The answer to that question goes like this. America was a failed state. And now it’s becoming an authoritarian one. America is now 60 days from the final stage of social collapse — the terminal stage, the point of no return, at which a society goes full-blown authoritarian, permanently — and it’s looking increasingly likely to us survivors and scholars of authoritarianism that that final, terminal stage is going to happen. America is dying.
And yet that’s a classical, textbook, predictable sequence. Which, if you really want to prevent, you should probably understand. Let me explain.
What do you imagine a failed state is? If you’re a “real” American, you probably think it’s some distant, war-torn land. And in a sense, you’re right. But it was also America, and is.
A failed state is a place where people can no longer really obtain the basics of life, in any fair or decent or sane way. There is not enough to go around. The result is that people live under the rule of a kind of violence, in a state of chaos, in perpetual despair and rage and panic. Where will tomorrow’s water, food, medicine, the money to pay for it all, come from?
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The state’s most basic job is to organise society in such a way that people can obtain the basics of life. We all need shelter, food, water, and medicine to live. To live well, at even a minimal level, we need safety, education, income, savings. That doesn’t mean that the state has to give those things to people necessarily — but it does have to organise society in such a way that those things can be had.
And that is precisely where America failed. Americans — especially “real” ones — are used to growing up in an atmosphere of fevered propaganda, exceptionalism. But what really happened in America from 1980 to about 2015 was this.
America became a society where people couldn’t obtain the basics of life anymore. I mean that in both absolute and relative ways. Want to have a child? That’ll cost you $50,000. Want to educate one? That’ll cost you $250,000. Need a life-saving operation? Sorry, that’ll cost you $500,000. What the? Entire cities had infrastructures which simply failed, like Flint.
Society as a whole had no functioning social systems — healthcare, retirement, pensions. So Americans’ only choice was to pay the prices that their system demanded. Want a pension? Wall St will sell you a “401K” — and take a fat cut, while hedge funds raid whatever was left of your life savings. Want healthcare? Sure, that “premium” will cost you thousands a month, for a plan that provides little care or choice at all.
Americans were locked into broken, dysfunctional systems, which no longer provided them the basics of life, at prices they could afford.
The income of the average American was scarcely $50k. How were they to afford any of this? They couldn’t, quite obviously.
The result was that many Americans began to go without the basics of life. They chose between that life-saving operation, or keeping a roof over their kids’ heads. They ate cheap, industrially processed food, and grew obese and ill, because it had little nutritional value. They worked jobs that would never lead to careers or mobility desperately just to retain some access to the meagre “benefits” only jobs now provided. Young Americans found themselves crippled by educational debt, and unable to begin independent lives of their own.
See the point clearly. America could no longer provide the basics to people. It could not feed, shelter, educate, or employ its people. Not affordably, and certainly not well. The situation was so bad, for example, that Americans just gave up looking for work, in fact, reaching a point where just above half of the working age population were employed at all. That millennials became a lost generation stuck at home forever, working crap jobs. That strangers begged one another for money to pay for medicine online.
This was a Soviet society by any other name. The Soviet Union famously had breadlines, where you’d never get the bread. America had unobtainable basics, too, in even larger and more lethal ways.
What did Americans have to do to simply even attempt to afford the basics of life — medicine, education, food, water, housing? They had to go into massive debt. Today, the average American dies in debt, meaning his or her debts are unpayable. And that means that he never in net terms really owns, saves, or earns a penny.
Those are the economics of failed states. People end up broke. A society descends into mass poverty. Nobody much can afford the basics. Meanwhile, those who have monopolies over said basics become ultra, mega rich. Vast inequality sets in. An economy becomes a kind of caste society — a large pool of hopeless and powerless proles, and a tiny number of billionaires so rich and powerful they resemble feudal lords of old.
Worse, nobody much understands — because a society’s economic statistics don’t show it. In America, like in the Soviet Union, economic statistics failed to reflect any of the real pain or despair people were beginning to live in. The stock market boomed — forever. Profits rose and rose. The unemployment rate seemed suspiciously low. Things had never been better! Then why was the average American broke, dying in debt, working a go-nowhere job, descending into poverty? These two sets of facts did not comport. One had to be lying, and the other telling the truth. But America’s intellectuals and politicians were incurious, lazy. They did not seem to care that the story economics was telling didn’t seem to be telling any remotely accurate truth about people’s living standards anymore.
And that is precisely where America failed. Americans — especially “real” ones — are used to growing up in an atmosphere of fevered propaganda, exceptionalism. But what really happened in America from 1980 to about 2015 was this.
America became a society where people couldn’t obtain the basics of life anymore. I mean that in both absolute and relative ways. Want to have a child? That’ll cost you $50,000. Want to educate one? That’ll cost you $250,000. Need a life-saving operation? Sorry, that’ll cost you $500,000. What the? Entire cities had infrastructures which simply failed, like Flint.
Society as a whole had no functioning social systems — healthcare, retirement, pensions. So Americans’ only choice was to pay the prices that their system demanded. Want a pension? Wall St will sell you a “401K” — and take a fat cut, while hedge funds raid whatever was left of your life savings. Want healthcare? Sure, that “premium” will cost you thousands a month, for a plan that provides little care or choice at all.
Americans were locked into broken, dysfunctional systems, which no longer provided them the basics of life, at prices they could afford.
The income of the average American was scarcely $50k. How were they to afford any of this? They couldn’t, quite obviously.
The result was that many Americans began to go without the basics of life. They chose between that life-saving operation, or keeping a roof over their kids’ heads. They ate cheap, industrially processed food, and grew obese and ill, because it had little nutritional value. They worked jobs that would never lead to careers or mobility desperately just to retain some access to the meagre “benefits” only jobs now provided. Young Americans found themselves crippled by educational debt, and unable to begin independent lives of their own.
See the point clearly. America could no longer provide the basics to people. It could not feed, shelter, educate, or employ its people. Not affordably, and certainly not well. The situation was so bad, for example, that Americans just gave up looking for work, in fact, reaching a point where just above half of the working age population were employed at all. That millennials became a lost generation stuck at home forever, working crap jobs. That strangers begged one another for money to pay for medicine online.
This was a Soviet society by any other name. The Soviet Union famously had breadlines, where you’d never get the bread. America had unobtainable basics, too, in even larger and more lethal ways.
What did Americans have to do to simply even attempt to afford the basics of life — medicine, education, food, water, housing? They had to go into massive debt. Today, the average American dies in debt, meaning his or her debts are unpayable. And that means that he never in net terms really owns, saves, or earns a penny.
Those are the economics of failed states. People end up broke. A society descends into mass poverty. Nobody much can afford the basics. Meanwhile, those who have monopolies over said basics become ultra, mega rich. Vast inequality sets in. An economy becomes a kind of caste society — a large pool of hopeless and powerless proles, and a tiny number of billionaires so rich and powerful they resemble feudal lords of old.
Worse, nobody much understands — because a society’s economic statistics don’t show it. In America, like in the Soviet Union, economic statistics failed to reflect any of the real pain or despair people were beginning to live in. The stock market boomed — forever. Profits rose and rose. The unemployment rate seemed suspiciously low. Things had never been better! Then why was the average American broke, dying in debt, working a go-nowhere job, descending into poverty? These two sets of facts did not comport. One had to be lying, and the other telling the truth. But America’s intellectuals and politicians were incurious, lazy. They did not seem to care that the story economics was telling didn’t seem to be telling any remotely accurate truth about people’s living standards anymore.
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