The year that most people start using Linux is the year that it will find some way to sell out. *I know that it's not a monolothic thing, GPL, etc. but people ruin everything... enshittification, uh, finds a way
We will likely have hit 1.5 + degrees of warming in 10 years time so our society may look quite different. It's likely that our supply chains will be disrupted by this and become more localised as rising temperatures / intensifying weather events impact our capacity to grow / distribute as much food as we do now. There may potentially be Pacific Nations that no longer exist due to sea level rise. We will likely also see the beginning of a significant climate refugee crisis that nations in the global north will struggle to respond to.
I grilled dinner tonight out on our deck wearing a painters mask because the smoke from the wildfires around here is so thick it looks like it's pissing rain outside. Only when I caught myself in the mirror with my plate, mask and tongs did I start to think, this seems a little odd.
In the west and culturally, a post-boomer period will have begun. And I think there’ll be continued evaluation of what mistakes that era made especially as climate change looms as an increasingly damaging debt. In a similar vein, the relationship with capitalism and big corps is, I think, going to get messy and more polarised, in part because the mistakes we’ve made will be hard to disentangle for many.
Overall, I suspect that for many paying attention, the downfall of the west will seem more and more plausible and closer and that will create a contentious atmosphere.
Downfall of the West relative to who? The whole world is impacted by climate change and the West is best positioned to manage its effects.
Well at first glance the West seems very well suited to buffer the effects, The last decade shows that it is hyper sclerotic and unwilling to give even the most minor concessions to adapt to change. This will be US centric, but the US was kind of behind on this trend (e.g. Orban, Erdogan, the AfD, etc. came before Trump). The only way the political system can function is by expanding authoritarian repression. No matter which party is in charge we have to keep expanding the military and police to fight the boogeyman (China, Russia, Republican Fascism, Democratic Deep State, etc.) and only appeals to voters/platforms are by how we need to fight back the horrors of the other party (fascism and the end of Democracy, Woke-ism and Democrat conspiracies). This fundamentally comes from an unwillingness to improve or maintain the standard of living of most, but would rather use violence to keep the lower orders and economically superfluous in line. Ironically, the more problems that we face, the more that the political system is converging and unwilling to adapt. This means that in actual policy both parties have been converging closer to each other (Biden has not deviated from Trump's immigration policy, and is in fact, working towards Obama's record as Deporter in Chief, has clawed back pandemic protections and relief even from the low bar Trump set, has been funding police using federal programs and therefore more anti-BLM than Trump). But for electoral and political identity reasons, the more that both parties are far-right fascist parties aligned on policy, their rhetoric and political maneuvers have to be more polarized.
So, even though in external challenges and capacity on paper are in the West's favor, I really think we cannot count out the institutional decay and how every political institution is hell-bent against ever adapting to changing conditions other than strengthening the police-state.
It's the Onion, but I think this demonstrates a metaphorical truth about how Neoliberalism of the last 40 years removed any state capacity to deal with crises and changing conditions: https://www.theonion.com/something-about-the-way-society-was-exposed-as-complete-1846251067
I did say "overall", it wasn't premised entirely on climate change. My concern is that the systems of government, influence and leadership have been pretty badly corrupted. No other region or culture needs to be better for this to be true ... all cultures/civilisations have periods of decay without "dying" or being conquered.
If we wanted to, sure. I mean, we like you and me want to, but we have no say. We were also supposedly "best positioned to manage a pandemic" and just look how that turned out. I know I'm not saying anything particularly novel here, but the capitalist response to covid has been a trial balloon for the capitalist response to climate change, and the results are pretty grim. As long as there's more profit to be made at the top by monetizing the rot, the problems will never be addressed.
With all the dystopian content I've been consuming lately I'd say we're heading to an age of
Mass surveilance
Regionalistic Economies in place of globalism
Widening wealth disparity
Intensified distrust of our governmentsThat is if the tensions in Asia Pacific don't turn into an all out conflict ( Live in PH )
Let me be a bit more optimistic:
Mass surveillance
I think we're already there, and despite the fact you can see laws signed that would point to more surveillance, you can't ban encryption effectively. It's kinda hard to ban maths, much harder than weed or booze, and see how they went. Point is, these laws IMO drive awareness of the issue, and everyone can just encrypt their stuff easily, and enforcement of a ban on that is near impossible.
Regionalistic Economies in place of globalism
That's the geopolitical dream of some countries ... but I don't see the current world order in trade buckling. That said, let's say that the current world order changes by the USD losing the world's biggest reserve currency status, what then? Will some countries simply not trade with others because of that? Maybe some pecking orders will rearrange themselves, but no one is interested in destroying the system, people just want their country to dictate instead of the US.
Widening wealth disparity
I don't think it can widen much more, as the pendulum swings both ways. See how socio-economic woes destabilized the US. We either fix the billionaire problem in a legal orderly fashion, or it resolves itself in an uglier way. It can't get much worse than this without social order breaking down, and then it's all moot. The rich can move to their New Zealand bunkers or the Moon to escape the mob, it's not that much different from them dying or going to prison as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
Intensified distrust of our governments
Have we ever trusted them? And to be honest, should we trust them? I mean I think governments are less untrustworthy than corporations, but still, they have power, and thus should be scrutinized. And besides, the loonies who always vote for the biggest idiot already don't trust the government. If this growing distrust results in more participation in politics from decent people who just want to live their lives, that's a good thing.
I think wealth disparity can get much worse than this. People used to be enslaved and forced into serfdom. The people on top wouldn't have to win if the people revolted, they just have to not lose and let the people who already struggle die from starvation. Such a scenario is highly unpredictable and personally I still think the people would win, but it's definitely an uphill battle that's getting harder the more we remain passive.
More climate refugees, more crop failures due to worsening climate change, more deaths due to climate change
Civilization will be crawling on its hands and knees, dying.
The rich will all be trying to pile into New Zealand.
America will be a warzone.
I'll have been killed by a flash mob stealing food from vulnerable houses.
Canada will be overrun by refugees, with rampant disease and cannibalism in the camps.
The republicans in the USA will still deny climate change, saying it's all a hoax.
The middle east and india will be uninhabitable.
Nuclear weapons use will be widespread.
The Internet won't exist anymore.
Everyone reading this comment will be dead.
The same as now but more dilapidated, desperate, and annoying, if you're lucky enough to not have everything changed by climate catastrophe in that time or torn apart by war
Oh, and people won't hang out outside much in most places for much of the year, we'll all collectively shelter indoors, as discomfort from heat becomes common and people start adapting to constant dangerous heatwaves
Don't forget the oppressively dense smoke covering all of North America every summer, simultaneously during extreme heat waves, meaning that the cheap leaky window AC systems found in normally cool areas will make people have to choose between overheating and coughing.
eventually there won't be enough left to burn to cause the smoke clouds!
Hopefully
nota live action Cyberpunk 2077While i know I wouldn't make it for very long, fuck yeah I wanna see a samurai show!
At least I might get to cruise with the valentinos and maybe get hooked up with some sick body mods
I don't think I can give a better or more creative answer than what's already here.
But I can assure you, people in ten years will come back to this thread to see how the predictions fared.
This is the ultimate failure of capitalism, an autonomous Workforce should mean that we are all free to live our lives. Instead it just means that we won't be able to eat.
