Conservatives who are getting their face eaten will not learn a single thing from anything
Famine will enter the American lexicon again.
Google goes offline for plebs, billionaires go mask off and start discussing population control via drones.
What do you mean by the first part?
Peak human population will occur within the next ten years. Previously this was driven by falling birth rates. Now it will be driven by rapidly rising death rates. Within the next ten years, I think 300 million - 1 billion dead from starvation due to bread basket collapse is a conservative estimate.
Drone attacks and drone based spying will be huge and hobby drones will be highly restricted.
As a casual drone enthusiast I’m already filling in all of my flying now because the free flying days seem to be numbered.
I saw an anti-drone fear article just today, actually. I hope this doesn’t happen, though.
It already feels overdue considering drones are quite popular for drug drops, even directly to prisons. Once some big events happen like high profile assassination, terrorist attack ir even something menial it’ll be game over for free flying.
Having a drone is such an eye opener tho and I really recommend getting one before it becomes too complicated to own one. Seeing your environment from 100 meters up is such a perspective change. Taking a drone on a road trip and thinking “I wonder what’s behind that boulder there” and actually being able to find out is a very grounding experience :)
Following the path of other regimes around the world, the USA builds their own “great firewall”, segmenting most people here away from the global internet. At around the same time, personal VPNs become explicitly illegal. We might also see the government seize control of at least one certificate registrar, if they don’t fire up their own, thereby “owning” TLS online.
On the upside, there’s a chance we will see more grass-roots efforts to reboot a lot of institutions that were co-opted by the rich. You’re just never going to hear about that through conventional channels. For instance: local newspapers with real journalism behind them. Or more small businesses with the intent to last, rather than sell. It’s possible that more of those things will be co-ops, union shops, or even Mondragon inspired. Either way, there’s a path forward for more community, real communication, and eventual prosperity, provided folks keep their heads and take things offline where necessary.
Trump will die and a new religious movement declaring him to be divine will gain a significant foothold among people who call themselves Christians in the US.
Evangelicals will decide that, despite being nominally Protestant, they’re suddenly OK with sainthood again.
Okay, I could see this one happening.
I think Trump’s loyalists are more after what he pretends to offer. As one uncle said, “He made me rich!” If you take away the potential earnings, there’s not much to the guy but bullshit. Like, he’s not even good looking enough to hang his portrait on a wall without getting tired of his face.
There is already a religious following in his noxious wake. They literally think he’s heaven sent.
We’ll have reduced the human body to basically just another machine and will be in the process of reverse-engineering it. So many new techniques and sources of data have come online all at the same time in biology.
This is in contrast to the current situation where we know a few things about select parts of the body in isolation.
Major roadblocks to piracy and porn in the US. Piracy will never be eliminated, but the barrier to entry will become too difficult for most folks. I’ve subsequently been hoarding all of the media I can get my hands on in case this happens - I refuse to pay for 20 streaming services just to watch movies and TV.
something I don’t understand about piracy is,
if you torrent to get rid of centralization, why have all the torrents saved on one website that can be taken down? Wouldn’t it be better to have them all on a torrented .html file or sthm?I imagine discoverability and avoiding forks or just stale copies would become a big issue.
Famine around the world. Global political instability + climate change + economic downturn = food scarcity.
A high profile political assassination in the US or Europe.
The first time a ceo or politician gets assassinated by drone-strike will cause some severe lockdown on those things.
No matter what country it happens in.
~the very last part at least~
The gulf monarchies’ oil will dry up, and they will collapse under their own weight.
… Probably not. But hey, a man can dream…
They’re pushing massively into green energy. I think they are the next biggest investors after China if I remember correctly.
They can try, but they don’t really have the massive advantages there. With oil they basically get >1000% margins because it’s just there and ready to be tapped, and their whole societal structure is based around spending that money like it’s water.
Wars over water in North America
The surveillance of chats and the prohibition of encryption in many Western countries must have a purpose. It mostly makes sense if democracy is dismantled.
Since the West doesn’t show signs of sharing resources voluntarily, my prediction is that the West is willing to fight a nuclear war to preserve its lead which cannot happen in a democracy.
Without that war, Asia will take over as the center of commerce and innovation. The brightest will move there, which means that the remaining people in the West have to be innovative without the main ingredience for innovation.
I’ll go with Hanlon’s razor there. The cops and politicians don’t really understand the magic boxes, let alone the game theory of adversarial uses layered on top of them. People use the boxes for bad things, they say just add a way to stop them, EZ. (Of course, we can’t and it’s not)
Since the West doesn’t show signs of sharing resources voluntarily
Which resources? The “only” tangible advantage the West actually has is strong institutions, and to a much lesser degree momentum. The science behind the technology is free for anyone to learn - even in excruciating detail if you go looking - and natural resources are actually less depleted in poor countries at this point.
If China escalates to cause war in Asia when other countries are sufficiently pissed off by them trying to steal territory and harass others non-stop, then that plus a potential Chinese real estate market collapse could cause pretty serious problems in the region.
They made a film about it “idiocracy” and its already started.
Significantly populated areas of the developed world are going to be deemed inhospitable due to climate change
Parts of the American South are getting close, but are holding on as long as their power grids do.
That said, a good chunk of Texas won’t remain that way forever.
but are holding on as long as their power grids do.
This is a big thing. Where I live, there’s long stretches of time where the temperature differential inside vs. out might average 50C. That might be hard to imagine if you’re not in a place like this, but it’s totally possible to live somewhere hostile to life with the right technology.
To be fair, the laws of thermodynamics are working against you if it’s hotter outside. Heat can’t really be destroyed very easily, only moved. AC units are universal in the US, but aren’t a good solution in the third world, and if something happens to them you’re in a much scarier situation than just having to bundle up and drain your pipes. Still, I expect the trend towards overly hot places like Arizona growing will continue.
And that’s the point, I reckon.
Heating a home is easy, we’ve done it forever and have some easy ways to do it without the government providing power (so long as you know how to use a wood stove).
Cooling one though? That’s not so easy without electricity.
I suppose. I’d be surprised if the US got poorer to the point they can’t provide electricity and maintain the units, though.
(so long as you know how to use a wood stove).
Fun fact, the Inuit made do with no wood or quality fuel of any kind, even. Just body heat and maybe a little whale oil and fur lantern. What they lacked in sources they made up with lots of insulation.
It depends on where in the US we’re talking about.
I mentioned Texas specifically because the power grid there has had some high profile failures and issues in the last 5 years. They’ve fixed some of it and embezzled money for other repairs. Now they’re farming crypto on it.
