Charlie StrossMar 16

RE: https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116232524241982831

Additional note: when foodprices rocket, that is ALMOST ALWAYS the trigger for civil unrest and revolutions. (The other is a fiscal/tax/revenue crisis, caused by government turning into rent-seeking by the rich *and* trying to fund a war simultaneously, as with the French Revolution.)

Does this look familiar to you, too?

Show threadJoe Brockmeier

@cstross The right in the U.S. is certainly pulling all the levers it can to drive unrest and system collapse: driving inflation, higher food prices, unemployment, flat or depressed wages, and making peaceful change through voting impossible.

It's starting to look inevitable to me. Maybe it's been inevitable since Citizens United, or even before that. No doubt they think they can ensure the outcome of civil unrest to their benefit. I really hope they're wrong.

Ever notice that almost all sci-fi that imagines a utopian future for humanity has its path through a system collapse/dystopia first (e.g., Star Trek)? I don't think we can imagine incremental change that results in a better society - just rip & replace.

Mar 16 at 12:05pmWeb
Show threadLorraine LeeMar 16

@cstross @jzb The current right wing coalition includes a lot of accelerationists. Also, they seem to be betting that 2024 will have been America's last election.

Even in real history, the period of relatively shared prosperity is referred to as the postwar period, as if the war was what made it possible. Surely the New Deal can't have any of the credit.

Show threadCharlie StrossMar 16
@lori @jzb The "New Deal" was US-only—it simply didn't exist in Europe. What *did* exist was a lot of 1945-onwards reconstruction and cautious social democracy in the west, and communism in the east.