| ▲ | Toutouxc a day ago |
| Insider trading as a service. No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years. |
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| ▲ | Waterluvian a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Or possibly ever again. Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power. I think one of the greater risks to a power like the U.S. is getting old enough where it's felt like things always were, and therefore always will be. When there is no-longer a grandparent at the dinner table who can even tell you when his grandparent at the dinner table spoke about the before times. |
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| ▲ | rubyfan a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Right, the fact that the current administration had a 4 year hiatus only extended this period. Think about all the young people that grew up with this as normal. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Grandparents telling about their grandparents is a very different timescale than two presidential terms with a gap of just one between them. The "what changed in the 1970s?" meme graphs are the kinds of timescale for forgetting what is and isn't "normal" for your grandparents, and the Great Depression for your grandparents' grandparents. Eternal growth? Nah. Even the worst of times will be shortly followed by a recovery, soon enough you survive on savings? Pft. The President surely wouldn't consider to order the removal of protesting veterans, with the Army Chief of Staff implementing this order with a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks, burning the belongings that the veterans had left behind after being cleared from where they had been protesting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army Conscription? Concentration camps? These are also in the "grandparents' grandparents" timescale in the USA. Go back only a one more generation and you get lynching *postcards*. | |
| ▲ | reactordev a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Reinforced by the Parnas', Lambert's, Kirk's and Loomer's on TikTok. Ready to vote in the next midterms. Thinking 9/11 was an inside job... | |
| ▲ | browningstreet a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I remember tales of how backwards and corrupt the Berlusconi government in Italy was. There was a sense that “over there” it was another world, a bad and sad and incorrigible one. Most Americans wouldn’t remember that, and yet we pulled, and continue to pull, an epic Hold My Beer in comparison. What would it take to get a Million Man March again? One that occupied the lawn? | |
| ▲ | flossly a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sorry, as an outsider, I think it has been a clown show for much longer. The whole Hunter corruption scandal in Ukraine + the laptop made it quite clear to me back then. And I can go on. | | |
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| ▲ | thm a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Great podcast on this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0XqYCQT4PgD3axPy0w5Wcd
He calls this category certainty. | |
| ▲ | jebarker a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power. Is there actually any good analogue for this era that caused a previous empire or great power to collapse? | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi... > The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors. | | |
| ▲ | c7b a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. It is such a bad analogy for the kind of within-our-lifetimes collapse that is being speculated about here that it undermines the original concern. The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century would be a better case study imho. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago. Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours. | | |
| ▲ | jebarker a day ago | parent [-] | | Hence you can’t take the starting conditions from thousands of years ago and assume they will evolve in the same way now | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | Sure. It might be much worse and faster this time! People have nukes and machine guns! |
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| ▲ | bryanlarsen a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Sure, but it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere, perhaps onat the moon landing. Declines often start out slow and are often indistinguishable from random noise until well after the fact, and there will be rises and falls after the peak. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc a day ago | parent [-] | | it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere Based on what metric? | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/61z8jv/oecd_life_... | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, historians notoriously focus all of their analysis of the rise and fall of an entire country on the ratio of worker pay to productivity. The health care cost one is so dumb I won't even bother with it. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Scroll bar doesn't work, huh? There's… substantially more than one chart on that page. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fair, I did not see that :) I would assume that you can take virtually any society that goes through rapid change over the course of a few decades and make all manner of cherry-picked charts like this. Just ignore all the charts with shapes that don't fit your hypothesis (like they show divergence way outside 1971, or gasp, they show positive changes!). Honestly, I find the attitude that the best times in America were 50-60 years ago to be baffling. So let me ask it this way: you can be born at a random place as a random person in America. You can't control your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your intelligence, your socioeconomic standing, your family, your health, nothing. The only thing you can pick is the year. What year are you going to choose? I'd love a serious answer too. I never seem to get one that supports the idea that America's best days are behind us, but maybe you'll provide some reasoning. | | |
| ▲ | bryanlarsen 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I didn't say the best times in the US were 50-60 years ago. I said that historians would consider the start of the decline was 1969 or 1973 or similar. Declines start in the second derivative -- progress is positive, but the rate of progress increases is decreasing. It takes a long time with a negative second derivative to make the first derivative negative, but the decline started when the second derivative turned negative. And the second derivative made an obvious turn around 1970. And it's also measured relatively. It 1969 it was obviously way better to be an American than a European or a Korean or Japanese. Even than a Russian, although it wasn't as obvious at the time. In 2026 I'd rather be born in Europe than the US if I don't get to choose to be born to rich white parents. | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > So let me ask it this way: you can be born at a random place as a random person in America. You can't control your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your intelligence, your socioeconomic standing, your family, your health, nothing. The only thing you can pick is the year. 2012, as long as I can bring some news articles with me, to convince people that https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/10/473709316... was, if anything, understating things. |
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| ▲ | TFNA a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Historians today tend to emphasize that, even if the Western Empire ended in the fifth century, ultimately everything goes back to the Crisis of the Third Century. That took place with a short enough space that it must qualify as a within-our-lifetimes collapse. | | |
| ▲ | c7b 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | I would agree with that stance and that classical antiquity ended then. But you still have to acknowledge that the Roman state, its culture and institutions not only survived but arguably came out even more dominant (with the exception of pagan religion), e.g. with a second political stronghold in the East. There are many episodes in Roman history that people would have experienced as decline or even collapse within their lifetimes, including multiple sackings of the city of Rome itself. But in most of those cases things actually did bounce back and the Empire continued to dominate. That's kind of the point I was making. Empires would seem to be far more resilient than contemporary observers would think if one only looked at Roman history. But the problem is that the Roman Empire is a bit of an outlier in that regard. Ancient cultures of Central America would be interesting to study there (there were far more than just the Mayas, Inkas and Aztecs, most of them relatively short-lived, hence good case studies for the question of collapse). Unfortunately much less is known about them than about Romans. |
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| ▲ | pjc50 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century Go on? WW1 and its consequences? | | |
| ▲ | c7b 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think the educational policies are most interesting to compare. There was systematic attrition of academic talent driven by xenophobic ideologies. It started slowly and well before the 1930's, before it turned into an all-out purge. There was also ideological alignment of academia in multiple ways. The timing might not perfectly line up with what we're discussing now, but it definitely qualifies as within-lifetime, and I think the overall parallels are interesting. | |
| ▲ | SideburnsOfDoom 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | WW2 and it's consequences will be a big part of this. Consider the Oppenheimer movie. The majority of physicists depicted there are people who left Europe around that time. It's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49210165 |
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| ▲ | roncesvalles a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It is highly unlikely that the US is going to collapse any time in our lifetimes. Or even those of our children. Also, let's not forget that the Trump admin is a problem of 2.5 years at most. Trump has greatly stressed the safeguards in our system, but I don't think that he has broken them. That is actually an optimistic instead of a pessimistic signal -- an anti-statesman even in the highest office couldn't meaningfully damage the country. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Trump has greatly stressed the safeguards in our system, but I don't think that he has broken them. His sentencing for 34 felonies was voided because the justices he personally appointed to run some of those safeguards decided he should be immune to them. Come on. | |
| ▲ | ben_w 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Also, let's not forget that the Trump admin is a problem of 2.5 years at most. If he invades Greenland, the US not only loses all NATO allies, but may be at actual war (rather than merely trade war) with them; the Asian allies are also getting worried because of how he's interacting with China. This administration is also somehow managing to piss off Israel despite having gone into a war as a co-belligerent with them against Iran, also pissing off all the other American allies in the middle east, and the Iran conflict is currently making people question the benefit of even having the US as an ally in the first place because the US can't keep them safe from Iranian counterstrikes, but even more broadly the US don't seem to be able to keep Iran from charging tolls on Hormuz so everyone else with a similarly strategic strait may be wondering if they can do the same. The administration also has problems with re-emergence of diseases due to a combination of cutting funding and chaos (e.g. while screwworm may have come back anyway, the government response was suboptimal), and in some cases actively promoting disinformation (e.g. vaccinations). It takes a lot more work to eradicate some disease than to keep it away. And this is without any of the current, justifiable, concerns that Trump may use ICE or similar to interfere with even this year's elections, let alone the end of his term. Trump may not kill the US outright in just this term, the ships of state are slow to turn let alone sink, but he may do a Great Leap Forward. | |
| ▲ | cindyllm a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | specproc a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US isn't Rome, it's Constantinople. Rome was Europe, the 20th century was about the colonial appendage achieving supremacy over the former imperial centre. If you want a lesson in what to avoid to maintain dominance, it's internal conflict, that's what wrecked the European empire. Good luck with that. Trump and Co will dig in. When they fall, there will be blood. |
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| ▲ | jebarker a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is not convincing. Many of these are debatable when you actually pull apart what is meant then and now. But there’s also a long list of things that are different about the Roman Empire and US (and the world) today. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | > This is not convincing. Yeah, we heard that about climate change, too. We may be Cassandras, but that doesn't make us wrong. |
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| ▲ | nozzlegear a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Who is this supposed to be? | |
| ▲ | A_D_E_P_T a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You could look even earlier. There are a lot of similarities between Trump's style and Emperor Commodus's. And to paraphrase Cassius Dio, Commodus took an empire of gold and transformed it into one of iron and rust. Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession. | |
| ▲ | leereeves a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The two worst Roman emperors ruled hundreds of years before the fall: Caligula from 37 to 41 CE, Nero from 54 to 68 CE. Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire. So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | Sure. We had Nixon. Most collapses start slow, and I tend to doubt this one is finished. | | |
| ▲ | Waterluvian a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I expect things to actually get better by some measures for a little while as the U.S. liquidates its holdings of international political and socioeconomic influence. A sort of short-lived glut from voluntary cannibalization. | |
| ▲ | flossly a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | There a quite popular narrative saying JFK's murder was a coup, and the US is still couped to this day (voting does not truly matter: the dark budget agencies make the policies anyway, those votes into office simple have to follow suit). |
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| ▲ | datsci_est_2015 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Look at Brexit, for example. Or Black Wednesday, from which the US’s esteemed Treasury Secretary profited handsomely. The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Didn't the UK's empire notably collapse quite rapidly? | | |
| ▲ | datsci_est_2015 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. Go back much further than that, though, and the argument starts leaking into whether the US was ever great to begin with (assuming “great” = “empire”, loosely). But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | > Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. That's pretty fast, historically. > But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? Sure it was/is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism | | |
| ▲ | datsci_est_2015 a day ago | parent [-] | | Not to get weighed down in pedantry, but the Wikipedia article is “American imperialism”, not “the American empire”. Taking imperialist actions is a low bar for determining what is or what is not an empire. I wouldn’t call Yugoslavia an empire, as an example. Even the USSR is tough to call an empire, for some reason. Maybe because it collapsed so quickly. Now that I peruse a bit, I guess scholars use the term “imperial power” to get away from the colloquial baggage of the term “empire”. | | |
| ▲ | dagenleg 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | How is USSR, a direct continuation of the Russian Empire, not an empire? |
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| ▲ | tmnvix 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, and the Hormuz crisis looks to be for the US what the Suez crisis was for the British. I agree with the earlier comment - the US isn't coming back from this. We've all seen it now. The emperor has no clothes. Turns out the US has just been a bully all along with no real ability to project power sufficiently to actually wage a war where it matters. China and Russia have both had front row seats to this embarrassment and have surely come to their own conclusions. After all that post cold war hubris and 'end of history' nonsense. To think that the West's the old communist foes might come out on top. I have a strong feeling that we aren't just witnessing the decline of US imperialism, but liberal democracy itself (or at least the neoliberal flavour of it). This is the decline of the Western empire - led by the US. And self-inflicted to boot. Yes, this is just my opinion. |
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| ▲ | ben_w 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way. I don't think that's accurate. I'd put the peak of the British Empire at just before WW1 and the obvious end of it somewhere between independence for India, Wind of Change, and Suez. You could point to errors made before then, and IMO the Potato Famine was so egregious it was probably a contributing factor to the invention of literal Communism, but I'd say the actual collapse began with the Pyrrhic victory of WW1. | |
| ▲ | gopher_space 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing Ragnarok is an existential issue mainly for the ruling class. Collapse is a change in the social order more than everything just suddenly being on fire. E.g. We developed a nice little niche during the dotcom boom, and the subsequent bust was a goldmine for us. From my perspective the sole effect of that "collapse" were cheap Ducatis and Herman Millers on Craigslist. What do you think the collapse of rome looked like to a farmer or blacksmith in some remote hamlet? |
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| ▲ | pjc50 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Last time we discussed US collapse I wrote about the Chinese empire: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211339 I would also deploy Adam Smith's "there is a lot of ruin in a nation". The US can withstand a few bad years provided it corrects. |
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| ▲ | mrits a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | geoduck14 a day ago | parent [-] | | Please elaborate? | | |
| ▲ | datsci_est_2015 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I had to think carefully, but I think they’re implying that the worst thing the US has done is invent Twitter, and comparing it to the worst thing that Europe has done (implying that that’s the holocaust), and that Europeans specifically(?) are being hyperbolic about the state of the US given the contrast between the two? | |
| ▲ | alephnan a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | People are still buying German cars and Hugo Boss clothing aren’t they? | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | Germany made it illegal to display Nazi symbols and espouse their beliefs. (And hung a few.) A bit of a lesson learned, in part, from not spanking the Confederacy's leadership enough. |
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| ▲ | gchamonlive a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In most areas (drug enforcement, basic education, healthcare, gun culture...) nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US but now they went full Roman on the rest of the world not even that anymore. War is the only thing that's left I think. |
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| ▲ | gota a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The US also arguably lost the Iran war. So far it can't claim any minor fraction of a victory, at least; seems to be the general consensus. I like to read Bret Devereaux (from the frequently HN posted https://acoup.blog/) takes on this in his Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux.bsky.social) | | |
| ▲ | gchamonlive a day ago | parent | next [-] | | It doesn't win wars, but it provides the necessary equipment for carnage and stalemates all over the globe. Remember war is just a pretext, the objective is always profit, so as long as a lost war is very profitable it's a success in their books. | | |
| ▲ | MisterTea a day ago | parent | next [-] | | IMO the last real war the US participated in and helped to win was WW2 giving it a massive ego. And even then it was drawn in via Pearl Harbor. After that it was a bunch of "wars" it fabricated to satisfy its ego with various (often poor) outcomes. | | |
| ▲ | Sabinus 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think it's fair to characterise the Cold War was an ego thing. Global authoritarian communism wouldn't have been a good time for the vast majority. |
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| ▲ | flossly a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | As long as the profits of weapons contractors go up, it's considered a win. Most senate members are well invested, so they agree... |
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| ▲ | KellyCriterion 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Id say there was not a single chance "to win" from the beginning on? (whatever "winning" in a war may mean) | |
| ▲ | dylan604 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | If everyone has the same conclusion, how is it an argument? Nobody thinks the US won in Iran except the morons that started it. Maybe bigOil feels like its a win as their profits are soaring??? | | |
| ▲ | gota a day ago | parent [-] | | No, I mean - the US has arguably already lost. It (almost unanimously) has no sign of winning. But it could, maybe, still win in the future. In short the argument is: can the US still win in any sense? | | |
| ▲ | tmnvix 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If it leads to the US staying away from future wars then it in one sense it could be a win - for regular Americans. But I doubt that very much. The US state is a machine geared to war and exploitation in too many ways. More of the good people in the US need to be aware of this - it's painfully obvious to the recipients of US foreign policy. |
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| ▲ | kreelman 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | With missteps and imperial arrogance in Iran and Ukraine, perhaps the world might not be counting on the US as much militarily either? "An army marches on its stomach"... If things at most soldiers homes aren't as good as they could easily be (financial prospects, opportunities..), maybe they don't have the same drive to fight with the same vision and discipline as they used to? I hope they will employ good vision and discipline. Science is gradually getting gutted too... | |
| ▲ | dgellow a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > nobody should have been taking the US seriously maybe since Reagan. Finance, science and war were the only areas you could count on the US That was plenty of reasons to take the country seriously! Also, the US has been the most powerful cultural exporter for a very long time. It’s still the case, whenever anything becomes huge in the US we get our local version in each European countries. Our far right parties are parroting American right politics, even copying the terminology as is | | |
| ▲ | gchamonlive a day ago | parent [-] | | Have you seen the state of AAA gaming and blockbusters lately? Even music is being utterly destroyed by the streaming platforms and record labels greed, so yeah it might have been in the 80s up until the 2010s, but enshitification got the best of the US I'm afraid so not even culture anymore. It's just decacence. It's not all US, but as you said things start in the US and trickles down across the rest of the world, so that's also true for its decadence. | | |
| ▲ | saturn8601 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Nothing is really replacing this elsewhere though (although I do concede China is trying hard). Lets start with movies: Most top grossing movies are still American based and centric. I was reminded of this recently when Obsession came out and I tried to get my German friends to watch it. They missed so many subtle 'Americanisms' in the movie that it really gave me a new perspective on how ingrained the culture is. 10 years ago living in Europe I was amazed at how much American music French people listen to and sing to. Even on random French shops its nothing but American music playing. I don't believe they suddenly switched to French music. (Is there some pop artist in France stealing the charts right now? Im curious to learn). And this is the country with Académie Française. The Chinese are trying: Ne Zha 2 was quite nicely animated and it grossed an impressive amount but that seemed more like a one trick pony given that it really attracted massive Chinese audiences and they seem to know how important the film was. This is just an opinion but it was not a memorable film like I'd expect from a Disney classic. Then there is food: Its fascinating how Luckin had its massive comeback and has forced Starbucks to retreat in China and other markets. Mixue might do something similar to chains like DQ and Baksin Robbins, (lets see what happens). I have yet to see the Chinese Mcdonalds but maybe its in the shadows waiting for the right moment like a lot of Chinese companies. In terms of Gaming, it still seems like despite all the BS, the market is still treating Western game publishers as the gold standard (and mainly American ones at that). The market dynamics are different for Gaming vs others because gaming is so diverse. Maybe there isnt really a leader given the ease of competition. Same goes for music. Streaming seems like what the market wanted or else they would have stuck with physical media. | | |
| ▲ | gchamonlive 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Replacement isn't a prerequisite for decadence just as much as decadence doesn't imply replacement. The Roman empire fell without being replaced. If you look at the numbers maybe it's the best they've ever been, but all production has decayed a lot in terms of quality. No wonder enshitification was word of the year in 2023. |
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| ▲ | croon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think they're merely referring to media/arts as culture. Enshittification is culture too, and it's certainly spreading. |
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| ▲ | realusername a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > War is the only thing that's left I think I would have agreed until the Iran war, the US used up so much of the missile stock that even the army isn't fully intact anymore | | |
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| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And the big issue is that everyone jumps on it (professionals and amateurs alike) because of FOMO; the past 15, 20 years have been wild in that regard, with loads of things soaring in value going from Apple, to Tesla, via Bitcoin and pokemon cards / "the everything bubble" to now anything involving AI. And people want to catch the boat this time. It's one reason why NFTs took off as hard as they did (before collapsing). And it becomes self-reinforcing, with people simping (to use that word again) for whichever thing they've invested in. I have serious doubts people actually believe in $product, but they believe other people will at the very least invest in it. And they all believe the masses are stupider (and have more money to invest) than they do. Finally, it's the wild west. Regulation and consequences have failed, because the people enriching themselves are running the show now. At least in the US, but thanks to open financial ties, they can get money from more regulated countries as well. |
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| ▲ | krzys a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You have Roman Empire at home... |
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| ▲ | jmyeet a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The US gained almost immeasurable power and influence by virtue of the 2 World Wars and being largely directly unaffected by those wars, whereas Europe was levelled, particularly by WW2. And that power came from selling weapons. The world order was reset after 1945 and designed largely by the US for the benefit of the US, particularly the financial system. People will often mistake cause and effect. A common one is the petrodollar. The US dollar isn't strong because oil is traded in it. No. Oil is traded in the dollar because of demand fo the dollar. The world oil market could switch to Euros or RMB tomorrow and the net effect would be that people would hold USD and trade it for whatever currency as needed and convert any such currency immediately back to dollars. But underpinning this has been the appearance of integrity in the US financial system and, in particular, the Federal Reserve and the SEC. That trust and that system is being rapidly destroyed for a few billion dollars in personal profit. All of this was enabled by an ideological Supreme Court who invented out of thin air the concept of presidential immunity to make the president a king in a country that rebelled against a monarchy. We're living in times that will be written about in history books as the end of the post-1945 era, particularly with the Iran War. I, for one, called this the most disastrous US strategic defeat in the entire of US history and it's not even close back in April. And I stand by that. There was a time when corrupt heads of state kept up appearances of not being corrupt. It was done in secret through layers of secrecy. That's gone now. The corruption is very much out in the open. It's not to see this as anything other than China's rise to global prominence and the irony is they just had to do nothing while letting the US commit suicide. |
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| ▲ | ihumanable a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I think that's been the most baffling thing about the rise of MAGA. It was a global order built by the US to place the US in positions of power and privilege in every way imaginable. And the MAGA group looked at it and said "we are being taken advantage of! We have to spend a rounding error worth of money on food aid and Voice of America?! I don't want soft power, I want rock hard power!!!" They looked at a game with unfair rules that were written by them to benefit them and said "this is unfair.... to me!" Then went about dismantling nearly a century of work that unfairly stacked the deck in America's favor. The US-Israel-Iran War is an interesting inflection point. They pulled out of every soft-power play, putting every chip in on hard-power military strength and now they are getting wrecked by cheap drones and Iran just being willing to stick it out and not fold. Venezuela will probably go down as the point in which they believed their world view was winning, no need for any diplomacy, just go in and abduct the president and take the oil. Iran showed them the limits of that kind of thinking, if they were more introspective they could learn from it. | | |
| ▲ | everforward a day ago | parent [-] | | The outcome in Iran was obvious to anyone paying attention. We knew Iran would close the strait, but we also haven't truly won a guerrilla war yet. Vietnam went poorly, Afghanistan went poorly, we've only historically done well in the more economically-defined traditional wars where there's an obvious target to fling a billion dollars worth of arms at. Iran isn't stupid, they know there's not much point in building massive arms factories to make complicated weapons. The factories will just get bombed, and the weapons will probably still be inferior. They can just sort of stand there, though. We don't have the appetite for a boots on the ground invasion, and even then they can just kind of wait til we leave and go right back to it. We don't really have a winning hand here without resorting to war crimes, and the costs of that vastly outweigh any successes. We'd be international pariahs to a degree that I don't think most Americans realize is possible. | | |
| ▲ | ElevenLathe a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Arguably Iran's ability to manufacture pretty sophisticated weapons in relatively large quantities (and faster than the US) is one of the main reasons they won. | |
| ▲ | AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nit: We have won a guerilla war, as the guerillas - the US Revolutionary War. |
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| ▲ | saturn8601 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your intro contradicts your conclusion and thats why I think this story isn't as clear cut as you make it. The US gained that reputation because of trust. China does not magically have that same trust. The relationships that countries build with China appear to be built on a bed of sand. Case in point: A lot of African/ME countries took bribes in the form of Belt and Road(among others). Then came the public show of support for China. When China started to struggle after Evergrand, they slowed down support or asked for repayment. All of a sudden, a lot of support for China disappeared from these countries. Can you provide any clear evidence that China is really building a lasting trust that is mutual with any country? Even the EU is treating China as a potential short term economic partner and not as an ideological ally. Its really sad how the US has acted these past few years. Its an insult to the sacrifices of those that came before us. But time is long and it appears China has to do a lot of soul searching to see where they really want to be. I don't feel confident the more I look. They have serious problems that dont seem solvable anytime soon. | | |
| ▲ | jmyeet 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's funny that you call Belt and Road "bribs" when it's basically the World Bank/IMF playbook with one difference: it's a much better deal for the recipients. The WB/IMF playbook is to pressure or bribe leaders into taking on debt that forces policy changes. Somalia is the posterchild for this. They force the country to produce export crops and the result is the country ends up being unable to feed itself and then the currency inevitably collapses and the country can no longer service its debt. They did the same to Haiti and elsewhere. It's economic colonaialism. The WB/IMF are a tool for American foreign policy. China offers a significantly better deal [1]. US influence ("exploitation") in Africa is fading [2]. It's such an issue that the US Africa Command is headquartered in Germany. China's foreign policy is largely offering to build ports, airports, roads and power plants. You know, infrastructure that actually helps and doesn't just enrich the leader and drown the country in debt. [1]: https://gga.org/china-vs-the-imf/ [2]: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-us-is-losing-africa... |
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| ▲ | micromacrofoot a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The messed up part is that it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws. So much of the way the US government has operated is based on some shared standard of moral sense that the current administration lacks completely. |
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| ▲ | DaiPlusPlus a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > it's not even technically insider trading as long as they release the same information publicly shortly after... so they're not actually breaking any laws No, that’s a canonical example of insider trading: acting on pre-release inside information before it’s made public; it doesn’t matter if it’s days, hours, or even minutes before it goes public. People have been convicted for executing trades when they saw or handled earnings reports in-person hours before they’re released[1]. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/employee-securities-fil... | | |
| ▲ | micromacrofoot a day ago | parent [-] | | Insider trading requires breach of duty, if you don't have fiduciary duty with who you're trading against it's not insider trading. The required chain in the link is someone inside a contractual agreement providing information. It's right in your own link, the filing-agent employee was convicted because he stole information he was contractually obligated to protect. Remove that obligation and there's no case. Truth Social owns the posts and is selling them with the source's blessing, nobody's stealing anything. As much as I hate to say it, what they're doing with Truth social is very likely legal. The president does not have any contractual financial obligation to these companies, if he posts "everyone sell Intel, I'm going to regulate out of existence" to a group of people who paid him for this post early... there's no breach of contract anywhere. | | |
| ▲ | sethammons 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is absolutely not true. Your brother in law gives you insider information and you use it, you go to prison. You have no fiduciary duty, but you still had insider information. I have seen this happen in real life. | | |
| ▲ | micromacrofoot 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | it is true, look it up — the brother in law works because there's breach of duty in the chain ... in the truth social case there's no breach of duty if the president is the one shifting the market without a direct link in the chain. Companies aren't saying "hey we want you to manipulate the market for us" — the president is just outright manipulating it, telling people he knows ahead of time, and reaping the profits that way. There's no fiduciary duty involved at all, so it won't be considered insider trading... you don't even have to believe me, this is literally how it's playing out... This situation is completely untested by the courts. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Aurornis a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > No one is going to take the US seriously for the next 50 years. I hate this obvious pay-for-access thing as much as anyone, but this isn’t going to define the US for the next 50 years. The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years. |
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| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The American population has demonstrated that they'll nominate an insane criminal to power at random. Twice! I think that's gonna stick longer than the Bush to Clinton style transitions. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally. I have no doubt that certain individuals in other countries will be holding grudges against the United States for the rest of their lives long after the country has moved on, but it doesn’t really have any effect. If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care. The world changes and most people move on. | | |
| ▲ | hgoel a day ago | parent | next [-] | | They're also talking about decision makers. They're going to operate with the consideration that Americans might elect another mad man. Anything requiring more than one presidential term's time will be much more carefully hedged. | | |
| ▲ | saturn8601 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Maybe thats better in the long run. The Cold War kept the US more on its toes and that benefited the world. We have another situation where dumb decisions the US makes will have a faster feedback loop. |
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| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I’m talking about the people with decision making power and the businesses working internationally. As am I. At a certain point, you get bitten enough times that you decide the angry cobra isn't a great pet. It may be really cool, sometimes! But sometimes it hurts you, a lot. > If you’ve spent some time traveling the world every country has older generations who have some grudge against other countries for events that happened prior to most people being born and the younger generations don’t care. Some end this way, sure. For an alternative, see Gaza. | |
| ▲ | ricardobeat a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The people with power put this government in place. The point is that there might be no “moving on” from here, just a new normal. |
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| ▲ | chermi 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As we know, nothing ever changes. But wait, you just said something changed... | | | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | CaptainZapp a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The second the next president is in office every other country will adapt to working with them, just as been happening every 4-8 years. That may well be, with one big difference. Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again. How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments? This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | > How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments? You've never seen a crime flick where the soon-to-be-murdered victim goes "I won't call the cops, I swear! Don't hurt me!" Who's genuinely trusting US commitments right now? Our most stalwart allies sent troops to Greenland as a tripwire force! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arctic_Endurance | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis a day ago | parent [-] | | If nobody was trusting the country, the economy would collapse. The Greenland drama was dumb, but there is zero reason to think it’s a next 50 years thing. Is the force even still there, or are they gone? Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already, and 50 years have not passed. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Why? I don't trust a wood chipper or angle grinder or fireworks on the Fourth of July, so I'm extra careful around them. Doesn't mean I don't use them. > Is the force even still there… Yep. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc a day ago | parent | next [-] | | OK, so apparently the claim that "no one will ever trust the US or their commitments again" means that businesses and governments will still enter into all manner of trades and alliances and business arrangements with the US, but in their heart of hearts, they won't actually trust the US? | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Think of it this way: You loan a friend $5k. They promise to pay it back. They don't. You may still hang out! But you may never loan them money again unless they give meaningful evidence they've changed. The US probably has one concrete chance left to prosecute, convict, and jail these folks to rebuild trust. My vibe from the Democrats is that they'll whiff that opportunity. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | But...countries, individuals, and companies the world over are loaning the US money right now. They're trading with the US, they're doing joint military exercises, they're forming new alliances, they're visiting the US, they're sending their kids to school here, they're buying real estate here. Don't get me wrong, I loathe Trump and what his band of nutjobs has done to this country. The damage is deep and long-lasting. But we're not quite yet a global pariah that no one will touch with a ten foot pole, nor are we (as some other commenter hilariously suggested) a failed state. Not yet. Not really even close. Honestly, these discussions usually look more to me like what people wish was true, probably because they're both angry and powerless, than any kind of sober assessment of reality. All that said, it'll be interesting to look back on this moment in a decade or two and see where it was going. History is notoriously difficult to predict. EDIT in response to your links below: of course these all have been impacted! We're talking about the claim that "Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again." Which is nonsensical, as proven by all your handy stats showing that many, many people, companies, and countries still trust the US. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > they're doing joint military exercises Some of them to protect against us! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arctic_Endurance (Which, for the record, is pretty new, at least for NATO.) > they're visiting the US Staggering dip in US tourism is a troubling sign for the future: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/travel/analysis-tourism-fewer... > they're sending their kids to school here https://time.com/article/2026/05/12/us-university-higher-edu... "Foreign student enrollment at U.S. universities for the 2026 spring semester fell by 20% from last spring, according to a new report by organizations including U.S.-based international education nonprofit NAFSA." > they're buying real estate here https://www.newsweek.com/foreign-buyers-flee-u-s-housing-but... "Foreign buyers continue fleeing the U.S. housing market, with their activity falling 14 percent between April 2025 and March 2026 to the second-lowest level since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) started tracking purchases in 2009." > Honestly, these discussions usually look more to me like what people wish was true… Indeed! See above. | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > We're talking about the claim that "Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again." > Which is nonsensical, as proven by all your handy stats showing that many, many people, companies, and countries still trust the US. Hurr durr, yes, it's not an instant process. You slayed the strawman, saving you from engaging with the points everyone's making! The collapse of the USSR took decades, too. Were they trustworthy? Is the used car salesman trustworthy, or do people just need used cars still, for now? Hell, you don't trust my links, yet you engage (well, sorta) with me here. Right? |
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| ▲ | Paradigma11 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, but it will be much more expensive and inefficient compared to the trades and alliances with nations that are trusted. Basically the US is a failed state. Functioning nations can make agreements that survive leadership changes. The US is not one of those. | | |
| ▲ | senordevnyc 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah, now the US is a failed state. As in, the government has lost control, state monopoly on violence is gone, armed groups have taken over, no public services, etc. Just like Somalia, Yemen, etc. Makes sense. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Doesn't mean I don't use them. And the goalposts keep moving. You’re proving my point by admitting that you still use it. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz a day ago | parent [-] | | Consider: I may also try and make/buy safer tools so I don't ever have to use them again at some point in the future. I may hire someone else (China!) to do the work. A lack of trust does not mean an immediate cessation of use, but it does meaningfully change the relationship. "I use x" is not evidence of "I trust x". Sometimes it's evidence of "I have no choice but to use x for now". If you put in your notice at a job, and they desperately double your salary to keep you, do you trust that they're happy to keep paying that, or do you reasonably assume they're probably gonna start interviewing for a cheaper replacement? > And the goalposts keep moving. Falsely conflating usage with trust is a goalpost move. If you'd posted "people still trade with the US", I'd have heartily agreed. But that wasn't the question. |
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| ▲ | saulapremium 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >If nobody was trusting the country, the economy would collapse. Trust is a complex term. You can work and trade with parties you don't trust, like so many countries do already. But a process has definitely begun, and it will without any doubt have very real implications for the US. >Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already I can assure you that Denmark still takes this thing extremely seriously. |
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| ▲ | chermi 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is that how history works? Anything bad in any society's history defines them forever going forward? Germany would like a word. Unless of course you're hoping this is the outcome, that the bad behavior persists. In which case I'm quite confused on your position. |
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| ▲ | tzs 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, other countries will keep working with the US, but with a different attitude. They will be much more weary of doing long term things with the US unless they will get enough benefit in the first N years (where N is the remaining term of the current president) for it to be a net win even if the thing stops abruptly after that. Trump 2 is a breakdown of the separation of powers and checks and balances that were supposed to give the US continuity. With that no longer functioning any deal you make with the US is really a deal with the current President which future Presidents may or may not honor. It doesn't matter how reasonable the next President is because just electing a good President doesn't fix the underlying system. If other countries don't see that fixed so that another Trump cannot happen they will not consider the US to be reliable for long term things. | |
| ▲ | thisisit a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are debating one hyperbole with another hyperbole. After all not everyone has Trump as President who thinks the only way to work with allies is to bully them. Will this particular thing going to define US for next 50 years? Probably not. Will countries say fuck it and stop working with US? Definitely not. But will they ever have same amount of fear or trust or reverence for the US? Absolutely no. That is now lost. While Iraq and Afghan war wasn't exactly a win for the US, the Iranians have shown that Americans can be had if cards(hands) are right. They now know Americans are completely blind to a president who would sell his mother for the right price and still defend him because they feel invincible and instead of offering a seemingly innocuous job to President's son like Burisma they can now blatantly bribe a jet, pay for access openly and no one in America will care because they believe they are infallible. | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | thisislife2 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As a foreigner to the US and its politics, it is both refreshing and depressing to see Trump as a President. It is refreshing because Trump is straight-forward and transparent that America has always been a country for the rich, run by the rich. In the final political outcome, his foreign policy politics really isn't anything different from other past Presidents (Democrats or Republicans) except that unlike them, he doesn't strive to pretend to be goody two-shoes. It is depressing because once the facade of democratic political theatrics is ripped apart by the President himself, Americans will invariably lose faith due to the ugly and cynical politics it exposes. |
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| ▲ | whywhywhywhy a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If insider trading is your concern then the country hasn't been serious for a long time, everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets. Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it. |
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| ▲ | sethammons 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You will never be the insider. That's a privileged position. "We all" can't take advantage of it. Insiders trading laws are there so "we all" have a chance in the markets. | |
| ▲ | A_D_E_P_T a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > everyone in government does it and it's never punished even when exploited to the levels of 9 figures of assets. Statements like this are worthless without examples. Surely you can provide some? Hard mode: Don't mention Pelosi or Clinton. | |
| ▲ | chinathrow a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Should just be legalized at this point so we can all take advantage if they're all gonna get away with it. Is this satire? | | |
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