I am not asking for dates, but instead for qualitative predictions. My question is this, what do you think the future of the United States government is?
My prediction is that people will someday realize how corrupt and bad the United States government is, and will seek to reform it. How much the reform will accomplish, however, is debatable.
I think that the United States might go the way of Dioceltian and the Roman Empire with the government trying to further its control over the economy to secure the resources it needs to continue its existence and then eventually imploding under its own weight.
People realize that the government is corrupt and evil, they just don’t see any better alternative.
This is the same reason that evil dictators maintain themselves in power. Iraqis may have hated Saddam Hussein, but they couldn’t see a future for their country that was better than the dictatorship of Saddam. And they were right.
It’ll collapse under the weight of its massive financial obligations (and faith in it will be shaken when it repeatedly fails to fulfill them), so that the age of massive central governments will be ended, leaving smaller states in its wake.
I see it being more like the UK. Eventually, the government will simply have to stop spending so much and bring the troops back home and stop giving out foreign military aid.
I think it will keep kicking until it is uncovered to be the fraud that it is. Hopefully I get to see that day.
I think though that will seek to reform it thus letting the cycle recur.
That’s real funny…The U.K is like that?
The U.K. used to have a bunch of colonies. Now they do not. They used to be THE world power, now they are not.
It will “reform”. They will proclaim, the only way out will be too move towards a trading bloc, NAU - i.e EU style.
From there, there will be a move towards world government. Or this step will be skipped entirely. Before they can have world government, there needs to be a world central bank.
The European Union. Does it exist? check.
The South American Union. Does it exist? check.
The North American Union. Does it exist? In the process?
The African Union. Does it exist? check.
The Asian Pacific Union. Does it exist? Soon. Diplomat appointed by PM Rudd of Australia working on it.
What do you know; look at all those nice trading blocs whose nations are slowly losing national sovereignty and their ability to affect domestic policy because of MANAGED TRADE, not FREE trade.
Better yet; possibility of ww3? Pakistan / India, Israel / Palestine, Georgia / Russia, US / Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran… everyone.. lol
What usually happens after World Wars?
World War 1: League of Nations
World War 2: United Nations
World War 3: One world government
The Future is Calling by G. Edward Griffin - I suggest this be read.
But war isn’t the only means of rachetting up a growth of the state. There was a Report specifically set up to find a substitute for it. It is called the “Report from Iron Mountain” and is Chapter 24 of the Creature from Jeykll Island.
The following from Rothbard’s Epilogue of his For a New Liberty gives me hope…
Our contention here is that history made a great leap, a sea-change, when the classical liberal revolutions propelled us into the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.6 For in the preindustrial world, the world of the Old Order and the peasant economy, there was no reason why the reign of despotism could not continue indefinitely, for many centuries. The peasants grew the food, and the kings, nobles, and feudal landlords extracted all of the peasants’ surplus above what was necessary to keep them all alive and working. As brutish, exploitative, and dismal as agrarian despotism was, it could survive, for two main reasons: (i) the economy could readily be maintained, even though at subsistence level; and (2) because the masses knew no better, had never experienced a better system, and hence could be induced to keep serving as beasts of burden for their lords.
But the Industrial Revolution was a great leap in history, because it created conditions and expectations which were irreversible. For the first time in the history of the world, the Industrial Revolution created a society where the standard of living of the masses leapt up from subsistence and rose to previously unheard of heights. The population of the West, previously stagnant, now proliferated to take advantage of the greatly increased opportunities for jobs and the good life.
The clock cannot be turned back to a preindustrial age. Not only [p. 315] would the masses not permit such a drastic reversal of their expectations for a rising standard of living, but return to an agrarian world would mean the starvation and death of the great bulk of the current population. We are stuck with the industrial age, whether we like it or not.
But if that is true, then the cause of liberty is secured. For economic science has shown, as we have partially demonstrated in this book, that only freedom and a free market can run an industrial economy. In short, while a free economy and a free society would be desirable and just in a preindustrial world, in an industrial world it is also a vital necessity. For, as Ludwig von Mises and other economists have shown, in an industrial economy statism simply does not work. Hence, given a universal commitment to an industrial world, it will eventually — and a much sooner “eventually” than the simple emergence of truth — become clear that the world will have to adopt freedom and the free market as the requisite for industry to survive and flourish. It was this insight that Herbert Spencer and other nineteenth-century libertarians were perceiving in their distinction between the “military” and the “industrial” society, between a society of “status” and a society of “contract.” In the twentieth century, Mises demonstrated (a) that all statist intervention distorts and cripples the market and leads, if not reversed, to socialism; and (b) that socialism is a disaster because it cannot plan an industrial economy for lack of profit-and-loss incentives, and for lack of a genuine price system or property rights in capital, land, and other means of production. In short, as Mises predicted, neither socialism nor the various intermediary forms of statism and interventionism can work. Hence, given a general commitment to an industrial economy, these forms of statism would have to be discarded, and be replaced by freedom and free markets.
The descent into corporatism is going to continue. As it little by litle ruins prosperity, the theft by plutocrats is going to become more brazen and ever more apparent. There is going to be resistance, but it is going to be disunited, confused and local. Stil the fear in the face of this unrest is little by little going to make the state security apparatus take down the velvet glove off of its iron fist. After a decade, or two, or three of this the governement is going to drag the country into a major war in an attempt to a.) “rally the nation”, b.) give itself extra options for dealing with domestic troublemakers c.) enrich the right military-industrial complex plutocrats d.) engage in some military keynesianism and “fix” the economy. Regardless of the outcome on the field the war is going to be a debacle for American might and is going to cost the USA its superpower status.
After that what the future of the US governement is wont really matter. Who will give a damn about some sparsely populated backwater (albeit with a lot of nukes)? But at that momentits people are probably going to have the best chance in centuries to take power if theyll be up for it.
It only seems inevitable that the federal government will eventually fail, of course no government in history has ever ever been sustainable. When will it collapse/overthrown (conquest), hopefully never, what would be great is a peacefull collapse followed by a complete power vacuum. I am very hopeful that in the near future if the government does collapse somehow, there will be an intellectual movement coupled with the power vacuum so the most powerful among men in society will not create a government and force everyone under their thumb.
as much as it depresses me to say…we are in a lull between major wars. that’s all history has ever been.
Yep. On the other hand, you could say - there is a war against Humanity going on right now.
The Report from Iron Mountain:
"The report then raises the question of whether there can ever be a suitable substitute for war. What else could the regional governments use – and what could the world government itself use – to legitimize and perpetuate itself? To provide an answer to that question was the stated purpose of the study.
The Report from Iron Mountain concludes that there can be no substitute for war unless it possesses three properties. It must (1) be economically wasteful, (2) represent a credible threat of great magnitude, and (3) provide a logical excuse for compulsory service to the government."
THE ENVIRONMENTAL-POLLUTION MODEL
"The final candidate for a useful global threat was pollution of the environment. This was viewed as the most likely to succeed because it could be related to observable conditions such as smog and water pollution– in other words, it would be based partly on fact and, therefore, be credible. Predictions could be made showing end-of-earth scenarios just as horrible as atomic warfare. Accuracy in these predictions would not be important.
Their purpose would be to frighten, not to inform. It might even be necessary to deliberately poison the environment to make the predictions more convincing and to focus the public mind on fighting a new enemy, more fearful than any invader from another nation – or even from outer space. The masses would more willingly accept a falling standard of living, tax increases, and bureaucratic intervention in their lives as simply “the price we must pay to save Mother Earth. A massive battle against death and destruction from global pollution possibly could replace war as justification for social control."
Climate Change / Global Warming are fulfilling that right now - in essence it is a substitute for war.
Only 17 pages, the report is really worth reading.
Globalization is the enemy of governments in the long run. Even a global government would be bad for statism. When it will eventually fail, it will fail horribly and each and every district or subdivision of the state would be in a deep mess. The ensuing separatism would fragment the former state very much and reestablishing older borders under a different regime would be improbable.
A centralised large scale state would also probably be unable to cope with agorism and the black market as well as a small state.
I can only think pessimistically about the future.
I think there is no reason why a world government would be less able to deal with dissidents and anti-state activities than a government of a smaller territory. After all, this is an arbitrary distinction, plus if we look at the most populated country in the world (unless it has been overtaken by India), it is relatively authoritarian, compared to far smaller, more technologically advanced countries. With more advancement there can only be increases in the state’s power - especially over the internet, which is the key/only place for anti-state views.
I just hope an anarchist paradise is set up somewhere - perhaps then people would be persuaded by the sheer weight of empirical evidence - but this is far from assured. On the other hand, i could endure 10 years of authoritarian V for Vendetta style government if I knew it would eventually leed to a V for Vendetta-style overthrow and anarchy.
very thought provoking stuff conza, thanks!