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Comment by bbminner | Hacker News Reader

Not everyone benefits from cooperation. Feuds are a great "business opportunity" - while everyone's divided and at each other's throat, you can take them out (or extort/bully) one by one, without any consequences, especially if you have the biggest and scariest stick in the block. So, solidarity, cooperation, and people sticking up for each other are absolutely awful for thugs and bullies.

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The US already had all the power when people called it the leader of the free world, when people start using the word "bully," that signifies a major shift.

It will result in a loss of power. Isolation is not a strengthening posture. You need allies to succeed over the long term. This looks like the beginning of the downfall of the United States from every measure.

I don't disagree. But then for most of the 7,000 years of recorded history, GDP (and all the might that wealth ensures) was strictly a function of population. It wasn't until European colonialism came in the 1400s and industrialization in the 1700s that guns, resource extraction, and productivity gains changed the game.

But WW2 ended colonialism and 90s globalization spread industrialization worldwide, leaving us all in the slow roll of reverting to the mean now. At the end of which, the ancient civilizations of China and India, with nearly 3 billion people between them, will return to global dominance.

Oh, I don't think it is the US as a whole that's meant to benefit from this coercive behavior. And it's not just the foreign policy. While Trump keeps pointing fingers at those "who are to blame for our problems" (transes stealing our children, biden stealing elections, immigrants stealing jobs and welfare, Ukrainians stealing aid) and the society stays divided on these issues, plenty of opportunities for business (extortion) arise for himself and his buddies, especially now that his hands are not tied by anything. This strategy worked wonders for another narcissist bully thug named Putin. That's basically divide and conquer.

What will Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel's wealth look like when the us dollar isn't the main transfer currency, the world sees the biggest financial crisis in the last couple centuries and everyone wants to cash out on their US bonds because all of a sudden there's 0 trust in the US government?

That's what we're headed towards. The 'dark enlightenment' fascists think they can accelerate a switch of global banking moving towards cryptocurrency. Good fucking luck trading a bitcoin when normal finance is blowing up, grocery stores are going to struggle with stocking their shelves.

The thing that crypto correlated the most with so far has been tech stocks, the most exposed ones. So I don't think crypto will hold much longer than those and will crash earlier than the rest if your scenario was to be true.

Also, if crypto would be to become any money, then it would not produce any yield in average. So it would not be interesting to hold, the whole scenario makes no sense.

They don't have to care because there is so much wealth to acquire in the short term. Trump alone will enrich himself with billions in bribes from foreign companies. The DOGE/Project2025 annihilation of government programs will result in drastic privatization with all of the billionaire class benefitting immediately.

All of the dark outcomes you describe are possible while a certain class has profitted already so much they don't care and will happily retreat into their bunker.

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