# How America wil end?



## a_majoor (11 Aug 2009)

An interesting series in Slate, although they don't seem to go beyond the usual tropes (climate change, for example). Of the ideas suggested in this part, the gradual breakup seems most familier, since it mirrors similar ideas presented by Joel Garreau in The Nine Nations of North America or Robert Kaplan in An Empire Wilderness.

http://www.slate.com/id/2223962



> Today, I've asked the world's leading provider of futuristic consulting to help me think about America's downfall. I'm at a conference table in the group's San Francisco office with six forecasters, including GBN founders Schwartz, Napier Collyns, and Stewart Brand.   Our mission: plot scenarios by which the United States could end in the next 100 years. GBN's head of marketing and communications, Nancy Murphy, suggested the time limit. "Beyond 100 years it gets so science fiction-y," she explains.
> Before my meeting, I collect some pointers from Schwartz's foundational scenario-planning text, 1991's The Art of the Long View. He suggests that wannabe futurists inhale science and tech news, embrace fringe cultures (though Schwartz admits that his chats with UFO aficionados "offered no insight about the future"), and look for social trends in nascent cultural phenomena such as gangsta rap and America's Funniest Home Videos. (Forgive him: The book was written 20 years ago.) The big picture: If you want to glimpse the future, seek out remarkable people and open your mind to loony-sounding ideas.
> 
> I also learn from Schwartz's book that the sensible futurist prefaces everything by saying This is not a prediction of the future—the professional forecaster is not an oracle. That said, Schwartz has made his share of good calls. When Schwartz was the head of scenario planning for Royal Dutch/Shell in the 1980s, his team told the company's higher-ups to watch out for an unknown Soviet pol named Gorbachev. If Gorby were to assume a leadership position, Schwartz said, it would be a strong indication that the USSR would open to the West and oil and natural gas prices would drop. When the price plunge came, Shell execs—having anticipated this eventuality—swooped in and bought oil reserves at a discounted rate.
> ...



More here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2223851
http://www.slate.com/id/2223962
http://www.slate.com/id/2223285
http://www.slate.com/id/2223984
http://www.slate.com/id/2224104
http://www.slate.com/id/2224333
http://www.slate.com/id/2224050


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## a_majoor (12 Aug 2009)

Readers were asked to pick their own apocalypse, and interesting results were obtained. Read the various charts and breakdowns:

http://www.slate.com/id/2224425/pagenum/all/#p2


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## Long in the tooth (13 Aug 2009)

I'd suggest reading "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Kennedy.  He concludes stating that due to the vast size (physical and population), decentralization of power and the sheer adaptability of its people, the US may be uniquly immune to social cataclysm.  

Now that I'm retired and living in the US, I hope so.  But this ain't NY or Calif.... it's.... Iowa.


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## a_majoor (14 Aug 2009)

Interesting that you mention locality, this is big in some other meditations of the nature and future of the United States. Joel Garreau divided the Unted States and North America roughly along climactic and ecological boundaries (The Nine Nations of North America), and Robert Kaplan suggests that micro regions bounded by geography (river basins, mountain ranges etc.) may define the future of America (An Empire Wilderness)

Kaplan:



> An Empire Wilderness: page 294
> 
> “Environmentalists believe in making decisions based not on the welfare of this generation but on the seventh generation to come. That means the seventh generation will occupy the same place that we have preserved for them. So we’re localists, because if you have no geography, not only do you have no accountability-like so many global corporations-but you have nothing to defend. But we can defend this watershed, this bioregion; we can’t defend anything that’s larger or something that’s merely political, like a state or country”
> 
> ...


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## tomahawk6 (14 Aug 2009)

My worst case scenario is a second revolution the foundation of which is being laid due to the increasing unpopularity of Obama's radical policies. There is a disconnect between the public and the politicians. The politicians are hell bent on forcing radical policies down the throats of the tax payers. This breeds frustration. Throw in Iranian style thuggery,election steeling [which hasnt happened yet on a massive scale] and an economy in the doldrums and there is a recipe for an ugly situation. Remember it only took a third of the population of the colonies to support revolution. The remaining third remained loyal to the crown and a third played it safe. I dont see those numbers being all too different today.


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## Jammer (14 Aug 2009)

An interesting point of view to say the least.
There is no doubt, as I see it that the seeds of revolution are bing sown once again.
Radical elements of the Republican Party are out in force and the Democrats are on the defensive. People, by our nature will react to fear or the perception of fear. This is what the GOP is counting on. 
Illegal Immigration, racial discord, and the "religious right wing" are likely to feed the fire.


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## tomahawk6 (14 Aug 2009)

Jammer you are way off base. Its not the republicans that have their thugs beating citizens up. Last year Hillary said it was every citizens patriotic duty to protest their government. Now that they are running the show they are whistling a different toon now. What you dont realize is that the democrat party has been taken over by Statists and have counted on their rank and file to go along. Obama's socialist agenda is very much anti-american and he is losing his democrats. His polling numbers have been tanking and thats not because republicans oppose him but his own democrats are bailing along with independents. People realize Obama has been lying to the voters and he has zero credibility left. They have the numbers in congress to pass any bill they want and what the public wants doesnt mean squat to them. Lets see what happens in 2010. If this keeps up and the economy continues to slide toward depression alot of democrats will lose their jobs in congress.


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## a_majoor (15 Aug 2009)

I think the real issues are actually different than what most people seem to think. The "Democrats vs Republicans" is how the  trope plays in the MSM, most of whom really don't see it in any other way, but looking at the composition of the T.E.A. parties and the opposition of normally non aligned people and organizations (the C.E.O. of an organic food supermarket chain wrote an Op Ed in the WSJ against Obamacare!) we see the distinction is almost totally artificial (most T.E.A. party organizers have shunned politicans from every party).

The divide seems to be the between political elites, many of whom have very little real differences, and their political clients and supporters vs the general public, who are essentially being told to pay up and pay big (higher taxes, fewer opportunities and devalutaion of savings and currency).

Kaplan's insights in regionalism and localism would suggest that the primary motivations of both the elites and the taxpayers are no longer even at the same level. The MSM, for example reports on an Obama town hall without reference to the crowd of protesters outside, while the regional press and bloggers only report on the protesters without much reference to what is going on inside...

The conflict is national "top down" control being imposed by Washington vs freedom to seek local solutions, and neither side is even on the same page despite talking on the same topic. If Washingtom becomes mostly irrelevant to people's lives, then Kaplan's vision of a residual government overseeing national defense and long term projects like nuclear waste disposal while micro regions deal with strictly local issues may come to pass in practice.


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## Dennis Ruhl (15 Aug 2009)

Thucydides said:
			
		

> If Washingtom becomes mostly irrelevant to people's lives, then Kaplan's vision of a residual government overseeing national defense and long term projects like nuclear waste disposal while micro regions deal with strictly local issues may come to pass in practice.



Which is exactly the model the founders of the US (and Canada) had in mind.  The federal government creep in power has come from a judiciary that sees themselves smarter than Washington and Jefferson or MacDonald and Cartier.


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## Edward Campbell (16 Aug 2009)

What bothers me is the level of _*public* discourse_ in America.

Within my very limited (by place and social class and, and, and ...) experience the _*private* discourse_ remains spirited but, essentially, civil.

But the public discourse is loud and discordant: it is rarely a discussion. _talking heads_ have been replaced by _*shouting* heads_. It’s been a long process but I recall when John McLaughlin’s programme, The McLaughlin Group was an interesting if overly loud “free form” discussion – quite different from its rather staid competitors. Now Face the Nation and Meet the Press and the rare exceptions: the rule is people shouting past one another.

My  fear is that _public_ discourse often drives its _private_ counterpart and when _private_ discourse turns into a shouting match then we are one step closer to losing the strong, civil *social capital* that is one of the foundation stones of our form of electoral democracy.

I doubt that gunfights after political discussions are going to be the norm in Boulder, CO or Durham, NC but, as the level of discourse declines, maintaining the _veneer_ of civility may become more of a problem in e.g. Houma, LA (amongst the ten worst educated cities in that Forbes survey).

In my opinion the differences between the Democratic and Republican _mainstreams_ remain minor – more than during, say, the Ford/Carter/Reagan/Bush era – but still not huge. Most Democrats, including most elected Democratic legislators, are not wild eyed, bomb throwing Marxists and most Republicans, including most elected Republican legislators, are not knuckle dragging troglodytes. But most _spokesmen_ for both groups are not in the mainstream. They are, too often, _radicals_ who ignore the American mainstream as they try to appeal to their respective “bases” – bases that our out of step with America.

Being out of step is not a mortal sin (well except in The RCR!) but being out of step and “leading” public opinion is dangerous.


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## Jammer (16 Aug 2009)

Obama's race to ram his health care plan down the throat is scaring the hell out of the Republicans and Democrats alike, not to mention the American public.
This is perpetuating a wider division of the classes instead of bring them together as he had hoped. The "Beer Summit" for example, pure theater in order to re-orient media attention to his agenda or a real attempt to bridge divides.
His social agenda is very popular with minorities and the less well off, however the politics of fear are being employed by both sides and the partisan media in America (ie Fox News and CNN).


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## Nemo888 (16 Aug 2009)

I'm guessing this thread is just for fun. So here is my 2c.

Free beer to whoever knows who I am quoting below. iper:

THE NEW LUDDITE CHALLENGE

First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite - just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most certainly not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=


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## Michael OLeary (16 Aug 2009)

> The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future - Google Books Result
> by *The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski* - 2005 - Political Science - 124 pages
> First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better that human beings can do them. ...


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## Larkvall (16 Aug 2009)

Nemo888 said:
			
		

> Free beer to whoever knows who I am quoting below. iper:



Kurzweil?


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## Nemo888 (16 Aug 2009)

Should have known the Irish guy would get the free beer. I'd never bothered to read anything he wrote. I just thought Kaczynski was crazy. I'll amend that. Smart and crazy.


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## a_majoor (7 Dec 2011)

This article suggests the old political divides in the body politic are resurfacing. Once again, some hints of the post Progressive future are also on display here:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/06/the-age-of-hamilton/



> *The Age of Hamilton*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> As President Obama travels to John Brown’s old stomping ground in Osawatomie, Kansas where Theodore Roosevelt made his New Nationalism speech in 1910, Newt Gingrich has announced that he is a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.
> ...


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