It’s a series of highly efficient machines, each optimized to the point of fragility. Think of the supply chain disruptions during Covid. The cost of shipping is so cheap that it can make sense to ship even simple products back and forth across the ocean several times as they move up the value chain. But if one of those links breaks, the whole house of cards collapses. In generations past, commerce needed huge buffers in the supply chains, and the chains themselves were kept simple. In the days of wooden sailing ships, ships arriving late or not all were common. Before computerized inventory tracking and just in time manufacturing, storing large quantities of intermediary parts was also required. These buffers in the systems represented economic inefficiency, but they also produced resiliency.
America is a series of highly efficient industrial juggernauts built on feet of clay. Any good you buy at the grocery store or big box retailer is going to have a huge logistics supply chain behind it. And that chain will be, in economic terms, highly efficient. It will also be very fragile.
this is an incredibly accurate and well written depiction.
Are you expecting multiple continents to just disappear or something?
It’s a machine that used to be well oiled but management’s been deferring maintenance for decades, the oil’s gross, it’s leaking everywhere and overheating, it’s barely hanging on, and the manufacturer’s long been out of business.
Plus people have just kinda been putting mouse traps in the machine here and there.
And taking out important parts of the machine and replacing them with mousetraps.
Don’t forget the duct tape.
Or the WD-40, can’t forget that.
I’m not American, but surely this is some form of false dichotomy when you restrict answers to such inflammatory options?
It’s not worded where it’s either one or the other, they’re asking “is it this, or this?” Anyone can say “it’s neither, here’s why”.
At this point it’s mostly mousetraps, though.
They are well oiled though…
Its a well oiled machine for the right class and is working as intended for them. Everyone else is stuck in the grind in subservience.
I think the only reason the US continues to exist in its current state is due to the global power of the US currency. It is the dominant currency for international exchange, which gives the US government extraordinary influence in international affairs AND gives corporations and wealthy people a reason to be based in the US. There are historical similarities with other countries having a dominant currency such as the British Pound or Dutch Guilder during those countries periods of imperial dominance. The empire is likely to persist as long as the currency remains dominant no matter how badly it is mismanaged.
It’s a well oiled machine for transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
Both.
Well oiled… with the blood of the working class and the poor
America is a rather young country compared to others. The others have gone through these issues already.
It’s not, though. America is young as a nation, but as a country with a set political system it’s one of, if not the oldest in the world.
France invented constitutionalism and you were the first to adapt it after them. That’s important political history, but don’t overestimate yourselves.
England has been the same kingdom since the early 10th century.
England has been the same kingdom since the early 10th century.
It hasn’t, though. The modern UK is a union of England, Scotland and Ireland and was created by the Act of Union in 1800, and if you don’t count that then you go back to the Treaty of Union in 1707. That’s definitely older than the US so good point there, but either way modern Britain is hardly the same political entity as Norman England.
England is England. They have laws going back until before any of that. There’s continuity all the way. Joining a union does not mean your country stops existing.
It does in the sense that it stops being a country and becomes a part of a country. There’s no country called England today.
One thing you need to understand is that the US is a Federal system.
Take education. Every state has its own standards, and each individual county has its own Board of Education. Two towns in the same state can have vast differences in curriculum and standards. Same with police forces. One jurisdiction might have all college graduates and another might accept GEDs.
