Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Chris Koncz's avatar

One of my favourite social commentators on parallels between the late Soviet Union (SU) and its mirror image, the United States (US), going back all the way to the 2008 financial crisis, when we were hours away from total financial collapse, is Dmitry Orlov. He wrote an excellent book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, which I would urge everyone to read.

https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Collapse-Experience-American-Prospects/dp/0865716854

The premise of his book is summarised in this nearly two-decade old essay, which I think remains relevant:

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us/

The main takeaway being, that if collapse were to take place in the US, it would be far worse than in the SU, due to its non-existent collapse preparedness.

Another author I would heartily recommend on the subject of collapse is James Howard Kunstler, in particular, his 2005 book, The Long Emergency

https://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastrophes-Twenty-First/dp/0802142494

I read this in 2008, as the Lehman Brothers collapse was unfolding (Singapore was heavily affected and I ended up losing my job in the wake of that crisis) and it still remains one of the best books on the subject.

Incidentally, readers of Rod's substack would very much appreciate his bi-weekly blog, I think Jim remains an astute observer, if a bit cranky in his old age. He is one of those disaffected Democrats (used to be an editor of Rolling Stone magazine and a NYT columnist), who have really turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction and is now completely disgusted by everything the left represents:

https://kunstler.com/

Expand full comment
Jeff Z's avatar

Apropos of all this, I would suggest reading Eisenhower's farewell address, famous for introducing the phrase "military-industrial complex." Eisenhower speaks as an emissary from the last generation that came of age before the US began the increasingly disastrous path toward world hegemony, and there's far more to it than the one simple phrase. Among many others, this one jumped out at me:

"As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

There is much more, and it's a very quick read.

Expand full comment
197 more comments...

No posts