America 2050- We talk about future elections...but what will the stances be?

[12th Doctor]

To take a stab at what the major issues will be at this time, in no particular order...

1) Human Cloning

2) The rights of people in an ever more technological society

3) Moral issues about how much science should do

4) What is a person (meaning that I think abortion will actually still be an issue, but also in terms of cloned humans, and perhaps even robots and animals by this point)

5) Fear over an emerging Japan and Turkey

6) Anti-immigration laws... after we have spent 2020-2040 in a rush to import labor, like the rest of the current first world

7) America's aging infrastructure (this is an issue about every 40 years)

8 ) Potential admittance of at least some of Canada into the Union (this will likely take the shape of eastern Canada wanting to join the (now far weaker than today) European Union, while sections of Western Canada wish to go with the United States, Ontario and British Columbia will be the two provinces most happy with the status quo; assuming the idea of a Canadian Nation has any validity, the early 21st century will take it to the breaking point

9) Globally, the continued carnage of the Russian War of Dissolution will be on everyone's tv's, but while people in the West will pretend to care, they really won't; the West won't take the side of any of the some 10 states formed by the total break up of Russia in the 2030's, preferring to be a spectator and denounce the violence from afar, happy that its old nemesis has finally been done in.

10) The Weaponization of Space... more of a "should we have" by this point.

11) Still coping with some of the effects of climate change, though the total disaster that was predicted never took place.

12) International aid... the planet has the capacity to feed a population that is now 10 billion, but we can't get the food there... still.

Wildcards:

Africa - Will it finally find its footing in the modern world?

Atlantic Europe - Will it finally come to terms with its true irrelevance in the modern era, or will it still arrogantly try to act as the world's guiding light?

China - Is the Chinese government going weaken its grasp on the coastal provinces in order to keep the economy humming, or will it attempt a crackdown and go into isolation as it has in the past?  Eitherway, the pressures created by the burgeoning wealth on the coasts and the continued lack of development in the interior, plus growing ethnic concerns, which by this point will be shrouded in economics, will cause the government to weaken.  This will likely take place by 2030, but will still be an issue in 2050.

India - Has it continued its benevolent growth as a friend of the United States?  There are three "what ifs" there.

[12th Doctor]

Off topic: Has anyone ever played the game Mass Effect, it's great and the backstory is intresting.


Anyway,  I'd like to make some predictions as well on the issues and the future.

The Issues- 2050.

Artifical Intelligence: I think that there will be an outright ban on this, not VI or Virtual Intelligence but AI. Think if robots could think for themselves. Scary.

Immigration: Once again, the United States will implement a system that will halt the great waves of immigration that are occuring today. I think this will happen sometime in the late 2010s,

Morality: The Science vs. God arguement, should life extension be allowed? Or is that messing with Mother Nature?  Is human cloning a good idea? Personally if you could call me a socially moderate republican today, I'll be more socially conservative then Rush Limbaugh in the future if these are the issues.

National Parks: As mentioned before, in an ever-advancing knowledge society, people will want to protect our heritage.

Civil Liberties: Self-explanatory

Space Warfare: Self-explanatory

My Predictions

I think that the republican party will still be the party of conservatism, just in different way. More in the mold of Tom Dewey, Nixon, and Rockefeller.

China will turn into what Japan is today, after chatastrophic failures in the 2020s and 2030s.

Japan will join the UN Security Council.

The Chinese will be the first to return to the moon, in 2018. The US will be back there in 2019. The Japanese and Europeans will arrive soon on there also. Due to economic problems, China will pull the plug on most of there operations. The US will be the first to land on Mars in 2034. Colonies will be set up on both, though Mars rather later.

Rising India will be talked about like China and Japan are today. Except unlike China, It will be a strategic ally of the US

The USA will still be top dog, although in a more multipolar world.

To take a stab at what the major issues will be at this time, in no particular order...

1) Human Cloning

2) The rights of people in an ever more technological society

3) Moral issues about how much science should do

4) What is a person (meaning that I think abortion will actually still be an issue, but also in terms of cloned humans, and perhaps even robots and animals by this point)

5) Fear over an emerging Japan and Turkey

6) Anti-immigration laws... after we have spent 2020-2040 in a rush to import labor, like the rest of the current first world

7) America's aging infrastructure (this is an issue about every 40 years)

8 ) Potential admittance of at least some of Canada into the Union (this will likely take the shape of eastern Canada wanting to join the (now far weaker than today) European Union, while sections of Western Canada wish to go with the United States, Ontario and British Columbia will be the two provinces most happy with the status quo; assuming the idea of a Canadian Nation has any validity, the early 21st century will take it to the breaking point

9) Globally, the continued carnage of the Russian War of Dissolution will be on everyone's tv's, but while people in the West will pretend to care, they really won't; the West won't take the side of any of the some 10 states formed by the total break up of Russia in the 2030's, preferring to be a spectator and denounce the violence from afar, happy that its old nemesis has finally been done in.

10) The Weaponization of Space... more of a "should we have" by this point.

11) Still coping with some of the effects of climate change, though the total disaster that was predicted never took place.

12) International aid... the planet has the capacity to feed a population that is now 10 billion, but we can't get the food there... still.

Wildcards:

Africa - Will it finally find its footing in the modern world?

Atlantic Europe - Will it finally come to terms with its true irrelevance in the modern era, or will it still arrogantly try to act as the world's guiding light?

China - Is the Chinese government going weaken its grasp on the coastal provinces in order to keep the economy humming, or will it attempt a crackdown and go into isolation as it has in the past?  Eitherway, the pressures created by the burgeoning wealth on the coasts and the continued lack of development in the interior, plus growing ethnic concerns, which by this point will be shrouded in economics, will cause the government to weaken.  This will likely take place by 2030, but will still be an issue in 2050.

India - Has it continued its benevolent growth as a friend of the United States?  There are three "what ifs" there.

Hey Soulty, have you read The Next 100 Years[/i because some of your predictions are familiar to the ideas in that book.

I borrowed some of his ideas, yes.   Really good book.  He makes alot of sense.

[12th Doctor]

Off topic: Has anyone ever played the game Mass Effect, it's great and the backstory is intresting.


Anyway,  I'd like to make some predictions as well on the issues and the future.

The Issues- 2050.

Artifical Intelligence: I think that there will be an outright ban on this, not VI or Virtual Intelligence but AI. Think if robots could think for themselves. Scary.

Immigration: Once again, the United States will implement a system that will halt the great waves of immigration that are occuring today. I think this will happen sometime in the late 2010s,

Morality: The Science vs. God arguement, should life extension be allowed? Or is that messing with Mother Nature?  Is human cloning a good idea? Personally if you could call me a socially moderate republican today, I'll be more socially conservative then Rush Limbaugh in the future if these are the issues.

National Parks: As mentioned before, in an ever-advancing knowledge society, people will want to protect our heritage.

Civil Liberties: Self-explanatory

Space Warfare: Self-explanatory

My Predictions

I think that the republican party will still be the party of conservatism, just in different way. More in the mold of Tom Dewey, Nixon, and Rockefeller.

China will turn into what Japan is today, after chatastrophic failures in the 2020s and 2030s.

Japan will join the UN Security Council.

The Chinese will be the first to return to the moon, in 2018. The US will be back there in 2019. The Japanese and Europeans will arrive soon on there also. Due to economic problems, China will pull the plug on most of there operations. The US will be the first to land on Mars in 2034. Colonies will be set up on both, though Mars rather later.

Rising India will be talked about like China and Japan are today. Except unlike China, It will be a strategic ally of the US

The USA will still be top dog, although in a more multipolar world.

To take a stab at what the major issues will be at this time, in no particular order...

1) Human Cloning

2) The rights of people in an ever more technological society

3) Moral issues about how much science should do

4) What is a person (meaning that I think abortion will actually still be an issue, but also in terms of cloned humans, and perhaps even robots and animals by this point)

5) Fear over an emerging Japan and Turkey

6) Anti-immigration laws... after we have spent 2020-2040 in a rush to import labor, like the rest of the current first world

7) America's aging infrastructure (this is an issue about every 40 years)

8 ) Potential admittance of at least some of Canada into the Union (this will likely take the shape of eastern Canada wanting to join the (now far weaker than today) European Union, while sections of Western Canada wish to go with the United States, Ontario and British Columbia will be the two provinces most happy with the status quo; assuming the idea of a Canadian Nation has any validity, the early 21st century will take it to the breaking point

9) Globally, the continued carnage of the Russian War of Dissolution will be on everyone's tv's, but while people in the West will pretend to care, they really won't; the West won't take the side of any of the some 10 states formed by the total break up of Russia in the 2030's, preferring to be a spectator and denounce the violence from afar, happy that its old nemesis has finally been done in.

10) The Weaponization of Space... more of a "should we have" by this point.

11) Still coping with some of the effects of climate change, though the total disaster that was predicted never took place.

12) International aid... the planet has the capacity to feed a population that is now 10 billion, but we can't get the food there... still.

Wildcards:

Africa - Will it finally find its footing in the modern world?

Atlantic Europe - Will it finally come to terms with its true irrelevance in the modern era, or will it still arrogantly try to act as the world's guiding light?

China - Is the Chinese government going weaken its grasp on the coastal provinces in order to keep the economy humming, or will it attempt a crackdown and go into isolation as it has in the past?  Eitherway, the pressures created by the burgeoning wealth on the coasts and the continued lack of development in the interior, plus growing ethnic concerns, which by this point will be shrouded in economics, will cause the government to weaken.  This will likely take place by 2030, but will still be an issue in 2050.

India - Has it continued its benevolent growth as a friend of the United States?  There are three "what ifs" there.

Hey Soulty, have you read The Next 100 Years[/i because some of your predictions are familiar to the ideas in that book.

I borrowed some of his ideas, yes.   Really good book.  He makes alot of sense.

Yes, I liked it as well. The only thing I found strange was the world war between Turkey, Japan, Poland and the US. Othereise I found it really intresting.

I think that part was a tiny bit of a stretch as well.  Seemed a little contrived, but his reasoning behind his assertions seemed pretty sound.  I think Poland is the future of Europe, Turkey the future of the Eastern Med and Middle East, and Japan will prophet from China's internal weakness.  All those ideas were thought I had going into the book, but never really put together until I read it.  Really, history does repeat itself, and old trends reassert themselves in new ways.

I have been saying for a long time that I still believed Russia was the real threat for the immediate future, not China, and he lays down a very good argument for that point.

[12th Doctor]

To take a stab at what the major issues will be at this time, in no particular order...

2) The rights of people in an ever more technological society
You mean the ACLU  complaining in 2050 that people's health insurance companies won't let them eat pizza?

3) Moral issues about how much science should do How exactly would any of this work? If trying to stop abortion or stem cell research hasn't been dicey when tried- you ain't seem anything yet!

5) Fear over an emerging Japan and Turkey - can a socially backwards Turkey or Greying Japan be really that powerful in 40 years? Possibly. I can see Turkey becoming a center-left military junta that will be able to make Turkey into the "Disneyland with the Death Penality"...but also has millions of soldiers. Japan is already jumping on the AI wagon and will probably jump on the human cloning wagon as soon as someone finds a way to reliably do it. If people aren't going to have, let alone raise their kids, the Japanese government will.

6) Anti-immigration laws... after we have spent 2020-2040 in a rush to import labor, like the rest of the current first world I am guessing they will probably be from Africa and Russia, instead of a fully-modern and prosperous Latin America

8 ) Potential admittance of at least some of Canada into the Union (this will likely take the shape of eastern Canada wanting to join the (now far weaker than today) European Union, while sections of Western Canada wish to go with the United States, Ontario and British Columbia will be the two provinces most happy with the status quo; assuming the idea of a Canadian Nation has any validity, the early 21st century will take it to the breaking point Perhaps the more developed parts of Mexico as well

9) Globally, the continued carnage of the Russian War of Dissolution will be on everyone's tv's, but while people in the West will pretend to care, they really won't; the West won't take the side of any of the some 10 states formed by the total break up of Russia in the 2030's, preferring to be a spectator and denounce the violence from afar, happy that its old nemesis has finally been done in. Will Eurasia be the new Africa?

11) Still coping with some of the effects of climate change, though the total disaster that was predicted never took place.  Hmmm....I give the predicted collapse a 30% chance of happening and a 40% chance of it causing substantial long-term harm to the economy...and a 20% chance of it being a moderately important issue and only a 10% chance of everything being honky dorey.

12) International aid... the planet has the capacity to feed a population that is now 10 billion, but we can't get the food there... still. This time, it will be where they cannot grow food but for global warming.

Wildcards:

China - Is the Chinese government going weaken its grasp on the coastal provinces in order to keep the economy humming, or will it attempt a crackdown and go into isolation as it has in the past?  Eitherway, the pressures created by the burgeoning wealth on the coasts and the continued lack of development in the interior, plus growing ethnic concerns, which by this point will be shrouded in economics, will cause the government to weaken.  This will likely take place by 2030, but will still be an issue in 2050. The most likely thing is that a progressive China emerges in China proper after shedding its Tibetans, Uyghurs and other more conservative minorities

2) Something like that.  Also to what extent your information should be stored and made available to others.

3) Odds are, opponents of new directions in science will meet with only limited success, as has always been the historical pattern.  But the faster science advances, the more persistent an issue this will become.

5) The Japanese will have one of the best sources of labor imaginable right in their backyard... China.  The Chinese and Japanese hate each other, but likely Japan will offer Chinese business protection from the Central government, in exchange for their continued production for Japanese capital.  Economics turns enemies into friends pretty quickly. 

The Turks are advancing, and also have a ready supply of labor in their backyard, along with several even more backwards countries over which they will be able to exert considerable influence.  They are also the only county in that part of the world with any considerable access to trade, and a population to take advantage of that access.  If Iraq doesn't split (big "if") then its access to the world is limited by geography (mostly landlocked) and all other states in the region are limited by similar factors, while the Persian Gulf makes for a less than ideal trade route (Strait of Hormuz)... not to mention that control over oil will be less a concern by this time.  Turkey has alot of potential as a reemerging power and faces few serious challengers.

6) Most likely, though I'd say India will also be a major contributor, as they will be one of the few countries actually eager to shed some of their population, and will most likely still be allies of the United States.

8 ) Depends on quite a few things with Mexico.  Will we exert more authority over their northern states, or they over our southern?  This will likely be a battle of economics over culture.

9) Most likely.  Central Asia has no promise in terms of the future.  There is just too much working against it.  Russia is challenging the West, yet again, and will likely continue to assert itself at a great and greater level over the next decade.  It will lose this challenge, to a strong alliance of the United States, Poland, and their immediate allies in the region (the U.S.-Poland relationship will be the new US-UK... not that the Anglo-American Alliance will weaken).

The irony of the modern age is that, as the world become more integrated, people are reaching more and more for their own national identity.  There is no "Russia" as such.  The vastness of the Russian state hides the fact that there are many regions in that expanse (even after the Cold War break up) that have their own identities and interests.  The first time the central authority in Moscow was thoroughly discredited, Russia broke apart at its edges.  This will happen again, but the edges are now not just the periphery, but what remains of the historical Russia itself.  The last of what can really be called "Russia" will splinter.

The very notion of a Russian nation has always been hard to maintain.  Battles over what "Russia" is, how it is to be identified and with whom, have raged on throughout its history.

Russian culture is fundamentally paranoid, and now they truly are the at the lowest level of security, as a state, that they have been in 400 years.  They know that what I just said is true, which is why they are acting now, in the hopes of preventing internal destruction.

11) There will likely be some rise in global sea levels.  There will be some shift into the northern climes of warmer weather... which will mean better growing seasons there.  But by about 2030, CO2 emissions will be headed in the other direction, and the melt water from the glaciers will cause a minor trend back in the other direction.  I'm not that worried, just so long as we don't go nuts, and I think the general trend is away from that.

12) The real problem is, and always has been, access to food supplies.  The United States wastes enough food each day to feed double its population for that day... that waste is either direct, i.e. because the food sits on a dock somewhere waiting to be exported, or indirect, such as in the case of people who receive generous subsidies deciding not to farm.

Problem is, the domestic situation of many starving countries is such that the people there either lack the means to purchase the food, or we lack the ability to get it to them, even for free.  There would not be so many starving countries if their governments weren't keeping us out in one way or another.

We have also gobbled up tons of farm land via the expansion of suburbia, which is on the way out.

China - The most likely thing is that the coastal areas flee into the arms of the West/Japan, and are either successful, or not.  Eitherway, China's problem are going to keep it from developing into a major threat.  China needs rapid economic growth not only to thrive, but to keep from collapse; which is why they are so anxious to buy up our debt.  They need us to keep buying their products no matter what the cost to them.  But this rapid growth is coming with more challenges.  The internal situation in China is a mess.

[12th Doctor]

BTW... the ethnic problems in China are not just in the extreme interior.  They are all over the place.

[12th Doctor]

BTW... the ethnic problems in China are not just in the extreme interior.  They are all over the place.

Hmmm...so I am guessing the "Han" thing is only for the parts of China that are on the Yellow River? Eitherway, if the Chinese Coast did become its own country, it would have about 1m sq mi and about 400 000 000. So yeah, I can see China as the new Japan. And Japan as the new America and China as the new Mexico.

Not "its own country," but rather that the central government will be forced to relinquish alot of its control over that area, or face total destruction, thus making it a good place to do business, but the Chinese state will be a weak one. 

Really, China is not entirely unique in this regard.  While it is not perfectly analogous, look at the political confrontation between the the coastal US and the interior US during the 1820's and you see a very similar situation... a well developed and wealthy coast at war (figuratively) with a less developed interior that feels as though it is being hosed by the rich folks in the big port cities.  And this pattern is repeated in a number of "one coast" countries.

The difference is that a huge percentage of the Chinese population lives in the interior... whereas this is not the case in many countries that are similar geographic problems.

Perhaps the social fracture would lead to a physical fracture, but that need not be the case.  Eitherway, China's own capital is still limited, but they have a labor supply.  Japan has massive capital, but a limited labor supply.  You do the math.

[12th Doctor]

And the fact is that there is great historical precedent for this problem in China.  It has happened many times, in cycles.  China's coast opens to trade.  That trade creates a massive influx of wealth on the coast, and the interior gets left behind.  The fast social change leads to unrest.  Those who seek to exploit this unrest work the interior against the coast.  The interior prevails (usually through the strangest of circumstances) and China falls back into isolation. 

The Chinese Civil War the 30's and 40's is a prime example.  The Chinese communist movement started on the coasts, but they could not gain enough support there, and so they enacted The Long March into the interior where they knew they could kick up more support.  Through bizarre circumstances, Mao prevailed and China fell back into isolation.  And the opening up of China in the 19th century was following a period where China had gone into isolation for the exact same reasons... and this has happened again, and again, with exactly the same causes and outcomes each time.

What makes now a bit different though is that the world is so integrated today, that total isolation will be hard to achieve, and multinational corporations make it so there are extra-national entities that can keep the coastal economy active.

[12th Doctor]

Sounds like Futurama to me. I bet the world would probably be like Futurama by like 2250, if we discover how to travel in relativistic dimensons and speeds. Then again, if we ever did get FTL, would it change the world that much?

1. Someone would assassinate Hitler.

2. Someone would assassinate Stalin.

3. Someone would assassinate Miguel de Torquemada. (Spanish Inquisition)

4. Someone would betray John Gacy and Ted Bundy to the relevant police forces.

5. Someone might bring a bicycle to the Roman Empire (I can't imagine a technology that would have done more good for more people at the right time) and show how to use it.

6. Someone might lock the door to the President's box at Ford's Theater during a performance of Our American Cousin in April 1865.

Helping out the Roman Empire would come dead last on my agenda.  I would be more eager to help the people who fought against them... for the most part.

[12th Doctor]

And, of course, we all know what would be #1 on States' agenda