Reply #1: Our leaders should be discussing this, but they aren't and can't [View All]

[starroute]

This is why empires fall. They get so locked into whatever made them great that they lack the will to change. The have to either collapse, be defeated in war, or at the very least decline while more flexible societies around them advance, before change becomes possible.

For at least a century (I think it may go back to H.G. Wells), various people have been suggesting that given an adequate knowledge-base, technological expertise, and democratic institutions, it should be possible for societies to actually foresee problems on the horizon and react to them before they happen.

Unfortunately, I don't see much ability to apply any of those things in the US today. We're rapidly becoming stupider, less democratic, and technologically more dependent on others. If you wanted to come up with a formula to make sure American society would collapse rather than reforming itself, you couldn't do better.

I really fear that we're going to go the way of Rome or the Ottomans, and my only hope is that the rest of the world will come through without a crippling level of damage.