Back in the day there were big infrastructure projects, the interstate highway system, nuclear fission reactors, USA was once a leader in rail, but now it seems USA can’t build any infrastructure at all, HDI is lowering, life expectancy is not as high as most other OECD countries. Anyone know what happened to cause this?
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The US benefited greatly in the 19th and early 20th century from Europe’s brain drain due to the wars and what not. After WW2 that tapered off, and recently the US has becoming far less attractive to educated Asian immigrants as well.
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Getting high on their own pro-capitalist bullshit they spewed during the Cold war, which resulted in things like Reaganomics and massive corporate deregulation. As we know, corporations tend not to care about what’s good for the people at large.
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Placing all their attention, money and concern towards playing power games abroad and not giving a shit about smaller domestic issues, which is exactly opposite to the approach China has been taking the last few decades. Examples include Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the amount of money being wasted on programs like the F-35, and all the money going towards USAID for the sake of funding color revolutions, which Trump finally just now cut out of necessity.
As an addendum to 1: after WWII the US was the only manufacturing power, and some of the money brought in by goods exports was spent on making life better for the chosen subset of the working class (white labour aristocracy) due to the relative power of organized labour and the concessions required of the capitalist class due to the mere existence of a powerful workers state demonstrating an alternative.
… all the money going towards USAID for the sake of funding color revolutions, which Trump finally just now cut out of necessity.
i was under the impression that this was more of a reshuffle to reprioritize the americas & the pacific over europe & africa, as evidenced by mandates for the eu countries to dramatically increase their own spending on american weaponry and sacrificing ukraine as enticement to warm up relations with russia, with the aim of isolating china.
also: usaid’s resources are still a thing, they’re also being reshuffled under the purview of the fbi to focus on china, the americas, and cointellpro-ing american citizens again.
when the first american drone strike hits a wedding party for a drug cartel kingpin’s god daughter and it “collatoral damages” hundreds of mexicans lives; it’ll become the most publicly visible sign that this is the american empire’s version of “crossing the rubicon”.
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Mostly because of Neoliberalism, which started with Reaganomics. It’s the same here in Europe. The state can’t do anything directly. The only intervention states have is, either via public companies that have yet to be privatized, or taxes (which are slowly being removed).
For example, if you need a road fixed then the regional government has to create a public competition, for a bunch of private companies to enter against each other. The one that presents the lower cost wins, and then proceeds to fix said road. This needless bureaucracy slows down things a lot. Also, since reparations are being made by private companies, they have an incentive to do a shitty job, so that roads break down sooner (planned obsolescence).
So you see, every job that the state should do directly is being outsourced to 3rd party private interests. This creates a group of companies that need to leech of the state to survive, the more they leech the better their profits. They also have no real incentive to properly fix things. So this is why everything in the West is slowly becoming worse over time.
In one word? Neoliberalism.
I like Age of the Sons theory: all the killers that built the empire are either dead or ancient, now the empire has been left in the hands of their failsons and they have no idea what they’re doing.
This feels a little too close to Great Man Theory and not particularly materialist, but I could be wrong.
Edit: your additional comments on the death of the family make a lot of sense, but I don’t know if I’d agree that it’s the cause of worsening conditions but rather a side effect.
This feels a little too close to Great Man Theory
That’s exactly what it is
I disagree. Great man theory talks about a whole society and implies everyone in each generation is that way. And that its like a natural cycle that happens over and over. Its bullshit.
This is more a natural consequence of nepotism. Its not that there arent plenty of really capable and smart Americans who could be running things. Its that all the rich assholes put their dumbass kids in positions of influence and then died leaving those dumbass kids in charge of everything.
People who dont have to work for things tend to both take those things for granted and not be as capable. So nepotism picks are usually pretty bad at their jobs compared to a merit hire. As nepotism becomes more and more acceptable, because the people in charge now are nepo babies themselves, the issue just becomes worse and worse.
Great Man Theory ascribes history to the actions of individual “great men.”
Failson analysis is no different. It’s just not a material or actionable analysis.
I also want to point out you are right to simply point out individual people who do incompetent things is not a material analysis, but what we can do is look materially at whether a system is setup in such a way that is encourages competence in its leadership or not in general.
Its an issue of how we view things. Everything that happens has a material reason for why it happened. The tough part is being able to dig into things, and find that root cause, and see it for what it is.
Is it not material? I think its a material reality of capitalism and the way it functions that it encourages power and wealth to be accumulated in the hands of a few people, this then encourages nepotism to ensure this accumulated power and wealth stays in the “in” group. Nepotism then leads over time to the people who hold all this power and wealth to be kind of incompetent.
This isn’t something that just happens randomly. Its a fundamental part of how capitalism functions. Its part of why its always failing so spectacularly. Shortsightedness and the inability to plan for long term goals.
Its the same issue that a system like monarchism had. You have these people born into massive wealth, everything is handed to them, and they never have to work for anything. Then theyre given tons of power. Of course they’d do stupid shit. Its inevitable.
It’s also actionable. Look at a country like China. They make sure the politicians there prove themselves, and work their way up from the bottom. This builds skills they need to later go on to take on larger roles. By doing this China ensures that its policymakers, and politicians are exceedingly competent. This can be seen in how they run circles around the west in basically every interaction.
seems unlikely, the empire was founded in 1776 and expanded non stop for 200 years and only began to decline in the last 50 or so seems to me it is impossible for this to be the cause because then the decline would have started at the latest in the mid 19th century.
True, but just as the emergence of private property and the state destroyed the gens, something happened to destroy the modern family unit. In its place is the individual, completely alienated from all concepts like community or family and increasingly even relationships in general. There’s only the neoliberal subject, constantly on their grind to build their brand. They don’t have the time, energy, or interest to groom their children to inherit the empire - in fact, they refuse to accept that they’re dying and work until the very end.
Why do you think the sons don’t have any idea what they’re doing, couldn’t their parents teach them?
They definitely could have, but they didn’t bother because none of them give a shit about their kids or the future of the empire after their deaths.
The Kennedy family is a really good example. We start with a killer like Joseph Kennedy that hustled for every penny he could, from insider trading to bootlegging to other risky and lucrative crimes. A couple generations later we get RFK Jr., a guy that picks up roadkill to harvest for meat.
Do you know why they didn’t bother?
One aspect is the loss of the gens and the rise of the so-called nuclear family. Rather than children being raised by grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, they’re the sole responsibility of the parents. This is further complicated by the ruling class leaving their children to be raised by the “help” so they can continue to focus on accumulating more wealth.
But then a further aspect I think is the rise of neoliberal subjectivity and the fulfilment of the self as an individual brand in constant competition, completely disconnected from all community or family ties. Their children aren’t a legacy, they’re part of the competition. We’ve progressed beyond the death of the gens - the extended family - and into the death of family itself.
Yet another might be psychological - the kind of person that builds immense wealth is also the kind of person that will resent their children for being young and having it easy, as well as be hated by their children for being either distant or tyrannical. There’s no loving family bonds, they all hate each other.
Overall, I just don’t think the bourgeoisie are good parents for a multitude of materialist and cultural and psychological reasons.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the same people who place their own profits above the future of the planet and knowingly continue to exacerbate climate change do not care enough about the future of their own children to educate them in the proper running of empire. These are not normal people we are dealing with, the people who make it into these high positions are mostly sociopathic and psychopathic personalities.
I think its a matter of kids not wanting to follow in their parents footsteps and parents not doing the things they hated their parents doing to them.
Decadence.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
