Opinion | The Old World Is Breaking Down. A New One Is Breaking Through.
www.nytimes.com
Four trends are converging to make life much scarier.

“Donald Trump is returning, artificial intelligence is maturing, the planet is warming, and the global fertility rate is collapsing.”

Opinion By #EzraKlein Jan. 12, 2025

from #NewYorkTimes #NYT [gift article - link can be shared. Expires in 30 days.]

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
    36·
    13 hours ago

    Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

    Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

    “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

    Source.

    That was 2006. We’re now almost 20 years past, and I think it’s safe to say the world has lost. Regressive oligarchs don’t just own countries anymore; they now jockey for global power with each other. They extract resources and “value” without putting anything back.

    I don’t say this to promote the idea that there’s nothing that can be done or no hope for relief, but we “poors” need to accept that our institutions have failed us. Instead, people across the globe are looking to authoritarians to take the reigns in a vain hope that the very people who put them in peril can save them.

    The next battle’s lines have been drawn. The real question is: what are we going to do about it? Because it’s no longer a question of survival under capitalism or oligarchy. It’s a question of survival, period.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      9 hours ago

      It would seem no organized movement has come forward. No global powers oppose the eating of the Earth. So my guesstimate is that once that final chain in global supply is inoperable the world will devolve to chaos and warlords again as the environment goes belly up on the Halocene.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        6 hours ago

        20 years ago was the time for Nations and MegaCorps to agree on a ‘managed decline’ strategy.

        But they could not even agree on that, so now we get the chaos timeline.

        …the World 3 model is holding up great.

        We are right now at the peak of industrial output, going by the latest refactoring of it.

        Everything gets worse from here on out, quality of life, food production/prices climate instability, climate migrants, authoritarianism, prejudice and bigotry, fundamentalism and conspiricism…

        … and that’s optimistic, assuming some flash point doesn’t spark WW3 or a thermonuclear obliteration.

        On the bright side, maybe in 100 years the flowers will bloom beautifully where the Thwaites Glacier once was.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        2·
        7 hours ago

        It would seem no organized movement has come forward.

        Yet. Enough people haven’t felt the weight of the looming disaster. Too many still think their relative privilege will spare them, because when has it failed them before?

        I believe it will happen, but whether it happens in our lifetimes remains to be seen, and whether it happens on purpose is unknown. At least part of that will be decided by the groundwork we lay today, and the more the existing institutions fail people, the more likely they can be persuaded to a better cause.

        No global powers oppose the eating of the Earth.

        They caused it, and they benefit from it. Why would they oppose it? Even if they think something should be done, they are more blinded by their extreme privilege than the rest of us.

        Like you say, I think humans will go back to smaller tribes and local government, though I hope we can lay the groundwork for them to be less warring and insular and instead, more cooperative.