United States Biden administration policies and actions - megathread

Robovski

Well-known member
More like Great Depression 2.0; we are not going to have another Dark Age, not unless people start launching nukes.

Yeah, see this may be better for a different thread, but a 'New Dark Age" (if any truly ever existed) requires effort. Everything is built on what came before, because of printing and other information technology. Our society is not built on the secret knowledge of a few and books and storage devices don't just stop existing unless someone destroys them. Every city in the USA has at least one public library, not to mentions schools and private libraries and living people don't just stop knowing what they know. Logistic collapse and failure has to happen before you have a mass loss of life in a current society and it's not happening everywhere unless it is the often imagined global thermonuclear war.
 
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mrttao

Well-known member
More like Great Depression 2.0; we are not going to have another Dark Age, not unless people start launching nukes.
Yeah, see this may be better for a different thread, but a 'New Dark Age" (if any truly ever existed) requires effort. Everything is built on what came before, because of printing and other information technology. Our society is not built on the secret knowledge of a few and books and storage devices don't just stop existing unless someone destroys them. Every city in the USA has at least one public library, not to mentions schools and private libraries and living people don't just stop knowing what they know. Logistic collapse and failure has to happen before you have a mass loss of life in a current society and it's not happening everywhere unless it is the often imagined global thermonuclear war.
nuclear war seems ever more likely by the day.

also it is not about "forgetting technology". modern technology is ever more interdependent and a truly global economic collapse will see an unprecedented amount of people left hungry and angry. Once a country is full of roving warlord bands it becomes very hard to maintain the supply chain needed to operate a factory, assuming it doesn't just get burned down.

the loss of access to modern pesticides and fertilizer would devastate food production. With lack of food enough people will have the brilliant idea to attack farms and factories or just their fellow men.

also the dark ages were not characterized by a complete non technological lifestyle.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
nuclear war seems ever more likely by the day.

also it is not about "forgetting technology". modern technology is ever more interdependent and a truly global economic collapse will see an unprecedented amount of people left hungry and angry. Once a country is full of roving warlord bands it becomes very hard to maintain the supply chain needed to operate a factory, assuming it doesn't just get burned down.

the loss of access to modern pesticides and fertilizer would devastate food production. With lack of food enough people will have the brilliant idea to attack farms and factories or just their fellow men.

also the dark ages were not characterized by a complete non technological lifestyle.

Modern technology is particularly dependent on a very broad and specialized resource base, yes.

The technology needed for 80's level computers, cars, etc?

That is much, much more attainable without a broad range exotic rare earth elements and special additives. If we can build 80's technology, we can maintain databases, then speed-run rebuilding 2010's technology. A lot of the current infrastructure can either last that long, or mostly last that long.

This won't work for every nation, but the US has the sheer variety of resources to pull it off, as does Australia, Canada, and Russia if it doesn't completely implode. Basically the entire rest of the world would need at least a few key trade partners to have a chance at that.
 

ATP

Well-known member
A war is going to happen before a depression fully hits the US or before Chins collapses

No,why start war if your enemy would collapse? China could wait - and they do not care how much their cyvillians could suffer becouse of economical problems.They would not dare to rebel anyway.
 

Typhonis

Well-known member
No,why start war if your enemy would collapse? China could wait - and they do not care how much their cyvillians could suffer becouse of economical problems.They would not dare to rebel anyway.
Actually Chinese people are rebelling. Look at the Lie Down movement.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Why would these key trade partners even be interested in trading these goods when they could be keeping the other nations weak and dependant?

...Because unless those nations are one of the handful I mentioned, they also need to trade in order to have a functioning modern economy? You can't really hold your supply of, say, Neon hostage to try to weaken other nations, if you're dependent on them for Steel, or oil, or food.
 

Sergeant Foley

Well-known member
A couple of months ago the mayors of all the mid-sized cities in the state sent the governor a letter that said that if he tried any of that lockdown bullshit again they were going to ignore it and he was welcome to send in the state troopers to try and make them comply. It lit a fire in Austin.
If I'm Abbott: I would push for legislation to have these mayors removed from office
 

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
Modern technology is particularly dependent on a very broad and specialized resource base, yes.

The technology needed for 80's level computers, cars, etc?

That is much, much more attainable without a broad range exotic rare earth elements and special additives. If we can build 80's technology, we can maintain databases, then speed-run rebuilding 2010's technology. A lot of the current infrastructure can either last that long, or mostly last that long.

This won't work for every nation, but the US has the sheer variety of resources to pull it off, as does Australia, Canada, and Russia if it doesn't completely implode. Basically the entire rest of the world would need at least a few key trade partners to have a chance at that.
The problem with this line of thinking is that...well, in the event of a nuclear war, it's very likely mines and such will be targeted to reduce the opponents ability to rebuild (irradiated minerals/ores are not much use if you want to rebuild the nation), and what deposits don't end up irradiated are likely not going to be accessible with the level of tech and machinery that might survive a full nuclear exchange.

So we might have the capacity to get back to 1980's level computing on a small scale, but the resources needed to get society back to this level will likely not be available to survivors, at least not unless they manage to get off-planet mining going, and doing that with post-nuclear war tech will be hard enough as is.

Nuclear war would essentially condemn humanity to never reaching this level of society again, and mean we will likely never spread our species beyond this planet, because the resources need to do that will mostly be irradiated or inaccessible.

This is also why Musk is pushing for his Mars colony so hard, because he understands these dangers, and a self-sufficient Mars colony would be a good way to make sure the knowledge, tech, and resources needed to rebuild after a nuclear war are available off-planet to start with.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
The problem with this line of thinking is that...well, in the event of a nuclear war, it's very likely mines and such will be targeted to reduce the opponents ability to rebuild (irradiated minerals/ores are not much use if you want to rebuild the nation), and what deposits don't end up irradiated are likely not going to be accessible with the level of tech and machinery that might survive a full nuclear exchange.

So we might have the capacity to get back to 1980's level computing on a small scale, but the resources needed to get society back to this level will likely not be available to survivors, at least not unless they manage to get off-planet mining going, and doing that with post-nuclear war tech will be hard enough as is.

Nuclear war would essentially condemn humanity to never reaching this level of society again, and mean we will likely never spread our species beyond this planet, because the resources need to do that will mostly be irradiated or inaccessible.

This is also why Musk is pushing for his Mars colony so hard, because he understands these dangers, and a self-sufficient Mars colony would be a good way to make sure the knowledge, tech, and resources needed to rebuild after a nuclear war are available off-planet to start with.

I was giving speculation on what things might look after a collapse of the globalized economy, not global nuclear warfare.

That would be a very different scenario, one so different we don't have much, if any, surety of what it'd look like. Too many things are dependent upon how technology that has never been tested in war would perform.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Actually Chinese people are rebelling. Look at the Lie Down movement.

Which change nothing,unless most of population including army decide that party do not have Mandate of Heaven anymore.
China history is full of rebel group which accomplished nothing except getting slaughtered.

But - i hope you are right,we have jokes in Poland about fighting on polish-chineese border,byt i do not want that to become reality.Becouse Putin stupidity would gave Siberia to China,if nothing change.
 

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