Around a decade seems like a realistic time frame to me. In my opinion, two big factors driving the collapse are climate change and the rise of BRICS.
US is seeing an increasing number of environmental disasters every year, and this puts pressure on the already ailing infrastructure. Changing climate is also causing droughts that will make large parts of the country unlivable leading to internal migrations of millions of people. The droughts are also causing harvest failures that will eventually result in food shortages. US farming practices also contribute to the problem because they cause soil erosion. I expect that these factors will significantly accelerate the internal conflict within US that’s currently building.
Meanwhile, BRICS is creating an alternative economy that’s outside western control and that necessarily means that the dollar based economy is now shrinking. Much of the wealth in US and other western countries comes from exploitation of the Global South, and when that stops there’s going to be a huge economic disaster in the west.
What internal conflicts are you referring to? A potential civil war triggered by the far right?
That’s certainly an increasingly real possibility. In general, US society is becoming highly polarized and tribal. The mainstream is now split into two camps that see each other as the source of all the problems. The worse the material conditions get the more radicalized people will become, and eventually that will result in violence. US could end up in a Rwandan style civil war at some point.
What do you mean by collapse? You could argue it already has.
How?
First it started falling over, then it fell over.
Take your pick. Poverty rate, child poverty in particular, child poverty skyrocketing, child slavery skyrocketing too, life expectancy plummeting… etc. failed state.
I don’t think “failed state” applies. The US government still has full sovereignty over its territories and there is no competing force that has any political or military claim that could realistically contend with the existing state apparatus. Is it a brutal and exploitative state with a fully frayed safety net? Yes. But a failed state? No.
Do you think its starving citizens consider it to be successful?
By what measure do you see it as successful? Because it has “no competing force that has any political or military claim that could realistically contend with the existing state apparatus”? Is that the metric?
“Failed state” has a specific definition. We don’t have roving bands of militia outcompeting the US military, nor do we have separatist political groups forming competing governing structures within US territory. Although there are many Americans who are in poverty, the vast majority of Americans are not starving.
We don’t have roving bands of militia outcompeting the US military, nor do we have separatist political groups forming competing governing structures within US territory.
I honestly thought you had both these things? Well not outcompeteing the military no, but aren’t there confederate secessionists?
Although there are many Americans who are in poverty, the vast majority of Americans are not starving.
In the richest country in the world, not everyone is starving. Good job.
I feel like I am detecting a level of snark here that is unnecessary and unproductive. I will not argue with you. Be well, comrade.
It’s not going to collapse until we make it collapse
If Trump wins the next election, the entire thing will collapse within 5 years.
First sane lemmy.world comment.
However I would not say that the US will collapse. I do not say this lightly, but if trump wins the next election, the US has a straight one way fast pass to becoming a full blown Nazi state. Full religious nationalist theocracy mixed with fascistic privatization of all aspects of the country, combined with an insatiable arms buildup and war preparation.
They will 100% come around to mass executing the LGBT, minorities, any immigrants, non-Christians, Jewish people, the mentally ill and so on.
What do you see as being fundamentally different between the Biden and Trump regimes?
Biden is driven to maintain the status quo and current profit system.
Trump is also committed to this but he is much more egotistical, mentally ill, deranged, and nationalistic.
I think you might be overestimating how much power the Amerikan president has; at the end of the day, the state is controlled by the big bourgeoisie (including the MIC, etc.)
I didn’t say that he would become Hitler, but he would accelerate the fall into fascism to light speed.
They do have more power than any president has ever actually exercised, especially if the bourgeoisie are behind it
I’m sure they could get away with some things before the bourgeoisie has time to react, but the people who have any chance of being elected are already bourgeois themselves and/or firmly under bourgeois control (if a president acts against bourgeois interests regardless of this, they have many ways to de-fang or neutralize that person)
Yes, I meant more so if a fascist took power and the bourgeoisie were supporting that
In my view, becoming a Nazi state would mean that the US was no more.
Did Germany cease to exist when the Nazis took power? Spain with Franco?
Unfortunately, the political entity (and huge army) of the US will still exist, even if they finally take the mask off and admit to their fascism. The best hope in that scenario would be a collapse of the state due to a lack of support and inability to suppress the people, but I can’t really see that happening in the US unfortunately. Some of their state police departments have bigger budgets than the armies of entire countries.
The population would be the same, but the country would no longer follow The United States Constitution, so it would be something different from the United States of America. There would undoubtedly be similarities with its predecessor, but it would not be the same.
Why would they need to abolish the Constitution to be a Nazi state? You simply come up with interesting interpretations of it as has been done since the beginning when it was convenient.
How so? It has, for decades now, only the violence was rarely directed inwards blatantly.
Then the US never was.
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I think the most important thing is the Ukraine war showed what a paper tiger the west is. I don’t think we would see the resistance in west Africa if it weren’t for the war, for example. The US doesn’t seem so all-powerful to the global South anymore.
Fascism seems to be spreading like wild fire
It could collapse tomorrow or decades, if not centuries from now. Let’s hope for the former. The collapse of the USA will undoubtedly make the world a better place.
Think I’d prefer the US hegemony to the Chinese hegemony…
Multipolarity is the future, but if there had to be anything, Chinese hegemony would be far superior
Why?
What counts as the end of the US? Did Rome end when the city proper was sacked, or when Constantiople fell?
If the US balkanizes would that be the end? Or maybe when DC falls to a foreign power or collapses and loses influence over the states and territories?
I suspect we’ll have something that calls itself the United States for a long time to come in any case
Not too much longer, hopefully.
There seems to be a simultaneous development of incredible animosity towards the state AND fascist appeal (at least around me) so it could go either way.
As other commenters have pointed out, the full takeover of fascists (going mask-off, I mean. We already are fascist obviously) does not mean the end of the USA. I do think, though, that the victory of Trump assuming it happens will speed up the reaction/revolt to the fascistic state in some accelerationist way. Can’t imagine USian society wouldn’t react to that in some way moreso than a Joe Biden flavor of fascism.
Hard to put a date on it. Could be next year’s election, could be 10 years, could be 20. All depends on how hard we shake the tree to make the apple fall.
I, for one, am going to dedicate a huge portion of my life to bringing this shit down, so I have hope. I’m only one person, though. Could be totally wrong and misplaced.
I don’t know but think in 20 years. Hope Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam and Mariana islands will secede before that.
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Thank you for encouraging thoughts Comrade.
Socialism in a post-nuclear world?
Humans will regroup after post-war(ww3). We are always looking for a community. Communism is inevitable.
Nuclear war would sterilise the planet. I wouldn’t even count on bacteria and fungi to survive
Many. If anything, Europe will “collapse” before the US as the USA consumes it through the process of vassalisation to keep itself alive. First the US will try win the the inter imperial rivalry between itself and it’s allies (the EU and it’s biggest member states, Australia, South Korea, Japan), which seems to be going well on the EU front given the Ukraine war. The EU is being successfully vassalised and has lost energy independence after the nordstream gas pipeline bombings. Then the US will shift focus to China.
I know people want to be optimistic, but the US is still a superpower. If you asked communists in the 1950s and early 60s, they probably also thought that the US had little time left, given the progress of the USSR, the rise of anti colonial movements, and the US still struggling massively with internal issues. But in the end, it was the USSR that collapsed, and the neoliberals got their “end of history” moment, until 9/11 happened.
Disclaimer: I’m just a bored guy who makes drawings for a living. I live in the US, and this is based on direct observation of local events. I don’t actually know what I’m talking about.
I think next year’s election will speed or slow the collapse. But ignoring that, and assuming the corporate dickheads who are actually running things keep going like they are, here’s my guess:
1-2 years - Theft from large businesses becomes normalized. Police will respond less and less to shoplifting calls, because there are too many calls to respond to.
3-5 years - Riots over food and water start to take place. More people start to immigrate (legally or otherwise) into the US to try and avoid growing heat in central and South America. Attacks on electrical infrastructure rise. In the news: talk about border control, stories about increasing penalties for retail theft and armed guards in every large store. Very serious talk about gun control.
6-10 years - Organized resistance against law enforcement. It will start with people calling 911 and ambushing cops, or cops simply being shot when they pull someone over. (A cop was killed a couple of years ago during a traffic stop in the metro area I live near. Since then, there has been a large and obvious decrease in the amount of traffic stops.) Police can no longer park their cars at home for safety reasons. A billionaire or state/federal offcial is assassinated. Gun control measures start to pass in congress and ate signed into law, because now the “wrong” people have guns.
10-20 years - Repeated attacks on substations, watet treatment facilities, and pumping stations. Due to a lack of funding in maintainence on these systems has people questioning if the failures are from attacks, or breakdowns. Middle class life completely vanishes. Actual civil war is going on, no matter what the news tries to say.
20-30 years - Driving across the country is nearly impossible due to lack of road funding, people are stuck in their local areas. Even making a phone call is questionable. Food, water, and materials drop in quality, due to lack of regulation or lack of regulation enforcement. Outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, and other Shakespearian ailments sweep across what’s left of the country. Elites who hid in bunkers in previous decades are killed when their staff gets tired of them.
As for the end result? I don’t know. There isn’t a nice obvious dividing line between one side and the other. There would likely be tens or maybe hundreds of groups of different sizes in conflict or uneasy alliances.
I’m just a bored guy who makes drawings for a living.
How in the world did you do this? I ask this because that unironically sounds awesome (though it is possible it is not from your perspective).
There’s a terrible secret: I’m not making art, I am making drawings. I’m a draftsman.
And even among drafters my job is a bit strange. I work for a place that refurbishes large parts for places like refineries, power plants, water treatment plants, and even rocket launch facilities all over the world. We rebuild parts for plants that cannot shut down, or can’t shut down for long. I’m sort of an emergency draftsman. My job consists of waiting for someone to drop either a scralwed drawing (sometimes literally drawn on a torn off piece of cardboard) or a broken piece of something, at which point I leap into action, and create a 3d model and a 2D drawing of whatever it is, so a replacement can be made in the machine shop.
This specific job sort of fell in my lap when I was laid off from another drafting job in january. I’m largely self-taught, and I have a couple decades experience as a machinist, fabricator, and mechanic, it helps if the guy making the prints knows how to make the parts himself.
I think maybe 10 or 15 years
Why?
It’s been collapsing for decades, it’s just now becoming more obvious. It’s basically already at a collapsed state. I mean, what do we call a society where people regularly can’t afford food, water, shelter, or medical attention? Collapse isn’t “everything sucks for everyone.” It’s “everything sucks for most while some still manage to hold on.” If you think it hasn’t collapsed yet you just aren’t yet a victim of it.
You still see white people living in nice neighborhoods and spending like crazy, so 🤷🏽♂️
Honestly I’m surprised it lasted this long. I figure that is T***p gets elected in 2024 it’ll so the legs, otherwise the cancer will take years. After that who knows. Maybe America 2.0, maybe some new hell. I doubt it’ll balkanize, there’s too much interdependency, but that’s just my opinion with no facts to back it up. Whatever happens though it (or part of it) will still be called the United States. Rebranding wouldn’t be a popular choice.
