
Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006) - krutulis
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us/
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hash872
I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't
collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more
likely, especially as budget issues prevent the US from deploying the same
overwhelming military power all over the globe. America already spends more of
its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what
progressives will tell you- when push comes to shove, we'll always fund Social
Security over another aircraft carrier or 30,000 troops in South Korea. So, a
slow fadeout seems way, way more likely. Plus, declining birth rates &
declining business dynamism.

The states that actually collapse are the more rigid, authoritarian ones like
the USSR or the Ottoman Empire. Plus the US has one advantage that previous
stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an
emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders.

No offense but I have to roll my eyes a bit at these disaster fetishists.
Orlov is apparently a foreign-born one, but we have tens of thousands of
domestic ones here in the states, this is a very old belief system. (Hell, my
parents were back to the land hippies fleeing Nixon & the imminent nuclear
apocalypse!)

~~~
rumanator
> America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the
> military, contrary to what progressives will tell you

Do you have a source that supports your statement?

~~~
eel
The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic
for 2019:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:2019_Federal_Budget_Infographic.png)

It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example,
social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for
defense.

~~~
pinkfoot
Notice that veterans affairs and a lot of the DOE is filed under 'not
military'.

~~~
rumanator
To be fair, some of the US's defense spending sounds like a way to covertly
fund "socialist" programs in a way that's politically tolerable. For example,
a bunch of weapons programs appear to be driven by the need to artificially
create jobs in some precise locations.

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Hokusai
Without agreeing with many points, the main thesis is true but just for one
point: XXI century economies are less resilient to isolation than in previous
centuries.

We live in a more complex society and countries need each other more than
before. Communication is cheap, transport is cheap so it makes sense to rely
on other for your own need.

So, this lack of preparedness is true for USA, but also for many countries in
Europe, and Asia. The more complex the society the more fragile it is to
disruption.

Is it solvable? Yes. Local renewable energy is a good example of reduction on
distribution complexity. There is more knowledge involved, but there is less
countries participant in the complexity.

To stop believing in politics seems worse advice ever, thou. It seems more a
receipt for collapse than a solution to be more resilient.

> "Took 10 years to recover"

Has Russia recovered? That also needs more probe. To be better that you were
10 years ago is not synonym of being recovered. Russia is just less chaotic,
maybe.

~~~
nopriorarrests
Russia totally recovered by any metric you can pick, from household income to
average life expectancy. Heck, moscow in 80's looked like dumpster fire. Now
it looks like a proper european capital city.

EDIT: to prove my point, russian life expectancy from fed --
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qTgj](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qTgj)

~~~
Spooky23
Russia isn't the Soviet Union. And Moscow isn't the provinces.

I'm not dumping on Russia, but it's easy to look at the shiny place and forget
about the other parts. If you were a time traveller from 1985, NYC looks like
a magical fairy-land (at least on the surface). But Syracuse, NY or Utica,
NY... not so much.

~~~
nopriorarrests
Well yes. USSR had plenty of different -stans included, they are independent
countries now. They are getting back to middle ages since they got
independance 30 years ago, thats true.

But you can take stats for russia proper from soviet times and compare it to
2019. Hell, you can take stats from 1993 when russia was not USSR already but
was still collapsing.

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dnprock
The US is a federation of states. It has already fallen apart in some ways in
this crisis. Power and decision making are shifting to local states. I think
the trend will intensify. The biggest threat to the US is probably secession.
That has not happened since the Civil War. Since then, it has become even more
unified. It's hard to see how states can leave the Union now. Being able to
shift power between local and federal is a strength of the US political
system. At international level, the US alliance may fade away.

I guess China would fall apart next. It's a country that's stitched together
by force and propaganda. It doesn't seem to have the ability to shift its
internal borders. So its collapse would be more dramatic than the US.

~~~
theandrewbailey
In the first 100 years or so, the power in the US was more with states than
the federal government. In the past 100 years, there has been an incredible
accumulation of federal power. The balance is creeping back the original norm,
with a long way to go before secession.

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jrumbut
It's so funny how widespread those beliefs about oil were. I would have
guessed that by now we would be paying $300/bbl and everyone would know that
the end of oil was near.

It's hard to predict the future!

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vasilipupkin
yeah, except it's nonsense, Soviet Union was completely unprepared for
collapse. It couldn't even survive Chernobyl.

~~~
flohofwoe
East German here, so I don't know all that much of the details of Soviet
society before the collapse (but my guess is that the situation wasn't all
that different in all former socialist countries).

I would agree that the (East German) state and government was entirely
unprepared for its own collapse.

But maybe the _people_ were better prepared because they've been living at the
brink of collapse for most of their lives. Shortages of one sort or the other
were a normal occurance, you learned quickly to not depend too much on the
state, but on family and other people. So when the state "disappeared" people
more or less just went on with their business.

And at least in the GDR there was definitely a growing feeling that this
couldn't go on for much longer during the 80's, which may have created a
"subconscious preparedness".

And of course the "collapse of the GDR" wasn't an "apocalypse-style collapse",
but in typical German fashion it was happening very orderly and predictable
once the ball was rolling. And (here's a controversial opinion) even though
many people had their lives turned upside down in the 90's, lost their job,
had to emigrate into the "Golden West", even with all that... being poor in
the reunited Germany still was a better life than being "rich" in East Germany
(whatever that meant, because there was not much to buy for money anyway).

I'm not sure how people in "the West" would have dealt with its own collapse
if the sides had been reversed. Maybe we'll learn in the near future though.

~~~
jotm
This "life always on the brink" preparedness is a major part of what's keeping
poor European countries poor.

Everybody distrusts the government, they rely on each other, learn to do
things themselves so they don't rely on others. So, money doesn't exchange
hands, taxes don't get paid, GDP doesn't grow, more money doesn't get printed.

This is all in a very interconnected world with a mostly free economy, so
outsiders just come and buy up everything because at the end of the day, money
matters.

Instead of preparing for collapse, how about preparing for being united in
work and life and start trusting and depending on each other more.

~~~
flohofwoe
I agree, but at least looking back that was pretty much the only way to keep
going. The government wasn't able to solve (or even recognize) the problems of
the "ordinary people", so the people had to deal with solving the problems
themselves. Of course this will never be as effective as having an actually
functional government, and it will lead to corruption in all levels of
society.

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ltbarcly3
"This too will pass" -Captain Obvious

The US will eventually suffer a collapse, that seems like a safe bet. Then it
will probably recover, become dominant again (at least somewhat), and collapse
again. If we look at Rome, that cycle could continue for 500 years or more.

Wondering who is 'prepared' for a collapse is a weird way to think about it.
If you are capable of taking steps to prepare for a collapse -- you wouldn't
suffer a collapse.

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huffmsa
The US at the federal level, maybe.

But it'll likely just fracture into smaller regional Nations made up of the
states.

Worst case, it's 50 separate nations.

Especially now that we'll likely see a shift back towards state level
autonomy, with the federal government's bungling of the SARS2 pandemic.

The US is decentralized to begin with, the USSR was not. Decentralized systems
fare better in collapse situations.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Corollary: Pay attention to elections to state offices, not just to national
ones. They can matter.

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bobmcbobface
This idea of US collapse, as framed seems deeply silly, for a number of
reasons.

1\. This isn't really the US we are talking about, its the Western economic
system

2\. Things 'collapse' in different ways. A slow collapse looks more like a
transition. Most things don't collapse anywhere near as quickly as the USSR
for obvious reasons.

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TomMckenny
Another perhaps core issue is whether the party in power gets there by
majority will or is there due to legalisms, archaic power distribution and
voter suppression. The party that people didn't vote for is not likely to run
anything in their interest.

~~~
pmiller2
I know you’re referring to _Bush v. Gore_ and the 2016 electoral / popular
vote inversion, both of which benefited Republicans. We’re there any scenarios
in recent history of the sort that benefited Democrats? I can’t think of any.

That said, the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College.
This can be done either by Constitutional amendment, or by the agreement of a
certain number of states [0].

What it wouldn’t fix is the huge body of campaign and election law and
regulations that make it so there will always be exactly 2 major parties,
starting with first past the post voting [1]. While Arrow’s Impossibility
Theorem [2] practically guarantees we will have some paradoxical outcomes if
we have 3 or more parties, even if we eliminate first past the post, I believe
first past the post is one of the most anti-democratic practices we have in
this country.

Finally, while this isn’t really a hard fact, it seems to me that
parliamentary forms of government tend to last longer than presidential
governments. Changing this in the US would be near impossible, requiring a
Constitutional amendment, but it seems to me it is our best hope of lasting
another 200 years.

—-

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-
post_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem)

~~~
pdonis
_> the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College_

This would certainly benefit the Democrats, but I don't see it as a
"solution". It would give states without large urban areas even less political
leverage than they have now. Presidential campaigns would not even bother
visiting most states, since locking up enough votes in large urban areas (all
of which are solidly Democratic) would be sufficient to win the election all
by itself.

The purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a slim 51% majority of the
country from running roughshod over the rest. It is serving that purpose.

~~~
pmiller2
> The purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a slim 51% majority of
> the country from running roughshod over the rest. It is serving that
> purpose.

At that it succeeded. Instead, we have a minority running roughshod over the
majority. Trump was elected with 46.1% of the vote to Clinton's 48.2%.

~~~
pdonis
_> Instead, we have a minority running roughshod over the majority._

No, we have government that is more limited in what it can do because of lack
of consensus between different parts of it (the President, Senate, and House).
Which is exactly what _should_ happen if the country is closely divided.

 _> Trump was elected with 46.1% of the vote to Clinton's 48.2%._

Which indicates that _neither_ side has a majority, let alone enough of a
majority to justify running roughshod over everyone else (which IMO is a lot
more of a majority than just 51%).

------
yters
I wonder if the different economic system had anything to do with USSR's
collapse? And perhaps US collapse becomes more likely as we change economic
systems?

For example, communists killed and imprisoned all the kulaks (land owning
farming class) to create their collective farms. Shortly thereafter the USSR
was hit with devastating famine. Similar series of events happened in China
under Mao. Coincidence or causation? If the latter, is this indicative of the
nature of the USSR economy and perhaps provides insight into why it collapsed?

------
unnouinceput
I have a saying in my country, it translates roughly like this:

"Horsed don't die when dogs want/wish".

Original is "Nu mor caii cand vor cainii"

------
cpr
Orlov is a very interesting character who's written a lot about societal
collapse, having lived through the Soviet version.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_\(writer\)))

I've read some of his books (The Five Stages of Collapse, e.g.) and there's a
lot of food for thought.

He's now spending his time designing and building "unsinkable" houseboats.

His thinkpieces, which in the past were quite worthwhile, are now behind a
paywall at

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knolax
The entire thing seems tongue in cheek to me. Not sure if it had any serious
message.

------
sacks2k
When human life is meaningless and you don't have to make decisions around a
pesky constitution and citizen rights, it's really easy to be prepared for
anything.

~~~
ltbarcly3
This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no
constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich
themselves at the expense of everyone else. They'll enforce policies that
cause starvation and deprivation, often without even realizing they are doing
so - there is no way for information to flow efficiently, and regional
authorities only answer to the central authority and not at all to the people
in their administrative area so they hide bad news.

People use the USSR in WW2 as an example of where central planning led to
success, after all they mobilized the entire country for war and eventually
won. However, the entire Soviet army was destroyed multiple times. Putting on
a Russian army uniform was basically the same as suicide. The rest of the
world didn't have the power to force their citizens into certain death, and as
a result they thought harder and were able to find ways to fight the war
without 90% casualty rates and having entire divisions destroyed to the last
man.

Having to answer to your citizens leads you to be more prepared and more
responsive to problems, not less.

~~~
sacks2k
"This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no
constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich
themselves at the expense of everyone else."

This was my point. The only reason the USSR is better 'prepared' for anything
is because they can make choices that countries like the US can't, at the
expense of human lives.

"People use the USSR in WW2 as an example of where central planning led to
success"

This is a good example of success in a country that doesn't care about human
life.

USSR total deaths in WW2: 24 million United States: 418,000

I think we agree.

~~~
ltbarcly3
If the USSR was organized like the US, they wouldn't have had 1/3 of the
country die, and they wouldn't have had to have 10-1 advantages to win
battles.

The USSR was _lucky_ to survive WW2 at all. They did almost everything they
could to lose the war, from purging almost all the competent officers to
allowing basically the entire army to be destroyed in Poland. If you took the
USSR, and swapped in a democratic government in 1920, they would have escaped
the war with 1/10th as many casualties. Maybe they would have surrendered,
maybe they would have never been attacked, but in the end the 22 million extra
people who died would not have had to.

Your argument comes down to 'only a dictatorship can throw 1/3 of the
population into a meat grinder while the others quietly watch' and I'm saying
'only a dictatorship can do that, but only a dictatorship ever _has_ to do
that'.

