Silver Linings in America's Institutional Collapse

[passerby]

Re-posting this essay from my Substack. Let's discuss.

Public faith in U.S. institutions is at an all-time low. The American populace no longer trusts large technology companies, corporations, and government arms like the police and public schools. Good—maybe these institutions have outlived our trust.

On the tech side, it's interesting that millions of people have flocked to alternative platforms like Substack (20M monthly subscribers), Mastodon (1.8M monthly active users), Rumble (60M a month), Discord servers (154M monthly), Medium (100M monthly users), and even OnlyFans (238M users and 3M creators). Notice a throughline: These subscription-driven platforms offer more flexibility in monetization and user-generated content, challenging incumbents like WordPress/Mailchimp, X, YouTube, >reddit, and adult websites.

Small business is one of the few institutions consistently retaining public confidence, partly because most Americans across party lines believe tech giants like Google have too much power in the market, leaving competitors at a disadvantage. Indeed, our Fortune 500-consolidated economy doesn't respect the true free market. Industry leaders often buy out competitors long before they become a legitimate threat, effectively paying the little guy to shut up.

Silicon Valley was once rooted in originality, scrappiness, and flexibility—the hallmarks of innovation. Today, the movement has been bastardized by financialization and an investor-driven desire to maintain dominance through portfolios/ecosystems.

For example, I'd argue Apple hasn't independently invented anything new since the early-2000s. This year's Vision Pro launch might be an exception, but it required several under-the-radar acquisitions to pull off. Apple is one of many tech giants whose business model depends on getting consumers hooked on its signature household staples, enriching shareholders through a proven market strategy. The company spends more money on stock buybacks than research and development: From 2013 to Q1 2024, it totaled $651 billion in repurchases but just $175 billion in R&D.

Big Tech institutions deprioritize R&D and absorb competitors because they're desperate to keep their mediocre products alive. If only we had an alternative to high-power gaming PCs running on the Windows operating system. Windows is extremely unreliable, glitchy, and full of invasive in-app advertising. No, Microsoft, I'm never interested in what you're hocking.

Meanwhile, the law is slowly reacting to these trends, albeit too late to rescue the pre-corrupted ideals of the free market. The Department of Justice has made some big antitrust moves lately, including two lawsuits alleging that Google illegally monopolized the ad tech market and Apple monopolized the smartphone market. But can we trust the justice system to apply the law fairly and effectively? Companies always have the resources to defend themselves, no matter the case's merits. The world's best legal teams know which loopholes to jump through.

Companies have already adapted their short-term strategies to avoid scrutiny over megadeals. Meta, Salesforce, Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon only made four acquisitions last year, compared to 18 in 2022. Market analysts project that 2024 will bring smaller M&A transactions. As S&P Global puts it, "big is out; small is in."

"Big business" has always been an Alpha-eat-Beta world. As I covered in my consumer choice post, market-leading companies don't care about the consumer experience. Competition is ruthless at the top, as execs take proverbial tokes off the infinite growth model. Investors depend on that irresistible high by proxy.

An institutional power transfer is already underway in many aspects of modern life, including how we consume and understand news and events. Narratives are no longer solely filtered by cable news outlets or newspapers, which historically required editorial control for financial, legal, and even personal reasons.

Thanks to the internet, audiences now see the raw, unfiltered evidence of what's happening throughout all institutional ladders. Firsthand footage of world events can be accessed secondhand by anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection. That's over 90% of the U.S. population. Since social media is designed to spread opinions, there's always someone available to scrutinize illusions or propaganda in the 24/7 news cycle.

Political movements form quickly with widespread social media access. For example: In last month's Super Tuesday elections, hundreds of thousands of people cast "uncommitted" protest votes against the U.S.-backed war in Gaza and the growing tally of 30,000+ civilian casualties. Two days later, ceasefire protests delayed President Biden's arrival to the State of the Union by 30 minutes. The uncommitted campaign is now spreading to other states ahead of November's election. Will it actually make a difference though?

Foreign wars aside, fewer than 2 in 10 Americans trust the federal government to do what is right. Reforms are insufficient for the average person. I wonder if our leaders will ever win back the public's faith. Rather than reversing their poor track records, they manipulate us into excusing them while demanding unconditional support through our money (Big Tech), attention (centralized media), and confidence (politics).

Civil War isn't what you think in 2024. It's a quiet but raw battle for control, aligning the institutions against the consumers/civilians. It's a prolonged trust-fall, in which one party is left hanging for decades while the other grows self-interested and forgets why they agreed to demonstrate trust in the first place.

Here is an opportunity for ordinary Americans to create our own institutions. Are the old authorities worthy of our trust?

 

[SolidStateSurvivor]

People don't just lose faith overnight without reason. It's a long process of erosion. But the thing is that this was inevitable with how readily available damning information has become. The Internet allowed decades of institutional wrongdoings to go from fringe knowledge to public spotlight. It was a long time coming, so many aspects of society we are conditioned to place trust in were either co-opted, corrupt from the start, or became too bureaucratic in nature that stagnation has taken hold and effectively ruined it

Instead of offering transparency, these institutions have doubled down on gaslighting through legacy corporate outlets, a tactic that may have worked a decade ago had it not been for the ability for anyone to publicly call it out to a nationwide/global community (as you stated in OP.)

Spoiler: Side Tangent on Dead Internet Theory

As I've said before, it's been fascinating to watch the public consensus and attitudes seem to shift to a more skeptical/condemning tone online and in-person. If you want to bring that specific aspect back around to The Dead Internet Theory, anyone doing such critiques of state narratives will often get labeled a "russian bot" or something along those lines. And it's an interesting phenomenon, because you will sometimes observe a group of bots post a similarly worded/inflammatory Tweet critique, competing bots attack said critique, and then this entirely fake exchange commences. Even if it is an exchange between real people, that fear and paranoia of someone being a foreign provocateur/glowie bot and a lack of trust that our online sentiments are coming from real breathing people demonstrates that the fear and paranoia of the dead internet has fully gripped the digital town square. It goes back to the (seemingly forgotten) internet golden rule of "don't trust everything you read online" but amps up the stakes. It's not just trivially lying online for the lulz, its a psychological operation from TPTB competing for the soul of a nation.

Spoiler: Personal Perspective

To offer my personal perspective, I have become very distrusting of almost any large institution since Covid. And honestly, it's not fun or ideal, because I have soured on things I once liked or admired. I want to find an institution to place some level of faith in, or have something that feels like it's inherently good. The religious institutions, at least very generally speaking, don't fit that bill with how prevalent these profit driven mega-churches have become.
Small businesses where I know the owners and local charities that actively volunteer are the only institutions I still have any level of faith in.
The last few years have emphasized to me, above all else, just how important it is, and how fortunate I am, to have such a great group of close friends to place trust in.

Generally speaking the US has become a very low trust society. Some of it is for good reason, others are media induced hysteria. It's interesting seeing this get reflected subtly in things like the theming/tone of fictional media and even increasingly aggressive car designs.

Silicon Valley was once rooted in originality, scrappiness, and flexibility—the hallmarks of innovation. Today, the movement has been bastardized by financialization and an investor-driven desire to maintain dominance through portfolios/ecosystems.

If only it was that dry cut, it's become this psychological engineered dopamine addiction loop. It no longer has this outward image of improving life with new technological conveniences, instead most of the products are left as husks for advertising and spyware.
The closest thing to that spirit left is the developments in AI, but people rightfully have many concerns with its growing presence in society and it was immediately scooped up by the big names in the industry. For better or worse, it is at least out there to be modified and reprogrammed by the public, so there is not a total corporate monopoly on it.

An institutional power transfer is already underway in many aspects of modern life, including how we consume and understand news and events. Narratives are no longer solely filtered by cable news outlets or newspapers, which historically required editorial control for financial, legal, and even personal reasons.

Thanks to the internet, audiences now see the raw, unfiltered evidence of what's happening throughout all institutional ladders.

It is still very surreal seeing FPS style footage of Go-Pro wearing soldiers getting broadcast on the news. We're all truly apart of the frontlines now.

The uncommitted campaign is now spreading to other states ahead of November's election. Will it actually make a difference though?

Depends on what difference you're looking for. In terms of the DNC/uniparty changing its stance on unanimously supporting Israel's war crimes and catering to big business, the answer is no. The DNC had the chance to have a much needed populist reform in 2016, but their old guard party members/institutions were able to stubbornly suppress it, unlike the RNC with Trump.

And much like in 2016, you're going to see the same Bernie Sanders wing of the DNC either sit out or vote 3rd party against Biden, handing Trump a victory barring legal shenanigans or health problems. Unlike 2020 they will be unable to rally the disillusioned youth en-masse against Trump.

Civil War isn't what you think in 2024. It's a quiet but raw battle for control, aligning the institutions against the consumers/civilians. It's a prolonged trust-fall, in which one party is left hanging for decades while the other grows self-interested and forgets why they agreed to demonstrate trust in the first place.

Yes, as I have said previously I get the impression TPTB want to hype a civil war along trivial identity lines to keep people from focusing on anything close to a revolution/class war or even basic institutional reform/shifting power dynamics back to individuals (to which I believe any traditional democratic means of doing so is destined to fail.) I still think there is a high possibility of something popping off over this election.

 

[manpaint]

The other day I made a "negativity map" of my life and noticed that most of the pronlems in my life are tied to technology, or more specifically, american compagnies being monry hungry in some way or another.

I can't speak for other countries, but here in Canada the only instution I ever heard people talk about is Religion and its more in a "damn, that thing sure is collapsing" way. I legit cannot recall the last time I heard someone complain about our governement directly. At best I heard about a protest and then whatever issue was at hand is never heard again - either way any form of problem seems to be extremly localized. This is suprising to me because Canada and the USA are both structurally very similar. This implies that the USA is tainted in some unique way.

During my youth (circa 2016), I was browsing >reddit a lot. I would often browse political subs for some reason. This site painted the following picture of the USA to me:

A nation lead by ancient boomers who are hardcore christian who supress any form of progress in the name of religion. Paradoxically, people are now salave to the tech giant. The would is an ugly mix of 1984 and Brave New World. Judges are corrupt and easily influenced by the type of sandwitch they eat. Children in school are forced to pledge to a flag. People walk around with guns (which are buyable at Walmart). Canadian are treated as spies and are subject to excessive questionning. Above all, people are hopelessly stupid and can easily be be influenced.

Agora Road certainly painted me a very different picture of the USA (which is like the polar opposite bias lol). Anyway, I am curious if you guys have any data about how people view instutions in other part of the world? IIRC something similar is going on in South Korea but idk because I am not korean.

 

[passerby]

I have become very distrusting of almost any large institution since Covid. And honestly, it's not fun or ideal, because I have soured on things I once liked or admired. I want to find an institution to place some level of faith in, or have something that feels like it's inherently good. The religious institutions, at least very generally speaking, don't fit that bill with how prevalent these profit driven mega-churches have become.
Small businesses where I know the owners and local charities that actively volunteer are the only institutions I still have any level of faith in.
The last few years have emphasized to me, above all else, just how important it is, and how fortunate I am, to have such a great group of close friends to place trust in.

Same. More people should actively refocus their energy on interpersonal experiences and sources of firsthand emotion—far more reliable than institutions we otherwise depend on. I guess the downside is that humans have a finite lifespan and institutions do not (at least not for generations). But there's beauty in that.

For better or worse, it is at least out there to be modified and reprogrammed by the public, so there is not a total corporate monopoly on it.

I have a feeling ChatGPT and others will eventually be placed behind a paywall. With premium plans already selling like crazy, it's only a matter of time before public access gets curtailed. AI cannot pay for itself without monetization (unless there's a donor-funded model, but that comes with its own problems).

It is still very surreal seeing FPS style footage of Go-Pro wearing soldiers getting broadcast on the news. We're all truly apart of the frontlines now.

I'm going to write a whole essay about this soon. It is truly surreal that even mainstream news coverage feels like standard video game content. It speeds up desensitization but with the false security of being informed/educated. It's hard to resist that pull though. For months, I kept tabs on the Gaza situation by watching frontline footage every night. I had to stop when it started fucking with my head as I wondered, "huh, why do I keep waking up sad?" No amount of conscious awareness of scale can disconnect you from such carnage.

Yes, as I have said previously I get the impression TPTB want to hype a civil war along trivial identity lines to keep people from focusing on anything close to a revolution/class war or even basic institutional reform/shifting power dynamics back to individuals (to which I believe any traditional democratic means of doing so is destined to fail.) I still think there is a high possibility of something popping off over this election.

100%. Pretty much everyone in my personal life has come around to the idea that "TPTB aren't working for us, so we can't rely on them." The seeds for revolt are already there, but I'm not sure if the election will be the catalyst. I think it'll be a terrorist attack or something external. Depends on who the shared enemy is, but TPTB will likely have an authoritarian reaction in any case.

 

[passerby]

The other day I made a "negativity map" of my life and noticed that most of the pronlems in my life are tied to technology, or more specifically, american compagnies being monry hungry in some way or another.

I can't speak for other countries, but here in Canada the only instution I ever heard people talk about is Religion and its more in a "damn, that thing sure is collapsing" way. I legit cannot recall the last time I heard someone complain about our governement directly. At best I heard about a protest and then whatever issue was at hand is never heard again - either way any form of problem seems to be extremly localized. This is suprising to me because Canada and the USA are both structurally very similar. This implies that the USA is tainted in some unique way.

During my youth (circa 2016), I was browsing >reddit a lot. I would often browse political subs for some reason. This site painted the following picture of the USA to me:



Agora Road certainly painted me a very different picture of the USA (which is like the polar opposite bias lol). Anyway, I am curious if you guys have any data about how people view instutions in other part of the world? IIRC something similar is going on in South Korea but idk because I am not korean.

Interesting. Maybe Americans are in a never-ending uproar because of our rebellious culture and cross-generation resentment about the American Dream not materializing for most people. Complaints have a bitter tone.

 

[manpaint]

Interesting. Maybe Americans are in a never-ending uproar because of our rebellious culture and cross-generation resentment about the American Dream not materializing for most people. Complaints have a bitter tone.

Yeah. As far as I know there is no "canadian dream" to speak of. It's not that we don't believe that everyone is equal or anything, but it seems like our expectation are a bit more in-lime with reality? Now that I think about it, I don't think we even acknowledge the concept of "succedding at life". The only thing close I can think off is that getting a higher education is incentivized, but that's it really.

I heard that one of the main cause of of unrest in South Korea is their awful social hiearchy system. While the USA obviously do not have a direct classification systems, I could see similar tribalism happening due to economic strife and polarization of politics. From an outsider perspective, this country seems to be extremly obsessed over politics. Here barely anyone ever talk about them IRL.

 

[pickleman]

Here barely anyone ever talk about them IRL.

Where do you get this idea that Canadians do not talk about politics?

I was born here and where I am living native born Canadians are minorities. Most Canadians have nazi-tier levels of anti-immigration fever atm. But if theres an immigrant in the group native borns keep quite around them.

Many Canadians are pussies and do not talk about how they truely feel in the name of maintaining and praying to their false theraputic moralistic deity.

 

[manpaint]

Where do you get this idea that Canadians do not talk about politics?

My personal life experience. Though I will admit that's not the greatest data sample in the world. But yeah that's a thing that probably depends on the place you are.

Still, I don't think that Canada is as insane as the USA when it comes to politics.

 

[pickleman]

My personal life experience. Though I will admit that's not the greatest data sample in the world. But yeah that's a thing that probably depends on the place you are.

Still, I don't think that Canada is as insane as the USA when it comes to politics.

I disagree, Canadians have Stockholm syndrome. They are a conquered people.

 

[passerby]

Yeah. As far as I know there is no "canadian dream" to speak of. It's not that we don't believe that everyone is equal or anything, but it seems like our expectation are a bit more in-lime with reality? Now that I think about it, I don't think we even acknowledge the concept of "succedding at life". The only thing close I can think off is that getting a higher education is incentivized, but that's it really.

I heard that one of the main cause of of unrest in South Korea is their awful social hiearchy system. While the USA obviously do not have a direct classification systems, I could see similar tribalism happening due to economic strife and polarization of politics. From an outsider perspective, this country seems to be extremly obsessed over politics. Here barely anyone ever talk about them IRL.

Maybe Americans are uniquely ambitious to a fault. Also uniquely comfortable with our welfare system

 

[passerby]

I'm going to write a whole essay about this soon. It is truly surreal that even mainstream news coverage feels like standard video game content. It speeds up desensitization but with the false security of being informed/educated. It's hard to resist that pull though. For months, I kept tabs on the Gaza situation by watching frontline footage every night. I had to stop when it started fucking with my head as I wondered, "huh, why do I keep waking up sad?" No amount of conscious awareness of scale can disconnect you from such carnage.

Update: @SolidStateSurvivor, thought you might like to know I finished my essay on FPS war footage: https://shannoncuthrell.substack.com/p/war-in-pov

It's good to see other people observing this shift too. You said it so well: "We're all truly apart of the frontlines now."

It is still very surreal seeing FPS style footage of Go-Pro wearing soldiers getting broadcast on the news. We're all truly apart of the frontlines now.

 

[Some_porcupine]

didnt you doublepost? or lot of similar posts really...

 

[passerby]

didnt you doublepost? or lot of similar posts really...

Me? No, I don't think so.. I haven't double posted.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Me? No, I don't think so.. I haven't double posted.

Haha alright my bad then, - when you got thread №58 on societal collapse and or so, they all end up in the same direction, "le corpos bad, world bad, let's end that or go away or kill ourselves (last option)"

 

[Some_porcupine]

It got me thinking now
In past, we lived in future
And now we live in the past

It's looks like future was hugely anticipated, no villa on moon, mars or in space...

 

[passerby]

Haha alright my bad then, - when you got thread №58 on societal collapse and or so, they all end up in the same direction, "le corpos bad, world bad, let's end that or go away or kill ourselves (last option)"

True lol. Trying to do a positive spin with this one though.

 

[Orlando Smooth]

Silicon Valley was once rooted in originality, scrappiness, and flexibility—the hallmarks of innovation. Today, the movement has been bastardized by financialization and an investor-driven desire to maintain dominance through portfolios/ecosystems.

A serious problem that I rarely see discussed outside niche circles is that the most famous tech companies have now succumbed to what I like to call "the big firm talent acquisition/retention problem." Basically, very few recent graduates go to work for FAANG companies because they seriously believe they can build a career there, and no one does so because they "believe in the product" or whatever. They do it because a) it will look really good on their resume to say "I worked as a Google engineer for 2 years" and b) the pay is usually some of the best in the field. This is both a cause and effect of the stagnation you're referring to: effect, because big companies are already big and prestigious so they tend to already be the big guy to beat, rather than the scrappy startup that needs to be the best in order to gain attention. Cause, because now at any given time a huge number of the people working for you don't actually care at all about the future success of the company since they are only there to get a paycheck and an attractive line on their resume. This contributes to "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" mentality which rots firms from within.

Dev: "I patched the bug for the software update, but used scrappy coding that will likely cause compatibility issues in future updates. Should we commit the code?"

Manager: "Screw it, by the time that commit causes any problems we'll both be gone and it'll be someone else's problem."

How do you build something meaningful or make breakthrough innovations when this is the pervasive attitude? Brute force, and inefficiently. The companies go on to hire more and more and more junior and low level employees as a means to basically throw money at their problems and hope they go away. Thus, it further reinforces the cycle.

This has been a feature on Wall Street (e.g., Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and consulting (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain) for generations now. The difference is that those sectors are perennial, banks are always going to be looking to squeeze and extra 0.001% out of their investments and companies will always be willing to pay 3 recent grads and an MBA to analyze their economic woes for them. This means the churn of recent grads can be anticipated and accounted for, and even seen as a marketing benefit when the "alum" of these firms go on to fill board rooms and manage billions in VC. Tech is not perennial though, at least not in the same way. Every so often the market changes radically when something like personal computers, smartphones, social media, or artificial intelligence suddenly determines who the new winners and losers are. Companies like Apple and Microsoft are pretty locked in to their market positions and are incredibly unlikely to be disrupted by anything other than unfavorable legislation, meaning they can afford this churn even if it costs them the speed of innovation they once had. A company like Facebook though? What reason is there to believe Facebook (including Instagram) will be a major player 10 years from now? Their products are stale, proactively distancing yourself from them is now a mainstream position, and TikTok has proved that Zuckerberg is very much susceptible to competitors. Facebook cannot afford the churn, but that's what they're stuck with at this point and it may be their ultimate undoing.

---

For what it's worth, I think the days of highly innovative tech are mostly behind us. This is not to say we should close down the patent office because everything has already been invented, just that the rapid change we've all come to expect may be slowing down. Microchip design is running up against the laws of physics, smartphone cameras are better quality than any average person can justify needing, pixel density on displays is greater than our eyes are capable of detecting, software has already been developed for seemingly every problem software can solve, and training future generations of LLMs or similar AI models will require more power (completely uninterrupted, no less) than is consumed by some countries in an entire year. Basic greed and keeping up with the Joneses will continue to fuel the engine for a time, and I'm sure that today's high end products will become cheaper and more attainable with time. But in a world where everything already seems so same-y from year to year it's hard for me to imagine anything significant changing before a hardware breakthrough in something like quantum computing, and that's been a few years away for decades.

 

[Some_porcupine]

A serious problem that I rarely see discussed outside niche circles is that the most famous tech companies have now succumbed to what I like to call "the big firm talent acquisition/retention problem." Basically, very few recent graduates go to work for FAANG companies because they seriously believe they can build a career there, and no one does so because they "believe in the product" or whatever. They do it because a) it will look really good on their resume to say "I worked as a Google engineer for 2 years" and b) the pay is usually some of the best in the field. This is both a cause and effect of the stagnation you're referring to: effect, because big companies are already big and prestigious so they tend to already be the big guy to beat, rather than the scrappy startup that needs to be the best in order to gain attention. Cause, because now at any given time a huge number of the people working for you don't actually care at all about the future success of the company since they are only there to get a paycheck and an attractive line on their resume. This contributes to "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" mentality which rots firms from within.

Dev: "I patched the bug for the software update, but used scrappy coding that will likely cause compatibility issues in future updates. Should we commit the code?"

Manager: "Screw it, by the time that commit causes any problems we'll both be gone and it'll be someone else's problem."

How do you build something meaningful or make breakthrough innovations when this is the pervasive attitude? Brute force, and inefficiently. The companies go on to hire more and more and more junior and low level employees as a means to basically throw money at their problems and hope they go away. Thus, it further reinforces the cycle.

This has been a feature on Wall Street (e.g., Goldman Sachs, Citigroup) and consulting (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain) for generations now. The difference is that those sectors are perennial, banks are always going to be looking to squeeze and extra 0.001% out of their investments and companies will always be willing to pay 3 recent grads and an MBA to analyze their economic woes for them. This means the churn of recent grads can be anticipated and accounted for, and even seen as a marketing benefit when the "alum" of these firms go on to fill board rooms and manage billions in VC. Tech is not perennial though, at least not in the same way. Every so often the market changes radically when something like personal computers, smartphones, social media, or artificial intelligence suddenly determines who the new winners and losers are. Companies like Apple and Microsoft are pretty locked in to their market positions and are incredibly unlikely to be disrupted by anything other than unfavorable legislation, meaning they can afford this churn even if it costs them the speed of innovation they once had. A company like Facebook though? What reason is there to believe Facebook (including Instagram) will be a major player 10 years from now? Their products are stale, proactively distancing yourself from them is now a mainstream position, and TikTok has proved that Zuckerberg is very much susceptible to competitors. Facebook cannot afford the churn, but that's what they're stuck with at this point and it may be their ultimate undoing.

---

For what it's worth, I think the days of highly innovative tech are mostly behind us. This is not to say we should close down the patent office because everything has already been invented, just that the rapid change we've all come to expect may be slowing down. Microchip design is running up against the laws of physics, smartphone cameras are better quality than any average person can justify needing, pixel density on displays is greater than our eyes are capable of detecting, software has already been developed for seemingly every problem software can solve, and training future generations of LLMs or similar AI models will require more power (completely uninterrupted, no less) than is consumed by some countries in an entire year. Basic greed and keeping up with the Joneses will continue to fuel the engine for a time, and I'm sure that today's high end products will become cheaper and more attainable with time. But in a world where everything already seems so same-y from year to year it's hard for me to imagine anything significant changing before a hardware breakthrough in something like quantum computing, and that's been a few years away for decades.

Yup, they "zaspali na vavrínoch", they live from their past glory, so many things has, and we are here to witness what has to happen next.
But I wonder when the trust will be all low. Many such discussions on many such threads, you can paint my picture on this prolly now if you know me (explain this from thread to thread, and when every one of them now seems to go into anti-corp anti-cap revival/agriculture , solarpunk dreams... It becomes tiresome)

 

[silktrader]

Civil War isn't what you think in 2024. It's a quiet but raw battle for control, aligning the institutions against the consumers/civilians. It's a prolonged trust-fall, in which one party is left hanging for decades while the other grows self-interested and forgets why they agreed to demonstrate trust in the first place.

there always was this subtle underground feeling to the wests slow decline. people think that the collapse will come after some big civil war or revolution against the government. its not. people are just going to stop caring. infrastructure will collapse, services wont get to the peolpe who need them. its going to click in someone that itll no longer be two more weeks but that its actually TRULY going to shit so he'll loot and rob. people will pick up on this, they dont give a shit about the society theyre in so theyll do the same. repeat until it all goes down, at least for a few months. maybe forever. wagering a 70% chance that this happens after elections regardless of who wins.

 

[SolidStateSurvivor]

there always was this subtle underground feeling to the wests slow decline. people think that the collapse will come after some big civil war or revolution against the government. its not. people are just going to stop caring. infrastructure will collapse, services wont get to the peolpe who need them. its going to click in someone that itll no longer be two more weeks but that its actually TRULY going to shit so he'll loot and rob. people will pick up on this, they dont give a shit about the society theyre in so theyll do the same. repeat until it all goes down, at least for a few months. maybe forever. wagering a 70% chance that this happens after elections regardless of who wins.

You already have the symptoms you described present though. I guess the question is how much worse can it get before the general public's opinion is truly shifted?
The prevailing attitude from people towards the system ranges majority apathy to minority truly enraged by it.
The infrastructure is quite literally collapsing in front of us but yet foreign aid is getting prioritized by the feds. My hunch is the next major happening in this regard is one of those shitty Boeings going down due to mechanical failure.
The looting has played out sporadically with brazen shoplifting on the west coast and flash mobs robbing malls, designer stores, and even trains. It's mainly been black communities (ie the people most often shafted by the system) perpetrating these, it's not hard to imagine that directed anger and desperation trickling upward into white lower class and even formerly middle class as the opportunities shrink and the squeeze/wealth gap continues to grow.