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This reminds me of how there's multiple dates that historians place the end of the Roman Empire at and all say something slightly different. The date picked creates a certain interpretation for the end of the empire. For example, some often use the moving of the capital to Constantinople under Constantine (i think like 310-ish AD) as the end of the Empire in the sense of a cohesive entity centered in Rome as we think of it. The Western Empire still existed for 100+ years and the Eastern Empire for like a 1,000 years after that. I think that paints an interesting picture of what decline looks like on that scale.
Timeframes in the modern era are sped up for a lot of reasons (communications tech, and climate change mostly) but its really hard to put a timeline on something like decline and collapse, even in history, let alone when trying to predict future
In a lot of ways, i feel that what American Balkanization is going to look like has already occured to a significant degree. The Federal government took little real action or responsibility during COVID, and is choosing inaction as a minority party overturns abortion rights ceding more power to states. They're also inactive while wild slates of anti-trans laws get passed in the most reactionary states and their extreme abortion restrictions. The Federal government's policy is basically "your on your own
citizensconsumers." I think that process will continue, but i think it looks more like this than states breaking away and forming new countries. I think the federal government will continue to be a middle man for collecting and dispersing tax dollars and running the military to keep the war economies going and facilitate imperialism. When the US can no longer do the later
we'll be deep in collapse. Hard to imagine when it will be, or what that will look likeSomething i noticed in Texas thst i think highlights another aspect of this process. The US has a rural urban divide in political affiliation. In Texas the Republican stare government has been trying to extert more power over the major city governments that are run by democrats. They withheld Federal disaster relief money from Harris County (Houston) after Hurricane Harvey and recently took over Houston's school district. No federal intervention on these overstepping of powers.
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I’m not sure how useful parallels with Roma are
I agree, i think in general people make too much out of percieved historical parallels. Thie point i was trying to make was more about how difficult it is the create a timeline of decline and/or collapse even in history, where we already know what happened, let alone when trying to predict the future.
I don’t really see the US state collapsing
I agree with this in the sense that i don't think the Balkanization will take place in the US in the way its traditionally concieved of, with US states breaking off and forming their own countries. In a sense the state would still be intact - collecting taxes, dispensing money to the states, and operating the military. But i do think tge federal gov has shown a trend of doing nothing on what should be national problems (pandemics, environmental disasters) and i think that will continue.
Without UBI or some kind of concessions to the working class, the state probably will collapse,
I'm not as optimistic about concessions generally, but i could see what you're talking about, and if anything remotely approaching a concession happens it would probably be the kind of UBI you're talking about. It feels less like an outright concession than a necessity to make the kind if society where "you will own nothing and like it" work the way the ruling class want it to, but thats probably me splitting hairs over the term concession.
The other possibility is outright fascism, although I think the demographics of the US make a fascism based in white supremacy or Christianity basically impossible now.
I hope you're right about that. I think we could see some states have christo-fascist governments in the kind of soft Balkanization i think is most likely. Minority rule in the US is the norm, not the exception, and there have been conscious moves on the stare level for over a decade to strengthen minority rule byvthe right in every state with a Republican government. The repeal of the protections imposed on firmer Confederate states by the Voting Rights Act by the Sumpreme Court opened the floddgates after they were already pushing legislation to promote minority rule.
Like i said I'm not as optimistic about concessions happening at this point in the US, and i think that a lack of that, plus the ruling class's insistence on confrontations with China and Russia say a lot for the possiblity of seeing fascism rather than concessions.
It's really hard to predict. It will probably he slower, more boring, and far worse than whatever our best preductions could possibly be.