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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

> A <removed> nation ruled by an egomaniac. Is <it> on the brink of collapse?

I feel like we could use that same headline on a lot of countries right now, including the so called best ones.

Yes and no. Yes, it seems like a lot of countries are ruled by egomaniacs. Maybe this was always true, and we're just more aware of it now due to better media.

But no, that does not mean the countries are equivalently on the brink of collapse. While you could reasonably ask if the US or UK are on the brink of collapse, they aren't on the brink in anything like the way that Turkmenistan is.

> While you could reasonably ask if the US or UK are on the brink of collapse

No, in fact you can't reasonably ask that. It's a very unreasonable premise in both cases. It's hyperbolic.

There is zero risk of collapse right now in either the US or UK. Financially, politically, socially, militarily: zero risk of collapse in either case. Nations having problems doesn't constitute a risk of collapse.

To seriously discuss collapse in eg the US, a person has to take a problem that isn't remotely collapse-threatening (eg student debt or partisan anger), and amplify it artificially 10x-100x to mean the end of the world. The sort of headlines & stories that a site like ZeroHedge specializes in 24/7 in the financial sphere (the world is ending every day of the week there, the next great recession has been about to start for a decade now). In general it requires a very high level of avoiding using reason and logic to assess risk, and falling back to emotional-based statements derived from what are actually modest, controllable problems. The same is true in the context of the UK, brexit or no brexit.

In the words of BJ Campbell[1] the US is currently undergoing increasing partisanship[2], civil disorder[3], coup rhetoric[4], a widening wealth gap[5], a further-entrenching oligarchy[6], dysfunctional governance[7], the rise of Nazism[8] and Communism[9], violent street protests[10], people marching and dressing like Blackshirts[11], attempts at large-scale political assassination[12], and I'll add to that a widespread (~35% among both lay people and experts) expectation of a looming civil war[13][14]. And it's true people have been saying the sky that is the economy has been falling for a decade now, but pretty much everyone is in agreement the status quo is completely unsustainable.

[1] http://freakoutery.com/2018/07/the-surprisingly-solid-mathem...

[2] http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-o...

[3] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/civil-wars/articles/2017-02-1...

[4] https://www.thenation.com/article/are-we-witnessing-a-coup-o...

[5] http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/03/news/economy/wealth-gap-amer...

[6] http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us...

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/business/economy/trump-el...

[8] http://www.dw.com/en/us-neo-nazi-groups-on-the-rise-under-pr...

[9] https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/communist-party-members...

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/style/black-bloc-fashion....

[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHM73eJCa7k

[13] http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/gene...

[14] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/07/will-we-have-a-2nd-civi...

Ah, but most other countries don't share a border with Iran. Wouldn't it be a funny old coincidence if Turkmenistan's economy just happened to completely collapse, and the US saved the day with some generous aid packages coughandsomemilitarybasescough? A funny old coincidence.

Despite the downvotes, I think this is a likely scenario.

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