What if the COVID epidemic doesn't end in this decade? The US continues to have about half a million dead per year, and a lot of lost productivity due to long COVID. This is the most likely scenario.
What if the war in Europe doesn't end in this decade? The optimistic scenario is that Russia bites off some of Ukraine and we go back to a cold war, with everybody in Europe building up serious military power to keep Russian expansion at bay. There are worse outcomes.
What if global warming starts to produce mass starvation in many areas of the world? This is looking likely, and it's already started.
What if supply chain problems don't go away? It's become clear that the incentives of the free market no longer insure abundance across the board. Americans could once deride the USSR's "short-blanket economy", where stores were always out of something. Now that's the norm in America.
For the past half century, large scale trouble in the US has been mostly about the business cycle. But this time, the business cycle doesn't dominate the other problems.
baby boomers and the greatest generation dying an additional half million per year accelerate the biggest wealth transfer in history - rebalancing portfolios to be demand for undervalued stocks and different consumptive spending patterns
Covid is over, the excess deaths are low, or even zero. War in ukraine would be a nothingburger if americans were involved (like noone cares about yemen, syria, now somalia, and noone cared about afghanistan, iraq, and even serbia).
Most of the current problems that we have are caused by the politicians directly, and not by covid/war/whatever, and sadly, they're the first that will have to go, if we want to return to somewhat normal future.
Russia invades ukraine, world becomes hysterical, mass sanctions, everyone stands with ukraine
America invades a country that has nothing to do with 9/11 and kills 500k+ (realistically 1mm+) civilians, no one stands with Iraq, and if they do they're terrorist states.
Not sure you are correct here. Ukraine war is in Europe, America's sphere of influence and features America's traditional enemy. America was involved in Afghanistan and Iraq which you claimed no one cared about. Russia and Ukraine produce a significant portion of the worlds food, energy and fertilizer supply.
The current situations are caused by politicians but politicians from dozens of countries. Politicians chose to invade Ukraine. Politicians financed the making of vaccines which provided enough confidence for economies to open up again. Politicians chose China's zero covid policy. Politicians flooded the market with money which led to inflation but also prevented a collapse during covid and allowed the poorest among us to survive. Politicians do both good and cause harm. They also provide representation, without them your other options are dictatorships or anarchy.
"they're the first that will have to go, if we want to return to somewhat normal future." how are you suggesting they "go"?
This is a normal future, there is very little going on right now that has not happened a dozen times before, its just people doing people things.
so what... A country has a minority, minority wants to separate, the main country won't let them, and fights happen between the main country and the minority, a big player steps in and destroys the main country to "save the minority" (and gain whatever their geopolitical interest was). Kosovo, ukraine, same shit, different players.
> The current situations are caused by politicians but politicians from dozens of countries. Politicians chose to invade Ukraine. Politicians financed the making of vaccines which provided enough confidence for economies to open up again. Politicians chose China's zero covid policy. Politicians flooded the market with money which led to inflation but also prevented a collapse during covid and allowed the poorest among us to survive. Politicians do both good and cause harm. They also provide representation, without them your other options are dictatorships or anarchy.
Meh... you need just one large country to succeed in their "revolution" (or whatever it will be called), by pulling their politicians out from their high security buildings and removing them from power one way or another, a few more will follow, and the rest will get scared and start actually doing something good for the people. The hypocricy we've seen during the covid era should not ever be forgotten, and the human rights violations neither. Let's also not forget the people who fly to Brussles twice per week in private government planes and tell their people not to drive cars due to ecology.
> "they're the first that will have to go, if we want to return to somewhat normal future." how are you suggesting they "go"?
In serbia people stormed the government buildings until milosevic stepped down. In france, they used a bit stronger, headless approach. It all depends on what works.
> This is a normal future, there is very little going on right now that has not happened a dozen times before, its just people doing people things.
Not really... in the past, the politicians were "removed" one way or another many many times,... this current peaceful era is more of an anomaly.
>so what... A country has a minority, minority wants to separate, the main country won't let them, and fights happen between the main country and the minority, a big player steps in and destroys the main country to "save the minority" (and gain whatever their geopolitical interest was). Kosovo, ukraine, same shit, different players.
This... almost works for the crimea situation years ago but Russia is now just attempting a full scale takeover of the country. I can tell Ukraine isn't into it because of how much they're fighting back.
I mean... nato bombed whole (what was then left of) yugoslavia, including civilian targets and destroyed civil infrastructure, to make the country give up the southern part (kosovo)... they even bombed a tobacco factory in Niš and the national TV station in Belgrade which have nothing to do with kosovo, and threw cluster bombs on residential areas "just because". So yeah... putin is basically doing the same to destroy the military infrastructure, and is now taking over the russian minority regions.
The only real difference is propaganda.... US was "bombing for peace" ( https://content.time.com/time/magazine/archive/covers/1995/1... ), and the current RUS-UA propaganda is basically a giant shitshow, where by reading the media, russia is losing every day, and the fighters from azovstal are being "evacuated" (...by russia... as prisoners of war... but the word used was "evacuated").
> caused by the politicians directly, and not by covid/war/whatever, and sadly, they're the first that will have to go, if we want to return to somewhat normal future.
> Not really... in the past, the politicians were "removed" one way or another many many times,... this current peaceful era is more of an anomaly.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this poster seems to essentially be dog whistling for assassinations.
Look at america for example... a bunch of senile should-be-pensioners are leading the country on basically all levels. Look at EU, a bunch of unelected people in brussles want to break e2e encryption and intruduce private message monitoring.. "for the children". Look at shanghai and their lockdowns. Look at global realestate prices. Look at the profits vs wages ratio.
I mean... something will happen sooner or later, if we want it, call for it, or not.
America is a good example. A country that has a population that is essentially 50/50 divided on almost every single thing. There is no "hey we kicked them out" and now everything is good, it ends in a massive pogrom. The us has elections where we have the option to kick them out every 4 years, the current focus on eroding trust in that process is weakening America and has me more concerned than anything else. Elections provide a way to vent pressure, one side takes over and then the other. Messing with elections and eroding trust in them leads to an increase in that pressure without a vent.
No matter what the revolution, it never leads to utopia, it just leads to another group of politicians. An effective Democracy is the best option. Issue is a ton of people choose not to vote and instead just complain. Its far from perfect but better than the alternatives.
"Look at global realestate prices. Look at the profits vs wages ratio" these are the results of capitalism and while I agree there are some massive limitations to it, it has lifted billions out of poverty and subsistence level living. Perhaps technology will lead to a better solution but right now I dont think we have one and just kicking over the sandcastle is not going to make things better and will very likely make things much much worse.
What if the war in Europe doesn't end in this decade? The optimistic scenario is that Russia bites off some of Ukraine and we go back to a cold war, with everybody in Europe building up serious military power to keep Russian expansion at bay. There are worse outcomes.
What if global warming starts to produce mass starvation in many areas of the world? This is looking likely, and it's already started.
What if supply chain problems don't go away? It's become clear that the incentives of the free market no longer insure abundance across the board. Americans could once deride the USSR's "short-blanket economy", where stores were always out of something. Now that's the norm in America.
For the past half century, large scale trouble in the US has been mostly about the business cycle. But this time, the business cycle doesn't dominate the other problems.