The distant future. The ultimate question for America.

[Beet]

Well from a number of metrics, a major correction has already occurred and/or will play itself out even if a collapse is somehow averted-- at least if your frame of reference is the last 20 years, or even 30 years. If your frame of reference is 60 or 70 years, then no. But the main changes of 70 years ago that are still with us today are, I think, politically based. It was the decisive settlement of World War II that enabled Bretton Woods and the capitalist recovery after 1945. The key was that the United States' victory within the capitalist sphere was so overwhelming and its government was so powerful and aggressive, that it was able to provide security not only to its own economy but to the entire capitalist bloc. In the womb of this security, the long boom that we have seen since was born. A real overturn of this would require a collapse in the international system, and possibly another war.

As long as there is peace, I think there is reason to be grateful. Bad ideas will flourish for awhile, as will bad politics. The economic pie may even begin to shrink, as it inevitably will as we exhaust the world's natural resources. But we will not return to the dark ages-- the price of energy will only gradually rise, resulting in downside adjustments to the standard of living and of expectations. Arguably, we have already seen this process happening since the 1970s. Things will muddle along.

If another war happens-- and I mean a war of sufficient scale to overturn the international system, then Dan the Roman is right and it will be a bad century. There has been a major war in the beginning part of each century since at least the 17th. Many of the same factors which affect business cycles also affect wars. Just as modern economies have made business cycles more consequential, the modern state and modern economy have made wars far more destructive. As countries go to war, they tend to exhaust themselves, and create a generational aversion to war; just as in business depressions, an aversion to risk taking and borrowing is built up. Then after a century or so, the dangers of war are forgotten, society is replenished with new blood, and off they go again; as in business cycles, as in wars.

One hope is that nuclear weapons have made such a conflict far too costly, and the psychological affect of MAD has permanently broken the cycle of hubris. But every time some claim of permanent progress has been made in the past, it has been proven wrong, plus, never underestimate human folly, so I don't think we can count on this.

After World War I, there was a great political pacifism. People had witnessed the horrors of war as never before, and they never wanted to return. But they returned anyway. After World War II, the situation stabilized. The difference was that World War II was settled decisively, while World War I was not. World War II left us with bipolarism, then unipolarism, while World War I left us with multipolarism.

There are numerous examples in history of unipolarism keeping the peace; so the best hope is unipolarism. Militarily, we live in a unipolar world for now and for the foreseeable future. The greatest threat on this front is the Europeans and the Russians, but Europe is not united enough to challenge the United States, and Russia has powerful opponents along the edges of its sphere of influence that could ally with the United States to check its resurgence.

Lasting empires (or superpowers) depend as much on political as military superiority. Thus, saying America is powerful and strategically placed does not finish the problem. There is still the problem of America's 'soft power': the political incentive of all players to remain in the system. As a hegemonic power, America strikes a Grand Bargain with those states that might otherwise wish to challenge it: We will protect commerce and peace with our military, spending so that you do not have to; and through institutions such as the UN and rhetoric on arms control and human rights, backed by serious diplomatic effort, will send a signal that we will stop you if you go too far. This will let you spend less on your military and feel more secure. In return, you will not attempt to challenge America's hegemonic power or attempt to spread alternative systems to capitalistic representative democracy. You may have alternative systems within your own borders and face mild penalties.

Ironically, I think such a system is at least as vulnerable from the inside as from the outside. And America's soft power has received some pretty big blows in the last decade which Obama's election has not been able to fully recover. But for now, this system seems stable on the whole. We should be glad for it.

[Sam Spade]

Don't know whether I can agree with all that Beet.  At all.  I'll post more later.

[Person Man]

So, we are in an era of a Great Washington Covenant, a New Deal that spread across the world.

Therefore, some questions I have is how it could implode or be pushed against. However, the biggest question is what would it mean to the average person.  So far, the erosion of our Washington Covenant has just been less job security and more reliance on credit to survive. A mixture that apparently did not work come the Great Land Depression of 2007-2010. After tunneling through this issue, we will go back to the way were we before the last bubble- How do we maintain our standard of living and security? Deregulation has failed us. Another way could be to simply build our way out of the fall of our dynasty, but unless people are afraid for their lives, they will not try to modify the current system. Perhaps if the system were to become damaged enough, people would not have the same vested interest in it. Basically, the goal of the United States in 2010s-2030s will be a way to end the current system in a way that is the least disruptive and yet disruptive enough to cause a strong enough political will to raise taxes, cut spending and build more great projects. In a sense, Planet Earth needs to be put on rehab. We need to wein the world of the use of our military and place our burden on other powers that would have the same interests that we currently have. Perhaps putting India in charge of the Middle East and China in charge of Eurasia and perhaps Brazil over the Global South. ...and the United States can just focus on the Northwestern Hemisphere as we encourage a strong enough EU to keep russia at bay. None of these powers would be able to challenge us right away, but they could possibly help us cut spending and free up money for the infrastructure that we need. Perhaps the world of 2045 will look like the world of 1913, but perhaps the advent of hypersonic travel and other transportation would make keeping in touch a little easier. Then at this point, the goal will be to find a way to keep us from blowing us up, but that was what we dealt with between 1945-1972, when America was had the most economic oppurtunities.

[Beet]

Yeah Angry Weasel, we need huge changes, and we'll get huge changes. That's the problem with these long term predictions. The amount of instability in just one lifetime is phenomenal. A person born in 1893 on a Hungarian farm would have already formed a young adult view of the world by 1911, when he immigrated with his family to the US, amazed at skyscrapers, the Brooklyn Bridge and electrification. If he lived for 100 years that Hungarian farmer would get to see World War I, the Jazz Age, World War II, the Atomic Age, the Space Age, and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union!

[Person Man]

The only question is whether we will be protactive and get these changes to work for us or whether or we will wait for change to come to us, with its natural consequences.

[Lincoln Republican]

Other, until the end of time.

[Person Man]

Other, until the end of time.

Well, our continent would have been warped by Plate Tectonics in a few million years and then our planet will overeat in a few hundred million after that or at least that is when the molecular precursor to sexual reproduction begins to unravel....Let's just put it this way, 700 million years from now, the Planet Earth will not be able to sustain complex life....and in 3-4 billion years, not able to sustain life at all.

[Psychic Octopus]

Well, if people even exist 700 million years from now, they will be radically different from people today, and much more evolved. When the universe ends, if it expands forever, I can see people becoming Androids like in the movies, by transferring their memory into it. I don't want to think about that though, I just want to enjoy the time I have on Earth with my family and friends.

[Person Man]

Well, if people even exist 700 million years from now, they will be radically different from people today, and much more evolved. When the universe ends, if it expands forever, I can see people becoming Androids like in the movies, by transferring their memory into it. I don't want to think about that though, I just want to enjoy the time I have on Earth with my family and friends.

Actually, you got to get more creative than that. I would say that Doctor Who probably has it right. I think that humanity is in enough control of itself to change radically and then revert back to its original self. It fights a lot of odds, but somehow very plausable given the fact that whether or not to be "human-human" could become a matter of choice to future generations.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Voted for option 3.


And here's the appropriate site for this debate: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/us_rome.htm

It's bit outdated though, since those two things didn't happen:
2005 Operation Righteous Retribution: Syria Conquered
2007 Operation Humongous Virility: Iran Conquered

And it ends with "2625-2645 Li Kuan of Rigel 7 attacks" (Li Kuan is a stand-in for Attila the Hun in this timeline).

[Psychic Octopus]

Well, if people even exist 700 million years from now, they will be radically different from people today, and much more evolved. When the universe ends, if it expands forever, I can see people becoming Androids like in the movies, by transferring their memory into it. I don't want to think about that though, I just want to enjoy the time I have on Earth with my family and friends.

Actually, you got to get more creative than that. I would say that Doctor Who probably has it right. I think that humanity is in enough control of itself to change radically and then revert back to its original self. It fights a lot of odds, but somehow very plausable given the fact that whether or not to be "human-human" could become a matter of choice to future generations.

Huh.

[Person Man]

In Doctor Who, humanity evolved into neo-humans or merged with aliens, plants or animals by the time the Earth was destroyed by the Sun. Eventually, trillions of years later when the universe was about to be torn apart by entropy, humanity had evovled back to the way it was originally.

[H. Ross Peron]

The United States will last for an another two centuries or so after which it will join a world government assuming no Apocalypse or any other disaster.

[Person Man]

The United States will last for an another two centuries or so after which it will join a world government assuming no Apocalypse or any other disaster.

An Apocalypse or World Government would be on opposite sides of a continum. A World Government would only come into being if it was truely feasible (a competent understanding of unified physics and engineering) and if there was an alien power that could unite the planet against it.

The most likely apocalyptic scenario was the Earth2100 documentary scenario that made the birthers, towners and neocons go crazy. Basically, the economy becomes so hard to handle and climate change becomes so bad that there are major famines, storms and pandemics by the 2070s and by the 2080s, only about 1 or 2 billion people are still alive. For the United States, it means that the Federal Government will liquidate and the governance of the people will revert to the remaining states. Many cities will be abandoned and many states will be totally depopulated. However, there could be several states that adapted fast enough in safe enough places to maintain their personality.

The Earth that I am thinking will exist in 2100 is a world where we have had one or two major global upheavals that are larger than WWII, but do not cause the apocalypse. The United States is a super-power, but must share the world with the rapidly growing third-world countries of today and some modern countries that have managed to overcome their demographic problems without destroying a progressive civil society. Think Turkey, India, Japan, Poland and something resembling the Western Roman Empire (plus Southern Scandinavia, minus North Africa). We will probably see all of the technological change we are hoping for today, but will probably still not have the ability to manipulate the laws of physics or have anything more than some basic proof that aliens exist.

[Scam of God]

I'd suggest that some form of civil, democratic government will exist in the territory defined as the "United States of America" for at least the next two centuries. I do not expect that the American government, in its present form today, will outlast the coming century. I expect regionalism and factionalism to increase in magnitude until it matches or surpasses that of the antebellum era prior to the Civil War by century's end, and that we will gradually see a devolution of power to the local regions. Technology will likely aid this process: as we become more self-sufficient, and as it becomes easier to live truly alone, there will be less and less need for centralization over great gulfs of time.

Now, I don't think this scenario is nearly as frightful as some readers probably think. I do not expect, for instance, that the South will revert to agrarian slavery: savage and primitive though the region is, the technology of economics alone make this infeasible. If it were to happen today then it is possible that segregation would be re-instated in most of the States, but even the passing of a mere ten more years would make this more difficult to conceive of. Technology heralds enlightenment.