Thread by @translucentmf

What is coming between now and 2035? Climate change: increasingly random and extreme weather, flooding, drought, famine, mass migration, pandemics, social upheaval, institutional collapse, automation, economic collapse, tribalism, authoritarianism, war, and general chaos.

Global warming will continue. Human population continues to increase. War drives a need for "energy independence". Entangled corporations, states, and individuals with direct economic interest in extraction and consumption of fossil fuels will continue to fight for their use.

And there are already feedback loops in play: the warming oceans, the melting ice caps, the thawing permafrost which is releasing trapped methane and CO2, the deforestation both man made and from increased forest fires.

According to the Wikipedia article on World population there were 7.9 billion people in November 2021, up from 1 billion 200 years ago. We require food. We require shelter. We mine raw materials, burn fossil fuels, clear forests, and drive other species to extinction.

The driving economic system of all these people is capitalism, which is driven by the investment of money into corporations. As a general rule of thumb a good investment returns 10% which means corporations need to increase their profits by 10% every year.

There's two ways to drive up your profits by 10%, sell 10% more or cut your costs. Selling more means producing more. Some of that comes from the natural population growth, some of it is from driving up demand for goods and services. More natural resources and energy are used.

Natural resources aren't getting any cheaper, neither is energy, because as noted earlier, we're unwilling or unable to switch to 100% renewables. The best way to cut costs is to cut labor cost.

Feudalism, slavery, indentured servitude, and the use of prisoners are all historical options for labor cost reduction that are still in use today in some industries. The other option is to keep labor supply high and demand low while fighting unionization.

There are three basic strategies for keeping labor supply high and demand low: import your workers to where the work has to be done, move the work to where the population is high, and automate as much as possible

Importation of labor was the strategy of the African slave trade in America especially but not limited to agriculture in the South, the use of Chinese labor on the railroads, and seasonal importation of undocumented Latin American workers, all with little if any legal protection.

Exportation of the work can be seen in the movement of manufacturing, garment, customer service, and IT jobs to. countries where labor is cheaper, aided by the automation of data transfer and communications.

The export of manufacturing and therefore the constant stream of imported goods moving across the Pacific has led to huge increases in energy consumption and the burning of fossil fuels, creating more pressure for highly automated local manufacturing.

The rise of telecommunication, robotic, office and artificial intelligence automation has significantly increased the value of workers who design, create and sell automation, shifting income from a growing number of fields to a new techno class plus tech executives and investors.

Where human labor is still required, the system benefits from increased population, both to increase consumption and the labor supply.

This is bad for the environment and a difficult balancing act to maintain because the decrease in wages achieved by lowering costs decreases the spending power of consumers.

Another way to expand the capitalist economy is to commoditize new things. Like health care, and then health insurance, which required more automation, and given away as an employment benefit tied workers to their employers and increased dependency on the nuclear family.

So to recap, where we in the USA pre-#covid? #Superstorms, flooding, wildfires, drought, record heat, unexpected cold snaps, a growing unease and a sense of #climate urgency among part of the population

At the same time, wealth #inequality is getting worse, wages are stagnating outside the techno class,
#healthcare is less accessible and more expensive, #automation is replacing more and more jobs.

#WhiteChristianNationalist movements become more active in response, attracting people who blame immigrants and demographic changes for their loss of income and status.

From around 2016 to early 2022, there are some obvious significant events reveal the fissures in American society over #authoritarianism, #police, #immigration, #capitalism, #demographics, #science, and the #environment:

2016 - election of an authoritarian/fascist president running on a mostly anti-immigration, anti-elite platform

2017 - significant protest at the inauguration. DC Police and prosecutors respond violently and aggressively but ultimately fail to convict anyone.

2017 -pro-immigration protests at US airports against the immigration ban

2017 - Republican Congressional Caucus chased out of Philadelphia by protesters during meeting to discuss how to overturn Obamacare

2017 - Standing Rock - coordination of local state and federal governments with fossil fuel corporations to shut down protests in a militarized operation

2017 - Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, heavily armed and violent fascist organizations met by armed antifascist resistance, police stand down, Heather Heyer murdered

2017 -rise of the QAnon movement, pre-apocalyptic anti-semitic mass hysteria typical of end times

2018 - formation of Extinction Rebellion (@ExtinctionR)

2018 - first two Democratic Socialist of America (@dsa) candidates elected to Congress

2020 - the pandemic declared, belief in the pandemic and the response to it becomes a major rift, anti-response protests proliferate over the next two years, poverty and homelessness increase dramatically as businesses shut down.

2020 - George Floyd murder by Minneapolis Police. Subsequent nationwide protests, more police murders, increased understanding of institutional racism, mass incarceration, police violence and repression especially as protesters are met with an increasingly militarized response

2020 - Kenosha protests over another murder by police and the subsequent murder of 2 people in Kenosha by an out of town teenager with an assault rifle who claimed to be protecting property

2020-2021 - running battles in Portland between antifascists and fascists + local, state, and federal police

2020 - unelection of the president, two more DSA members elected to Congress, and two supporters of QAnon

2021 -January 6 storming of the capitol attempting to keep the unelected fascist president in office

2021 - the great resignation, 47 million Americans quit their jobs

2022, beginning of successful labor organizing at @Starbucks and @amazon

There is some good in there. The resistance to authority. The challenging of capitalism. But there is no system yet to replace what we have. No system of housing, medical care, or food for those who do not work.

Covid has pretty well proven that we are not united, cannot agree on responses, and the government is too divided, too controlled by special interests, too reactionary or wanting to preserve the status quo to make significant changes.

There is an increased sense of urgency in all of it. Now or never. There is no more time. If we lose, we lose forever. The center cannot hold. And if it does, we will all definitely lose.

Where will the people of the West Coast go when the fires make it unlivable? Who adjudicates the water disputes between states? Where does the food come from to feed 350 million people? What other borders will Texas have to defend?

Look around. Do you really think it's going to be another 50 to 100 years before everything collapses? Be ready. Do what you can to hold it off. Live your best life. Be nice to each other. End thread.