not, in any sense, part of the elite.

You could say the same thing about a private-rank soldier, or a party secretary. The relatively low wages of one particular person is incidental to the main issue of the overall power structure, and who it serves.

[0] https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/39160/

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#97

Post by jimkleiber »

bilbo0s wrote: post #56
jimkleiber wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people are capable, given the right environment. I think what destroys it is not letting people in Congress write laws in relative secrecy. When the most powerful, including the political parties, can monitor how every Congress person votes in committee, they can micro-manage and micro-terrorize them into doing what they want. Let them deliberate without us watching over their shoulders (because it's most…

Let them deliberate without us watching over their shoulders That’s a recipe for disaster. The Founders came up with a Constitution for a reason. Public debate is not our problem. Any more than freedom of speech is our problem.

Please check the link and read some of the articles. They have many many quotes from the founders on voting and deliberating in secrecy, even for the creation of the Constitution itself.

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#98

Post by reginald78 »

lm28469 wrote: post #28
resource_waste wrote: post #12

Broken Clock is right twice a day. A civilization declines? If I didn't read history, I'd be shocked. Isnt America still number 1 in GDP and the only regional hedgemon? "I predict that America will decline." Someone write an article, I will be correct at some point. And on the comments about superstition... religion is at an all-time low... So, I suppose that isnt perfectly correct.

> Isnt America still number 1 in GDP GDP is a completely outdated metric that didn't say anything about civilization decline when it was valid and still doesn't say anything about civilization decline now that's it's next to useless

Was GDP ever meant to be used as a metric of success? It almost seems like it adds in all the broken window fallacies in the world and celebrates them as an achievement. The US broken scam healthcare system is likely a significant contributor to the GDP number but its really just a parasite on the American worker that makes them more expensive and less competitive in a global market.

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#99

Post by MangoCoffee »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #84
MangoCoffee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is going to replace US? China? Its economy is on the decline with deflation, debts, real estates problem...etc. Europe? Japan?

A swift google suggests that your assertion that China's economy is "on the decline" to any great extent is quite false. As they say, citation needed. And, well put this way: the management in China seems to be more grown-up and stable, which is better for long-term prospects.

> China's economy is "on the decline" to any great extent is quite false

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crr54x00857o

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/20/chinese-econ...

https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/china-deflation/

https://www.aei.org/economics/chinas-economy-is-in-deep-trou...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/03/xi-china-economic-decli...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/business/chinas-gdp-q2.ht...

Re: Carl Sagan Predicts the Decline of America (1995)

#100

Post by bookaway »

queuebert wrote: post #74
kennysoona wrote: post #39

I think the only people denying the decline of the US are the same people that think the US can be as powerful and respected as it was in the 50s, i.e. not the most well informed crowd. It really is crazy to see the way the US is going. I remember reading every time in history an emerging superpower was replacing a declining power, the declining power got antsy and shot first, leading to them getting whooped by the e…

We fought a literal civil war and bounced back. We've had multiple presidents assassinated but still had continuity of power. I doubt the U.S. is going anywhere anytime soon except maybe down a couple slots on the world's largest economies lists, and that's soley due to population growth. Some of us who are optimistic believe that the uniqueness of the U.S. lies in its favorable environment for innovation (e.g. YC),…

>We grew up on hopeful sci-fi and will stick to it until our bitter end.

American optimism and hope did not derive itself from "hopeful sci-fi" or tech. The sci-fi and tech came in its superpower phase, post-WWII. American optimism preceded that by decades if not centuries, because its population believed--despite everything--that as country it always strove to act in a morally just manner both domestically and internationally. What's more is that this mythology, cause that's what it was, happened to be accepted by much of world as well. That accomplishment in persuasion exceeds any accomplishment in short-term innovation when the goal is to maintain a long-lasting empire.

There was a time when many thought Nazi Germany was the most innovative and advanced entity in the world. Yet, even at the time, no one who believed that would care to immigrate to Nazi Germany for that reason. The same would be true if China became the most technologically advanced country in the world.

It is the man-child delusion of the broligarchy to claim that American optimism is (was) rooted in technological advancement.

"Everything not saved will be lost." -- Nintendo

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