The collapse of the Soviet Union was ahistorical in many ways. It's rare that collapse of an empire can be pinpointed to a single day. And what you saw was a result of shock therapy imposed from the outside. I doubt that would happen to the US.
It's unlikely collapse will be felt as a singular, apocalyptic event. More like a slow, steady loss of influence and excess wealth. Countries on the periphery stop considering the empire's perspectives before making their own decisions. Other trading partners emerge. Bridges stop getting maintained until they're no longer usable.
And soft power declines. Imagine a day when the biggest pop star in the US, someone on the scale of Michael Jackson or Madonna nationally, is virtually unknown outside of its borders.
There are reasons to believe the American empire is in decline, but I maintain this will look more like Britain. It could take 50 years before American fully realize it.
Thankfully, that means there's plenty of time to reverse or mitigate the trends, or to make a decision to strengthen the Republic over the Empire.
I beg to differ. The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal causes.
First was the abominable low productivity in oil/gas and agricultural sectors from 1950s through 1980s.
Then came the corruption of Brezhnev era. Andropov tried to get some reforms going: first against corruption and then some Chinese-style economic changes. But Andropov died very quickly.
Eventually came Gorbachev- who had good intentions. Unfortunately he prioritized political reforms over economic. He wanted economic reforms with no pain, something to show his people some progress. Unfortunately that was impossible so he ended up with some half baked ideas (like limit alcohol sales. Or letting factory managers keep their profits expecting the managers to invest profits in new technology- managers used the profits to pay themselves. Or introduce free markets pricing between factories-when managers complained they had to pay market prices on inputs and nobody were buying their outputs the result was to subsidize factories for both inputs and outputs)
The result of these Econ reforms was that the Soviet state was running out of money. (A humanitarian policy was that for the first time in Russia’s history bad agricultural results did not result in famine-for the first time the govt bought food on the international market paying in Western currencies)
Add a few ambitious politicians who did not want to take orders from the center (Yeltsin being the principal example, but also Kravchuk) and the process of dissolution already started by the Baltic independence could only end with total collapse.
The shock therapy you mention was designed, advocated, and ultimately implemented by Gaidar - a Soviet economist fully trained by the Soviet state.
Sorry for the long reply. If you are interested in this topic I recommend reading two books, both called “Collapse” one written by Gaidar, the other one written by Zubok.
| The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal causes.
I wouldn't take the time to argue otherwise, although it's a question of what's considered an "internal cause." Afghanistan comes to mind. But generally, yes, absent any external pressure, the internal mismanagement still would have had the Soviet system in a very bad way and collapse would have been a matter of time.
So we're not particularly in disagreement there, except for matters of degree (100%? eh.)
But I disagree strongly that shock therapy can be put solely on the shoulders of Gaidar. You can't talk about shock therapy without talking about Jeffrey Sachs. Although I wouldn't put it all on his shoulders either. It was an extremely complicated situation from top to bottom.
But most of all, my post was really more about the how the American empire's fall will not look like the Soviet's. And I stand by that completely.
Afghanistan - economically not a big impact. The economic pressures in the 80s were low agricultural productivity requiring imports from Western countries, low oil/gas prices and productivity, endemic corruption. And if we really want to be pedantic, nobody forced USSR to invade Afghanistan.
I had to look up Jeffrey Sachs (0). He was an adviser-that is all he did. He did not impose anything on Yeltsin or Russia.
I agree that American decline will not resemble Russian collapse. Their commonality is both declines have internal causes. But other than that there isn’t much in common.
Britain's demise was relatively swift, and took place over the course of the two world wars. It fell almost immediately into vassalage, under the US. Not quite a bang, but not as drawn out as you suggest.
Its former colonies experienced all I described above and more. In this case, the colonies are most of the world: where are the bases? Everywhere.
With the States, here's the scenario, not too far fetched. We will see 1) constitutional breakdown, as Trump (or his crew) digs in, and 2) economic breakdown, 2008 but exponentially worse.
This would constitute a Soviet scale collapse, to my mind.
I put the collapse of Britain's empire at around 75 years, which is faster than the Ottomans or Spanish empires, but still nothing compared to the Soviets, which to reiterate, was an historical anomaly.
As for the US, for all the current turmoil, the dollar is still supreme in global economics, its soft power is still immense, despite the immigration chaos its still the primary destination for immigrants, and it would take decades for countries to push out our military bases because doing so would often mean building up their own military infrastructure.
Trump's unconstitutionality is a threat, and that the US has a series of bubbles built on shaky economics is not controversial. But I don't see how that could possibly result in a Soviet style singular day of collapse. At least internally, there isn't a cultural and linguistic separation between states the way there was with Russian imposition on their Soviet satellite countries.
And of course, there's the previously mentioned shock therapy, something that wouldn't have the same level of violent effect because the US is already a market economy. And there's nobody powerful enough to impose something like that on us regardless. Unlike the Soviets, if the US goes down, much of the world goes down with us, so there's strong incentives for an off-ramp, not a destabilization.
I agree there are major structural issues, and the US democratic system is being stress tested daily, but its all symptoms of decline, not imminent collapse.
Really cool UI. Makes me nostalgic for old NES games. I'm not sure this specific approach will catch on, but I'm excited to know that people see the need for a "slow internet" after years of algorithms and A/B testing optimizing people's feeds and attention-spans.
So I'll advocate "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari [0] and my "Digtal Vegan" [1]
Johann's book has some surprises toward the end, that go way deeper into environmental
and cultural factors. He ultimately sees it as a collective/societal problem
with collective solutions. Mine tries to advocate for mindful control and rejection of
toxic tech and makes it a more individual battle.
I'm not one who believes that perfect representational parity is possible or even desirable within all social groupings. That said, I see no reason to ignore the implication of a 1% vs 40% disparity within a highly advantageous profession.
Love Htmx but confident the hardest part of implementing will be convincing managers and designers to fully rethink how to approach UX and product in a way that privileges simplicity over presentation.
Um... it's famously a film[1] staring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard.
I thought it was okay. It was obviously toned down a lot from the book to meet then current sensibilities which would not offend an audience today. Ironically, there's a comedy bit with Mickey Rooney[2] that probably didn't offend American audiences at the time but that has not aged well. I also thought they added a bit too much slapstick.
The talent on this film is stacked. I was interested the second I saw who was attached.
Greta Gerwig was an indie darling for a decade before she went on to make two highly praised, award-winning films back-to-back.
Noah Baumbach is known for mumblecore indie dramedies like The Squid and the Whale and recently got an Oscar nomination for Marriage Story. The irony of him working on a Barbie movie is intriguing enough.
Margot Robbie has brilliant charisma on screen and this role seems tailor-made for her.
And if you've seen The Nice Guys, you know how hilarious Ryan Gosling can be.
I think Ryan is the only one who actually won an Oscar, but the whole team has something like double digit nominations across their projects... so if the execution is there, as it is hoped w/ Oppenheimer, these are going to the frontrunners for a boatload of awards. One has to imagine the spirit on the set was high on making such a subversive, stylized piece of filmmaking.
I was deeply skeptical that I would be interested in a movie of Barbie IP. But the opening seconds of the trailer piqued my interest, and then the title card introduced Gerwig's name. I was instantly intrigued.
I hope it's good. (Though I've got a suspicion that a lot of HN users will hate it, and not because of it's girl-coded intellectual property.)
That’s the thing. If a kid approaches learning with a language model responsibly, they stand to learn a lot very quickly and solve difficult problems that would otherwise be next to impossible for them.
The thing is, we need to teach them that today rather than tell them it’s cheating and try to catch them using it on essays and deal some kind of consequence.
I now use it professionally fairly regularly and it’s an easily justified expense. I’ve already delivered things to clients faster because of it. Most recently I reasoned through prototyping a sort of minimal CMS experience using a self hosted CMS API connected to Next.JS, and had a viable plan and prototype at the proposal stage in as much time as I’d normally just do the research on something like this.
If it’s feasible to accelerate learning and research for real world work, I think we should seriously consider how it integrates with education rather than encourage kids to avoid it entirely. Of course, we don’t have that awareness in our education workforce in Canada, but I wonder if it’s harmful to discourage the use entirely rather than accepting it and ensuring kids are still producing the work that’s expected. If it’s clearly GPT regurgitation with hallucinations and no bibliography, the kid has still failed to deliver. If they manage to do their work faster with technology (the main difference here is that they haven’t googled bunch of stuff, frankly) then great, they’re still learning something.
And of course, the more you tell kids not to use it, the more they’ll want to (which I’ve come to love, honestly).
Maybe the solution isn't decentralization, but a non-profit approach like Wikipedia.
Reddit already functions entirely on volunteer labor anyways, adding venture capital requirements makes much less sense than a just-keep-the-lights-on non-profit model.
It may be a better way to go for a public forum like Reddit. Don't kid yourself though into thinking the non-profit foundation won't also be rife with petty politics, hidden agendas, and the usual crap. There will still be issues, and how to handle NSFW content is still going to be a big conflict.
| Don't kid yourself though into thinking the non-profit foundation
Those aren't the problems I was expecting to solve. Those are other problems that exist regardless of funding model, because they're fundamentally social problems.
A non-profit funding model simply solves the problem of venture capital undermining the core product in search of profits.
>A non-profit funding model simply solves the problem of venture capital undermining the core product in search of profits.
It also introduces a larger problem of shutting down entirely if they can't pay for server costs. That's always going to be a bigger problem than VC's.
Wikipedia only does so because it is bankrolled by universities and other institutions. And we should note that Wikipedia doesn't have to host videos, and has strict requirements on how to host images. I can't think of those places doing the same for Reddit.
Reddit worked for years without hosting its own videos and even images. For many years, it was hosting nothing but structured text and links to external resources (which was its original raison d'être, in fact; discussion about external resources).
HN chose to be pure text and not embed external resources, but this is just an editorial choice, it wouldn't cost more resources to add them.
| shutting down entirely if they can't pay for server costs
Keeping the lights on is never a guarantee for anything. VC funding can also run out. Being for-profit locks an organization out of crowd-sourcing, institutional grants and other funding sources that non-profits have available.
Very interesting point. It'd be a challenge to execute, but I'd be glad to see a non-profit that lets online communities discuss topics of interest, solve problems, and expand knowledge. Maybe something like that exists and I just don't realize it.
Sorry to make this about AI, but it'd also be interesting whether such a non-profit makes its data fully open--i.e., for AI companies to scoop up--or has more restrictive terms that forbid AI "scooping" without a separate agreement. Lots of tricky issues, trade-offs, and interesting incentives involved. There could be alliances with orgs creating open source models, for example. If anyone is working on a nonprofit like this or just wants to chat about it, please reach out.
The AI aspect is interesting, it could solve the funding issue. AI scooping requires a (paying) licence. Or, the paying licence would be restricted to closed-source AI models, and it would be free for open-sourcec models, thus making them much more competitive.
Codicat is doing that for Stack Exchange. I don't know anyone doing anything similar for Reddit. There are apparently some Reddit clones on the Fediverse, but I have my own dislike of the Fediverse model.
It's unlikely collapse will be felt as a singular, apocalyptic event. More like a slow, steady loss of influence and excess wealth. Countries on the periphery stop considering the empire's perspectives before making their own decisions. Other trading partners emerge. Bridges stop getting maintained until they're no longer usable.
And soft power declines. Imagine a day when the biggest pop star in the US, someone on the scale of Michael Jackson or Madonna nationally, is virtually unknown outside of its borders.
There are reasons to believe the American empire is in decline, but I maintain this will look more like Britain. It could take 50 years before American fully realize it.
Thankfully, that means there's plenty of time to reverse or mitigate the trends, or to make a decision to strengthen the Republic over the Empire.
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