Mastodawn

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. I soaked up the vibes of a high-tech, utopian future. I internalized the trajectory we were on was good, that we had reached the End of History. There might be a few bumps on the road, but the direction was inevitable and the destination was inexorable.

It turns out that the fastest a human being has ever traveled was 39,897 kilometers per hour. That was the crew of the Apollo 10 mission returning to earth. That happened on 26 May, 1969.

Fifty-four years ago. We peaked more than half a century ago.

1/of several

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

In the US, life expectancy peaked about a decade ago and has declined to 76.1 years, reaching levels from about three decades ago. Critically, this decline started *before* the COVID-19 pandemic, which has certainly exacerbated the decline but did not initiate it.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy

2/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

In the US, some 850 school districts have switched from a five-day school week to a four-day week. This by itself should not be a cause for alarm; there’s nothing intrinsically superior about a five-day week, a fairly arbitrary schedule that we inherited from decades and centuries ago.

But what is alarming is the cause: these districts are reducing hours not to experiment with the educational or other benefits of a different schedule, but because they cannot afford to continue operations five days a week.

3/

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/4-day-school-week-study

4-day school weeks are gaining steam, but students are suffering

The 4-day school trend is catching on despite mounting evidence of learning loss.

Axios

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

Just a few decades ago, mass shootings were essentially unknown in the US, limited to infighting among organized crime or the rare spectacular incident, such as Charles Whitman’s use of the clock tower at the University of Texas to murder 15 people.

In 2021, there were 686 mass shootings in the US—incidents in which four or more people are injured or killed by a shooter. In 2023, there have been about 480 so far, with five months left to go.

4/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

The British city of Blackpool “has England’s lowest life expectancy, highest rates of relationship breakdown and some of the highest rates of antidepressant prescribing.” It’s something of a mess, in other words.

And yet its life expectancy—the lowest in the country—is the same as the average *of the entire United States.*

Everyone in the US, from the richest to the poorest, is likelier to die at any age than their counterparts in countries like the UK.

https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303

5/

Subscribe to read

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

Some 37% of Americans lack the savings to afford a $400 emergency expense. This is an increase from 32% in 2021. Real wages fell half a percent since last year, while expenses increased, and over a third of Americans reported being worse off financially than they were last year.

Meanwhile, capitalists exploited the pandemic to post their highest profit rates since 1950.

People cannot afford emergency expenses because someone took that money from them.

6/

https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/

Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?

The inflation spike of 2021 and 2022 has presented real policy challenges. In order to better understand this policy debate, it is imperative to look at prices and how they are being affected. The price of just about everything in the U.S. economy can be broken down into the three main components of cost. These…

Economic Policy Institute

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

Americans collectively owe about $17 trillion in consumer debt. Right-libertarians complain about taxes, which average around a third of income for many Americans.

If we imagine our income being directed to pay off each obligation sequentially rather than simultaneously, then we could calculate how long we labor each year to extinguish our tax burden—about halfway through April. But then we labor another third of the year to pay off our landlords and mortgage owners for permission to shelter ourselves. So let’s imagine that, by the end of July, we’ve covered those two.

Many people pay another 10% of their income to finance their car payments, while student loans consume another 10% of income for many people.

So, perhaps by the middle of October you’ve paid those rents as well.

7/

Americans are managed like livestock. We’re draft animals for the wealthy. And let’s be clear: this has always been the case. The US was founded as a plantation economy and while it has evolved since then, it has never lost this basic foundational aspect.

The earliest colonial settlements were vast consumers of unfree labor: of enslaved indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans, and also of bonded and indentured and otherwise servile labor sometimes literally kidnapped from the dregs of Europe’s white lower classes.

The problem that we face today is that this system, which has faced plenty of challenges but endured for centuries, is breaking down, and indeed has been breaking down for decades. We might call this “collapse” if, like me, you have a taste for honesty even when it sounds melodramatic.

The fastest we ever travelled was in 1969.

8/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

Societal collapse is fairly common in the historical record, but it seems melodramatic to use the phrase in this context because of how hegemonic the US has been for so long. It appears so robust in so many ways and I imagine quite a few people would laugh at me for hysterical pessimism.

But collapse is often a slow, uneven process. Historians traditionally mark the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, when the Ostrogothic king Odoacer deposed the last emperor in Rome. But Rome had faced a near-endless series of crises for centuries, including massive political transformations, loss of territory, and a decline in its ability to manage complex projects like infrastructure.

And an emperor reigned in the east until 1453, nearly a thousand years later. Lots of people living through collapse probably don’t consciously think of it as collapse, and many would probably aggressively deny any trends towards decline.

9/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

So I don’t really know what else to call what I’ve seen over the decades of my life: the shuttered factories and rotted-out downtowns. The deaths from despair from suicide and opioid overdose, to which I would even add the rise of mass shootings—in a meta-sense, the same sort of aimless and destructive lashing-out you might see from caged and stressed zoo animals. The shrinking school week and closing schools and libraries. The tent camps and bread lines, all in what is ostensibly the richest society that is or ever was.

10/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

If this thread has a thesis statement, it goes something like this:

In the early 70s, the capital class stages a revolt of the rich against the poor. The post-World War II consensus had transferred too much wealth and too much power to the working class, so the rich made it their mission to dismantle that consensus and make sure it could never re-emerge. First Nixon and then Reagan built and institutionalized debt traps, slashed social spending, annihilated labor unions, and poisoned the very idea that there was any such thing as “society” or that we could work together to solve our shared problems.

They took Margaret Thatcher’s slogan, that there is no such thing as society, and made it the guiding ethos of American society, to ensure we would remain atomized and unable to organize. And then they and their successors have milked us for everything they could, driving us as beasts of burden to the point of exhaustion. Or rather, of collapse.

11/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

What else can I point to, in order to make this case? It’s almost too much to keep track of.

Our infrastructure is crumbling because it was left to rot.

We have the largest prison population in the world, and those prisoners are often farmed out as slave labor.

We have epidemics of suicide, opioid addiction, and loneliness. We consume more anti-depressants each year.

We work longer than our counterparts in other countries, are less healthy, and then die younger.

We are often one “oh shit” moment—a car accident or a burst pipe—away from homelessness. In any given year, about 2.5 million American children experience homelessness.

Remember those measly government benefits we received in 2020? The “stimulus” checks and unemployment benefits? Things are so bad in the US that those paltry handouts were enough to decrease poverty rates:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/key-us-poverty-rate-fell-record-low-2021-census-bureau-says-2022-09-13/

12/

Key U.S. poverty measure hit record low in 2021 largely due to federal aid

A key measure of how many Americans lived in poverty in 2021 fell to a record low thanks in large part to federal government assistance measures aimed at supporting households through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census Bureau said on Tuesday.

Reuters

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

I think back to that optimism I had as a child and I mourn it. The society I live in is a hollowed-out shell of what I remember, and even that was a decade or more into the decline.

Our horizons shrink. Our expectations for the future become more modest. Some of us leave if we can, and others stop having children, and some check out a bit more permanently. Big projects are postponed or canceled. Collapse is a slow process: institutions can coast on momentum and bring to bear enormous resources—including and especially violence—to maintain the status quo, at least for a shrinking elite. People will get used to new conditions, or deny that anything has changed.

But things have changed. I was trained from an early age: do well in school, go to university, get a job and work your way up. I could, I was led to believe, expect a quietly prosperous life in which I would be more comfortable than my parents and my children even more than me.

In reality, quality of life in the US is declining. I am burdened by crippling student debt. I have few realistic options for advancement. I even tried hustling a hobby into a second job once! I am so fucking tired of being stressed all the time. I am, by dint of genetics, prone to anxiety anyway, but genetics alone cannot explain away this ever-present sense of precarity, that one wrong move could ruin my life as thoroughly as millions of other Americans have had their lives ruined.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-11/a-global-anomaly-the-us-declines-in-annual-quality-of-life-report

13/

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

This has been a bit of a bummer, so I’ll finish with a few maybe-possibly positive thoughts.

One, this is happening and there’s not much we can do about it. Putting a name to it helps me to process my grief but also to make sense of all these disparate trends.

Two, lots of hucksters will tell you that America is declining because We Strayed From Jesus or We’re Just So Mean These Days, and you know that’s bullshit. We may not have much power to stop enormous processes that were set in motion decades ago but we can at least tell the conmen to fuck off.

Three, collapses like this obviously entail enormous suffering and dislocations, but also create new opportunities and possibilities. There are some suggestions in the data that, historically, the collapse of parasitic elites actually improved the daily lives of the working class, who more or less get to go about their business without paying taxes and rents. Fingers crossed!

14/end for now

Mick 🇨🇦Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum thank-you for sharing this thread. It makes me feel less alone with these thoughts to see them articulated by others.

Free Pietje 🇵🇸 🍉Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum
Ha! I was just about to post a reply like this:

Well, that's depressing.
And accurate.
Especially since I have been saying for several decades now:
What happens in the US, will happen here (.nl) with some years delay.

And that's still true :-/

I'm glad you wrote it.
More people are beginning to realize that we're in 'a bit' of a mess. If we want to (start to) fix it, we need to know how we got here. And imo putting things in a wider context is vital for that.

#ContextMatters

Dr. Heather Etchevers Sep 1, 2023

@FreePietje @HeavenlyPossum As an American transplant to France, definitely seeing some transmission here, also. And yet the hope is in the small differences. Thanks for the last reminder that terrible times lead to unanticipated opportunities for prosocial change.

Eniko (moved ➡ gamedev.place)Sep 2, 2023

@FreePietje @HeavenlyPossum yeah I've been warning about the neoliberal hollowing out of the Netherlands in a similar way to the US for years, but seems most people don't wanna listen. That's why when I moved out of the US (after moving there from NL) I decided not to return to the Netherlands but moved elsewhere in the EU

Maybe with Rutte gone things will get better but I'm not counting on it :/

Free Pietje 🇵🇸 🍉Sep 2, 2023

@eniko @HeavenlyPossum
Latest poll showed the VVD was still at 22 (out of 150) seats, after Rutte tanked his own gov (for political gain I presume). A few WEEKS after Rutte said it would be irresponsible to do.

I can (but won't) make a HUGE list of all the things they fscked up and I don't understand why ppl don't see it.

As long as the predicted seats isn't 0, people still don't see what the problem is and thus can't see the solution.
So no, I don't see things getting any better :-/

Andrew Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum An excellent articulation of where the US, and the broader Western world, finds itself, with collapse being imminent.
Hardly anyone is aware of this. Humans, for one thing, struggle to recognise and process large change. This tendency is only exacerbated by the accompanying fact that societal collapse is proving a relatively slow process. The result is that the populace is unaware of the precarity of their situation

🗦 𝙴𝚞𝚋𝚒𝚎 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚠 🗧（🦣)Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

Not a historian, but I have no awareness of double tap empires. The next big thing is never a revival of the last big thing.

Brent, in a jar Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Loved this thread!
My personal bugaboo for the collapse of the US are the trains. One hundred years ago, you could cross the country comfortably by train in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable cost. Those days are long gone!

Rev. GothAlice Sep 1, 2023

Tackling this topic of discussion from a bit of a physical sciences perspective, we've run into a problem of entropy—disorder, chaos, even conflict. The temperature of the planet has risen, in both a literal, and in a metaphorical—but physically analogous—sense.

1/

@HeavenlyPossum

Rev. GothAlice Sep 1, 2023

Take a volume of gas, add more particles; the temperature will rise as the "pressure" within the volume does. This temperature is the "entropy" of the system; the number of collisions rise.

Take a world of people; add more; the "pressure" within the world rises. As scarce resources become scarcer. As there are more interactions, the temperature rises.

2/

@HeavenlyPossum

Rev. GothAlice Sep 1, 2023

Then link everyone to everyone else, and you've geometrically increased the № of interactions: collisions. Temperature.

Exceed Dunbar's Number (max. connectedness) and just stop thinking about it. People, but they're not /people/, y'know? Stop simulating them in your own head as people, so don't consider how they might respond to statements and actions.

3/

@HeavenlyPossum

Rev. GothAlice Sep 1, 2023

We can consciously choose the form our interaction takes. But, curse evolution, it appears we (as an aggregate gas of rising temperature) tend towards indifference and violent conflict in preference to peaceful dialog and cooperative problem solving. We intentionally go out of our way to gain more interaction: to acquire.

Greed is a rather base sin.

3/fin

@HeavenlyPossum

HeavenlyPossum Sep 2, 2023

I strenuously disagree that humans have any tendency like this. The vast majority of our time as a species was likely spent doing just the opposite.

Rev. GothAlice Sep 2, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Gun violence in America.

I remember the first major school shooting. Something, anything could be done; should have been done.

Nothing was.
Should-a, could-a, would-a.

So… for the vast majority of our time as a species, we were better than we are today? 🤔 Noted.

I mean, I don't believe you. Or colonialism, an innumerable number of wars holy or not, slavery…

Your analogy of a gas simply isn't an appropriate analysis of human power relations. It really tells us nothing. Worse than that, it reinforces capitalism's narrative that we are atomized individuals concerned only with our personal economic benefit, only interacting with each other as automatons.

Even your image of vast millennia of history is tainted by the limited focus and just-so stories we've been taught to justify submitting ourselves to hierarchical authority.

Please don't believe Capital's lies about "human nature". We are embedded in a system that coerces us into behaviors now that humans have resisted for thousands of years.

We are victims of power structures forced upon us, not some grass-roots expression of some supposed essential human fault.

I invite you to explore this thread of threads, quotes and links that I compiled to examine how we got where we are today:

https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/110357255122736031

@HeavenlyPossum

RD (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image HOW DID WE GET HERE? (a thread of threads, quotes, and links) This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done *to* us, and what has been *taken from us*. By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities. By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality, exploitation and oppression, hunger and starvation, genocide and war; a world of fences, walls, gatekeepers, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable disease; a world of vanishing biodiversity and blooming fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital. Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall: "After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned." https://widerquist.com/books-3/#2b Also recommended: "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy" https://widerquist.com/books-3/#4b #capitalism #colonialism #enclosure #PrivateProperty #state #police #inequality #anthropology #environment #ClimateCrisis #economics 1/30

kolektiva.social

Rev. GothAlice Sep 2, 2023

@[email protected] So, ignoring that that got you a block for a moment; less about the whole anarchist thing and more to do with the inherent assumptions embedded in the tirade.

My major was psychology.
Not capitalism.

I'd suggest to correct your assumptions and examine your biases, but you'll only be able to see this reply for a few moments.

@alice @HeavenlyPossum

"My major was psychology.
Not capitalism."

okeedokee.

@alice @HeavenlyPossum

And for the record, I *have* examined my biases and assumptions. That's how I finally arrived at anarchism.

HeavenlyPossum Sep 2, 2023

People were not better or worse, but certainly did not experience the same institutional constraints that we do today.

Khleedril Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum
In the long run, the rise and fall of the United States will be a mere moment, insignificant in the ages of civilization on our planet.

Violet Madder Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum "Collapse" may not even be a strong enough word, if the looting continues without any abatement.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s too, also a Trekkie kid bigtime. Grew up thinking smart people would do the right thing because nothing else would make any damn sense.

But through my parents, I had enough exposure to science and nature to know things were already getting very bad. I really didn't think it would continue this far without something giving... I still can't believe people are so gullible and complacent.

I keep looking at those graphs that show things like productivity vs wages, union membership, etc-- prosperity rising sharply in the early part of the 20th century, holding steady for a bit, and then around 1970, boom... downhill from there. All of it. No matter the administration, just one steady neoliberal trajectory straight to hell.

Some people will get a clue and work on better things. The bad shit will fall. Only question is how ugly it's gonna get before it gets better, and how many zeroes and commas we'll need to count the dead.

I can see what needs to be worked on. So long as I can chip in somewhere on that effort I think I can hold it together, but the rage and grief is big. This is all just so unnecessary. We could have done so much better.

🇺🇦 Ehren Werner 🏴‍☠️Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Thanks for your perspective, I agree entirely.

But as for Star Trek, don’t forget that they had to get through a collapse or two first as well. The Eugenics wars, The Second Civil War and WWIII resulted in the deaths of some 30% of the Human population, and the extinction of six hundred thousand species. By the end, most of the major cities had been destroyed and there were few governments left.

If they can recover from that, maybe there’s hope for us.

Catherine Shinners Sep 2, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum thoughtful perspectives. Thanks for Marglin paper reference

enmodo ⚛️ 🧬 🇺🇦 🍉Sep 2, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum one of the problems is too many people who know this just will not say it. This is the real American carnage, not the FUD inducing distraction that Trump mentioned in 2017. But no Democratic leader would ever dare say this either - apparently it is political suicide to speak the truth these days. Maybe it is, and that would be just one more symptom of our decline.

I wish I could help do something about it but right now all I have is a well earned favorite and boost for you.

ShiraDestProjectDoBetter Sep 2, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

All of your points are correct, and we are in the process of collapse, this is true, and individually, there may not be much you or I can do in terms of moving any needles all by ourselves, apart from refusing to be scammed, as you point out. But there are also things that could change this situation almost entirely if entire communities of us resolved to come together. That is why I listed four phases, of 15 or so years each, that communities could plan
#ProjectDoBetter

HeavenlyPossum Sep 3, 2023

Do you have that list available?

ShiraDestProjectDoBetter Sep 3, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Yes:

" listed four phases, of 15 or so years each,..."

with details explained here before the link to the free book for communities and organizers (or anyone interested, frankly) below that:
https://shiradest.wordpress.com/pubs-workshops-and-more/what-is-publicdomaininfrastructure/

1. libraries
2. mass transit
3. public health service support
4. free on-going legal & consumer debt law education/workshops/street corner talks...

Project Do Better, Phase I: PublicDomainInfrastructure

What is Public Domain Infrastructure? Four key social institutions.

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

HeavenlyPossum Sep 3, 2023

Thank you! I will give it a read.

ShiraDestProjectDoBetter Sep 4, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

I look forward to your thoughts! Please remember that I am more easily reachable via the ShiraDest site on WP (the link is a free WP website), than here.
Warmly,
Shira

Callisto Sep 3, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Amazing thread.

Andreas K Sep 8, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum You missed one bad issue:

The rich are destroying the natural resources we need to live.

HeavenlyPossum Sep 8, 2023

Yeah, I felt like there was enough to discuss just in terms of American society failing as a system without getting into the background context of climate disaster that will stress-test every state and society.

Howard Chu @ Symas Sep 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum can only agree with all of that. https://mastodon.social/@hyc/111033050221280964

Juliafin Sep 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum very true and inciteful. I would add a positive thought though. The rich are just as squishy as the rest of us and the pendulum (which has historically swung in the direction of greater good) is due for a return.

Starran Sep 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

I've been having discussions, albeit not so eloquently, with an old school friend (from 60 years ago). He wants everything to crash and expects the 'Star Trek' govt to arise from the wreckage. That's unlikely IMO - in my remaining years I just want don't want fascism to wreak havoc within this pathetic political economic system- and yeah I blame Thatcher. I don't think the solution can be imposed and it's going to take long time to get the changes necessary.

HeavenlyPossum Sep 12, 2023

I’m enormously skeptical that we get a “second chance” at industrial society. We’ve mined the easily mined metals; we’ve tapped the easily tapped hydrocarbons. We could not retrace our previous path if we wanted to.

Starran Sep 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum
Oh so am I. Something has to change - but people are the hardest to change.

BTW I'm from Blackpool

Alyssa🏳️‍⚧️Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum it’s been a very long time since I felt optimistic for the future.

Ed Suominen Mar 6

@HeavenlyPossum This is such an insightful post. Unfortunately I can relate to it, as a parent of young people who have long since given up on the possibility of as good a life as their parents had. It’s a feeling of sadness and generational guilt.

Chris Raymond Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum And two years after those payments stopped the Right is still blaming them for inflation, not the price gouging of corporations enjoying record profits…and margins beyond increased production costs.

Aethelstan Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum yes. And selling these ideas to the American public was made easier by the press-reported ruthless cruelty of Soviet, Chinese, and Vietnamese regimes — who assumed the mantle of the “workers party” in the minds of most. It was as though unions in the US and labor parties in Europe somehow lost their voice.

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

Soviet-style totalitarianism was an enormous ideological gift to western capitalists, and was in many ways symbiotic with western capitalism. The Soviets got to act for capitalism as the devil did to the medieval church, simultaneously the only conceivable alternative and too awful to realistically contemplate adopting.

NoctisEqui 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇪🇹🏳️‍🌈Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

I certainly was aware of that during those periods. It was crushing disappointment, visualizing what could have been and what was. I am fortunate that the one thing I have, what I am trying desperately to save is my home. My income is below poverty level; as low level worker I never made much & made terrible mistakes on top of that. I have always had books tho, so I survive but life should be so much more!

Brent, in a jar Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Great thread! Not done reading yet, but this is the right place to drop a reference to the Powell Memo...
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/deep-archeology-and-the-powell-memo

Deep Archeology and the Powell Memo

One of the most apt critiques I read of my post on the deep archeology of Fox News focused on what we might call the counter-revolution of capital, and whether I'd ignored it in telling this thumbnail…

TPM – Talking Points Memo

prozacchiwawa Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum i formed the theory a while ago that the main problem with the us (and britain has been desparately trying to follow the same lead) is that after the 60s economic boom people noticed that our society and institutions had a lot of future value stored and wanted to materialize it to wealth right away, which jives well with your thesis. a big part of that future value was collective prosperity that wasn't being centrally monetized effectively.

Domhenri Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum yes, you're right. But it won't stop, until a new bottleneck in human population occurs again. Their aim is to become the only 1500 humans to survive this next bottleneck, and they have everything in hand to do it.

Jackie Gardina Sep 12, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Powerful thread. Thank you for putting it together.

JM Horner Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

I'd like to make three statements...

1. That our fastest travel speed seems of little relevance. Humans don't seem to be able to manage their own home, so going elsewhere seems quite premature at this point.

2. That being "the richest society that is or ever was" only makes sense if "dollars" are the yardstick by which wealth is measured. There are some [perhaps many] who would say that someone with a lot of dollars but poor health, crappy food, undrinkable water, and nobody they can truly share their time with, may not actually be rich.

3. The term I would use to describe what you are seeing is Late Stage Empire.

My three cents.

Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum decline at least

David M. Kelly Sep 5, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Sadly, this seems to be happening in most if not all "western" societies. The changes may be less obvious, but the trends are the same.

costrike Sep 1, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum I'm living through collapse.

HeavenlyPossum Sep 1, 2023

Yeah, we all are.

Add on top of all this structural decay the biophysical implications of climate change and it’s hard to see a positive way through.

@HeavenlyPossum

“because of how hegemonic the US has been for so long”

I would suggest that in the broader context this isn’t really true… USA has really only had perhaps 100(-150?) years of vigorous expansion and consolidation, and the road from backwater to global dominance is often retraced at double time under the cover of wistful, wishful thinking and glorified messaging.