I think innovation has long since stopped being the domain of the US.
Unless you mean in ways to make rich people's lives that bit more convenient and hipsterish.
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I think we're talking past each other. The country best placed to fund green tech, or defund fossil fuels, or change the state of the oil game, is the US.
That will remain true for the entire window of opportunity to do anything except pray, unless the models are very wrong.
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Possibly, but it'd require wholesale systemic change for them to use that potential in a way that isn't imperialistic & neo-colonialist & counter-productive.
Certainly, their 800+ military bases should be retooled for disaster prep & relief, then handed over to host states.
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I think the difficulty of systemic change is oversold as often as it's undersold.
Realistically, it's sufficient for the current US system to collapse, provided the right people manage to seize the momentum.
But the US is such a crazy place, it's hard to predict how it'd go.
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Yep. Predicting anything post-transition is a mugs game.
As pointless as predicting timing.
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The other thing is, when you look at places like the ex-Soviet bloc, these countries all got neoliberalized into new types of shitholes, in spite of their revolutions.
But the US was the primary agent of that neoliberalization. What happens if it collapses? Who subverts *that*?
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One thing's for sure, though:
If people like Bezos don't already have plans for drone armies, they're not playing the long game.
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Drone armies and seasteds/succession and neofuedal sovereignty.
Or just hire Blackwater as their defence department.
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Blackwater will be laughably insufficient.
Is there any country in the world with as much accumulated combat experience and sheer mass of lethal individuals as the US?
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accumulated experience at losing wars.
They aren't close to the best army in the world in terms of skill.
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Not talking bout army as much as pure number of people trained in use of weapons, tactics etc.
Blackwater hasn't really showed any greater competence than US army, either, AFAICT, considering all the fuckups they had in Iraq.