I mean, the rate at which people are dying and becoming disabled due to covid can't be sustainable, can it? This country was running on fumes to begin with. Surely a country with an infamously terrible healthcare system, an economy that runs everything with as little margin for error as possible, and a government that has lost its ability to respond to any major disaster that can't be shot at cannot withstand this kind of catastrophe? What do you think things are going to look like five years from now?
Something I learned from Patrick Wyman's History of Rome podcast was how truly "uneven" the collapse of the Roman Empire was. First of all, folks cite 476 CE as when the empire collapsed, but that was only the western half - the poorer and less relevant half at that. The Roman Empire in the east continued on for nearly a thousand years beyond that. When Rome functionally lost its grip over modern day Algeria and Tunisia, those regions were probably better off materially because they no longer were forced to ship grain to Rome every year. Meanwhile in Britain much of the economy was based on supporting the legions; so when they left things fell apart fast. All this happening over a couple hundred years.
Collapse is often too fast of a word. The Soviet Union collapsed, Rome crumbled, as did the Byzantines. Most of these states fell because of outside pressures mixed with interminable political problems at the core.
For the Soviets, being cut off from any and all real foreign investments was the outside pressure, and the gerontocratic and unenthusiastic citizenry buying into a new stage of liberalism was the bomb. In Rome the northern and eastern European populations continued to press in and disrupt the war machine, while the citizenry of Rome lacked land, power, and domestic food supplies. What little Republican tradition was outdated and far too complex to be useful. This caused Rome to crumble over the course of a few hundred years. The Byzantines had many of the same problems as the Romans, but the external pressures of Islam could be managed, until a further pressure was created by the Venetians from the West. The Byzantines routinely restructured themselves and created bureaucracy and power structures that allowed them to survive a thousand years past the "fall" of Rome.
America hasnt really had much of an external pressure pushing in, perhaps the only citable thing is trade deficits, moving manufacturing overseas, but thats all pushing out, deflating ourselves. What we do have is tons of internal problems, the biggest will always be and always has been the racialized underclass of Black and Brown people in this country. But even so the political institutions in this country are just completely hollow, they hold no semblance of moral or even physical authority over huge amount of the population. Even conservatives dont think they are subject to the law, and only come to realize they are after getting smashed by cops; of course, not a single politician of any note has been abused while in office or actually held accountable for doing a shit job. And thats all thats left, is the violent oppression by cops, thats really the only thing most americans see as the arms of the state, this is a key problem of devolution of powers + bureaucracy. The federal government doesnt do anything for anybody, it doesnt empower any of the citizenry. Governors dont do shit, and local officials are just rubber stamps for real estate fascists.
So yeah, we still have a lot longer to go before collapse, notably when the 3rd world finally goes to war with us because of climate change.
the material resource tribute is something i think that gets lost when people imagine balkanization scenarios for the US. for example, chicago is the golden idol of The Great West. forests are logged, grains are planted/harvested, rivers are drained, and mountains are leveled for the markets she paints in her dreams.
to imagine the city, any city, as separate from its hinterlands is a delusion. the very second that NY, LA, Chicago or any other wealthy "enclave" cleaves itself from the bosom that feeds it (by severing any pre-existing risk management program), the tightly wound land use patterns of rural, extractive communities will snap. hell, the US has cut so many of these programs already, it's probably going to happen anyway.
older cultures make massive investments in rural infrastructure and community support, because it turns out that's cheaper and more politically stable than having to constantly fight, enslave, and terrorize the plague-ridden barbarians that feed you every time some group of them decides to tell you to fuck yourself instead of sending the grain.