We’re seeing all the symptoms of civilization collapse. The United States empire has already stepped down from the sole superpower (China doesn’t have the capacity to force project, but the US is losing its own capacity) and the corruption, the wealth disparity, the persecution of its own citizens, the dismantling of social institutions all point to the same kind of decline and fall that we’ve seen with Rome, or the Ottoman Empire or Great Britain.
But what scares me is the quantity of wealth concentrated at the top. To borrow a quote from the Guardian (correspondent Gabriel Zucman), At the height of the Gilded Age, around 1910, the four largest American fortunes owned wealth equivalent to 4% of US GDP. Today, that same tiny fraction of the population, the top 0.00001% – which now includes 19 households – could buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US.
Or as I think of it, a multi-billionaire can buy a major election and control a government. A trillionaire can buy all the elections and control all the governments. That scares the Hell out of me.
And that’s before we confront the harsh reality of the climate crisis, mitigation of which the international community has only taken mild, non-committal action. Outside the climatology community, the public completely underestimates the severity of conditions when the temperature rises above +2°C, and it’s very unlikely we’re going to stop warming below that temperature. We’re going to run out of water, and most of the human population will perish.
I’m not sure if any of these define a finish line, but there are multiple factors that certainly count as escatological, a cataclysmic end of an age.
True. Sad. But since I am a fairly religious person, all points to me that we are heading to the finish line with this.
We’re seeing all the symptoms of civilization collapse. The United States empire has already stepped down from the sole superpower (China doesn’t have the capacity to force project, but the US is losing its own capacity) and the corruption, the wealth disparity, the persecution of its own citizens, the dismantling of social institutions all point to the same kind of decline and fall that we’ve seen with Rome, or the Ottoman Empire or Great Britain.
But what scares me is the quantity of wealth concentrated at the top. To borrow a quote from the Guardian (correspondent Gabriel Zucman), At the height of the Gilded Age, around 1910, the four largest American fortunes owned wealth equivalent to 4% of US GDP. Today, that same tiny fraction of the population, the top 0.00001% – which now includes 19 households – could buy 14% of everything produced in a given year in the US.
Or as I think of it, a multi-billionaire can buy a major election and control a government. A trillionaire can buy all the elections and control all the governments. That scares the Hell out of me.
And that’s before we confront the harsh reality of the climate crisis, mitigation of which the international community has only taken mild, non-committal action. Outside the climatology community, the public completely underestimates the severity of conditions when the temperature rises above +2°C, and it’s very unlikely we’re going to stop warming below that temperature. We’re going to run out of water, and most of the human population will perish.
I’m not sure if any of these define a finish line, but there are multiple factors that certainly count as escatological, a cataclysmic end of an age.