It was 2017. Clans were governing America.
The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.
As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.
The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.
With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.
And then things got really bad. Read the essay to see the rest of our future(?).
Freefall has not stopped. Freefall has simply slowed its acceleration. Last I check we had 18%+ unemployment and the census monkeys are not yet finished. When those jobs figures go off the books, I suspect that unemployment will go up. Lest we forget that Obama still has 26 months or so in office and he still has unfinished items on his agenda. I have no doubts in his ability to make things worse. For example, we’ll see if Obama is dumb enough to try to push cap and tax in this economic environment or tries to impose trade barriers. In addition, any rosy economic predictions are based on a lack of surprises (e.g. another attack, a country collapse, a State collapse, *cough* CA *cough*, another round of mortgage collapses etc). Realistically, things are going to get worse before they get better.
I like to think that the future in “Snow Crash” is the real one. I would love to live in a world like that. It’s very similar to this one, except cooler.
The Alex and Bobbo show.
Thomas==I agree. and I’m very consciously not being pessimistic. Just looking at what is. The pessimism/optimism scale comes after analysis as to what we “hope for.”
Its THERE that I prove myself pessimistic.
We’re screwed. All we have is tax and spend Dems with Deficit and Spend Pukes all in a matrix of a sheeple public split into two waring camps of equal stupidity and a ruling attitude of:
I’ve got mine, screw you.
To late! It’s already happening.
Just another wannabe conservative visionary. They wish society could collapse so they could hoard their guns and rule over a harem of women. Next step – “I am your god”.
Pathetic.
Just make your choice small government or big government.
I met a young man last night who worked ever since high school. Class of 1986. His company laid off 200 employees two years ago and he just now is getting a job. He is young and strong and very good but why did he lose his job? Mexico, China, etc.
I retired in 2001 from the government with good benefits and I did drop out of school in 1960. Why did life change so much in the United States of America?
If you want to see what will happen to the US in the next 100 years take a plane to the UK.
And 100 years after that, take a plane to Spain.
THAT is what happens to former empires.
This other guff is nothing more than a re-spun post-apocalyptic scenario. Great for a SciFi channel movie or some manga, but not realistic.
Cursor_
#28 And to fish lefty loons like #26
This is BS. Some mental masturbation from the Obama haters.
I highly recommend you read the following brief essay by security consultant Bruce Schneier. He discusses why it is a waste of time and energy to focus on worse case scenarios.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ypygbn
We, the US, are better than this. We survived one of the bloodiest civil wars that any nation could endure. The US dollar after the Civil war was worthless because of counterfeiting.
The thing is, we have the 3rd largest population on the planet. We have deep water ports on both of the world’s major oceans. We are at peace with our neighbors. We have the world’s largest economy, military, and higher education system on the planet. We have the most weapons and nukes. We can feed ourselves, and we can, if needed, power ourselves. If we really, really wanted to, we could tell the rest of the world to f**koff and we will survive.
Despite the wet-dreams of America haters world-wide, we aren’t going anywhere. We are not going to break up. We are going to be the 800 pound gorilla on the world stage for a very, very long time.
Guess again. And while you are all out here on the net arguing , making uninformed posts about something you refuse to accept as a possibility, no- a probability…. some of us are quietly preparing.
Good luck, schmucks!
#31. ditto
Ditto
#30–yank== yes the USA has a lot of assets/advantages to play with. I took the OP as a scenario of how a disaster “could” play out==not that it will or must.
Then we got a survivalist with two ditto’s in response saying it WILL!==ha, ha!
So, odds on something like this happening is an entirely different question from how might something like this happen.
Tell Me: wasn’t the Great Depression of 1929 pretty much a similar scenario, just not as bad, and wasn’t such an event just narrowly avoided in 2008? Its not that all the potential isn’t available, its that the organizing element has broken down and takes awhile to re-establish itself. Meanwhile millions can die. In my scenario, a good ===there I did it again===a FOOD shortage arises. When/if that happens, no amount of coal, ocean security is going to help and having the 3rd largest population is the problem.
Bad things can happen. Like AGW, the real question is what does a rational society do to protect itself from such percentages?
Can we keep infowars bullshit off the blog?
Really his essay is nothing original. He has basically outlined what has happened in most African countries that have lost any sort of effectual government, like Somalia etc.
Hell even Yugoslavia during the conflict in the 90′s was essentially like what he has outlined in his story.
Warring, clans, warlords, He who has the most firepower hijacks/steals controls most market goods etc.
Ha, ha. Yes. Disaster set off by a food blight of one of our major food crops ((all grown as monocultures contiguously for square miles)) was outdated. I should have said phytoplankton:
http://tnr.com/blog/the-vine/76682/week-in-doom-phytoplankton-edition
Equal probability:
In 2011 after the full panorama of stimulus efforts took hold, the US was well on its way back to full recovery from what then became known as the Great Republican Recession (GRR). That year’s growth was nearly 9% and subsequent year’s growths were double digits.
The US leveled its debts to China in 2014, and employment coursed toward 99%, allowing the country to increase its immigrant quotients. Housing loans, now regulated by the Money Act of 2012 settled in as home values slowly rose.
In 2018 work began on the Obama Library, and curator Malia Obama, 20, showed extraordinary precociousness paralleling her already outstanding achievements at the Harvard School of Architecture.
In 2020, the nation mourned the passing of David Letterman, Jay Leno, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lindsay Lohan, and Betty White.
By 2027, much of the nation’s sun belt had converted to 80% solar and wind energy, facilitated by the development of metro sodium/iron battery technologies, and producing the conservation of oil around the world as a lubricant and plastic raw material rather than as a fuel.
As global warming showed a world-wide trend toward leveling off, scientists around the planet breathed a sigh of relief.
A minor recession in 2033 put nearly seven percent of Americans on the list of unemployed, a figure that became meaningless four years later as autonomous SimBots took over nearly all manual and service personnel labor.
The advertising slogan “Got a dull job? Buy two SimBots and retire!” heralded the end of nearly all labor from menial through upper management.
Clans will initially form around cops… because everyone knows cops are the only people with guns in this country.
We’ll have finally won the war on drugs… because the drug lords will be bankrupted by the collapse of their prime market.
Mexico will finally annex California, New Mexico, Arizona… because all of the squabbling clans will not be able to unite against the Mexican army.
Canada will build a fence along their border with the US… in a futile effort to stem the tide of illegal immigrants.
I guess I need to go watch Red Dawn again, to see how this all shakes-out.
Equal?