Another vote for “things will just get shittier over time”, not total collapse at any point, except for one possible scenario (I will describe below). If we use the Roman Empire as template, they never really “collapsed” all at once. Britain experienced “collapse” when the legions left in the 4th century, but the Roman area around Constantinople did “collapse” until over 1,000 years later. It’s common among Roman historians to not even talk about “collapse” much per se, and focus more on evolution and change. Heck, some parts of the empire actually saw conditions improve after Roman control ended (in North Africa, they could stop sending all their grain to Rome every year, for example).
Now, there is one scenario I could see that could cause a total rapid collapse: if the US could no longer extract value (i.e. exploit) from the global south. I’m on a Capital vol. 2 and MMT kick right now. Basically, the key insight IMO from the first 17 chapters is that it’s only in the sphere of production that value is created. It can be the production of goods or services, but that is the only place where value is created (well, Marx gives some very narrow examples of value being created in transportation of good and sometimes in storage, but those are extensions of production, really). This is where the fact that Americans don’t make anything really comes back to bite them in the ass. Obviously we don’t make things here but what most people don’t realize is even American companies like Apple and Nike don’t actually “create” value. The subcontractors they use in place like China and Bangladesh is where the value is created. It’s just that Apple and Nike appropriate the value from those places and distribute it here among their marketers, lawyers, etc. The entire non-financial sector of the US economy resembles a merchant capitalist (where no value is created, it’s just taken out of productive capital which is all overseas) economy than anything else.
So what does this mean? If Americans aren’t creating value within the country, and it’s just that value is taken from other parts of the world and distributed here… if you cut that off then all of the sudden the US is a country that isn’t creating much value and isn’t even capable of that outside of a Stalin-esque centrally planned industrialization program. The US depends on circulating capital taken from the global south domestically, not producing it domestically. So if that’s not circulating, and Americans have no real capacity to create value domestically… then material conditions probably degrade on a scale that’s hard to even wrap your head around. THAT would be a hard and fast collapse.
Admittedly, the catalyst for that (the rest of the world preventing the US from exploiting production in the rest of the world) is pretty far-fetched, so at this point it’s just academic and why I saw that I really only see a slow motion degradation happening.
Another vote for “things will just get shittier over time”, not total collapse at any point, except for one possible scenario (I will describe below). If we use the Roman Empire as template, they never really “collapsed” all at once. Britain experienced “collapse” when the legions left in the 4th century, but the Roman area around Constantinople did “collapse” until over 1,000 years later. It’s common among Roman historians to not even talk about “collapse” much per se, and focus more on evolution and change. Heck, some parts of the empire actually saw conditions improve after Roman control ended (in North Africa, they could stop sending all their grain to Rome every year, for example).
Now, there is one scenario I could see that could cause a total rapid collapse: if the US could no longer extract value (i.e. exploit) from the global south. I’m on a Capital vol. 2 and MMT kick right now. Basically, the key insight IMO from the first 17 chapters is that it’s only in the sphere of production that value is created. It can be the production of goods or services, but that is the only place where value is created (well, Marx gives some very narrow examples of value being created in transportation of good and sometimes in storage, but those are extensions of production, really). This is where the fact that Americans don’t make anything really comes back to bite them in the ass. Obviously we don’t make things here but what most people don’t realize is even American companies like Apple and Nike don’t actually “create” value. The subcontractors they use in place like China and Bangladesh is where the value is created. It’s just that Apple and Nike appropriate the value from those places and distribute it here among their marketers, lawyers, etc. The entire non-financial sector of the US economy resembles a merchant capitalist (where no value is created, it’s just taken out of productive capital which is all overseas) economy than anything else.
So what does this mean? If Americans aren’t creating value within the country, and it’s just that value is taken from other parts of the world and distributed here… if you cut that off then all of the sudden the US is a country that isn’t creating much value and isn’t even capable of that outside of a Stalin-esque centrally planned industrialization program. The US depends on circulating capital taken from the global south domestically, not producing it domestically. So if that’s not circulating, and Americans have no real capacity to create value domestically… then material conditions probably degrade on a scale that’s hard to even wrap your head around. THAT would be a hard and fast collapse.
Admittedly, the catalyst for that (the rest of the world preventing the US from exploiting production in the rest of the world) is pretty far-fetched, so at this point it’s just academic and why I saw that I really only see a slow motion degradation happening.