[quacked]

The frustrating thing about the empire collapse is that it doesn't need to happen. There are still tons of highly energized and ostensibly disciplined and competitive people here. It's just that the production base was sold off to foreign lands and the aesthetic and moral project of "America" was effectively discontinued, for reasons unclear.

[input_sh]

I would argue the empire already collapsed, about a year ago when DOGE was tasked with killing every form of soft power that were put in place to present the country in the best possible light across the world.

Even with tons of talented and well-intentioned people and everyone fully aligned to re-build everything broken, it'd take decades to rebuild that trust that was lost in a matter of weeks.

[pocksuppet]

The first sign many Roman citizens had that their empire had collapsed is when a bridge near them fell down and nobody showed up to repair it.

America's been in that mode for a long time.

[giardini]

That is your local city and county, not the "American empire". And your judgement in choosing where you live!8))

[pocksuppet]

Is your local city and county not part of the empire?

If the empire doesn't have any cities and counties, it must have already collapsed.

[dh2022]

Take a drive on an interstate highways. Whenever I take an Uber/Lyft to the airport I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the US.

US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to admit that.

[xienze]

> I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the US. > US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to admit that.

So why do so many people want to keep coming here?

[pocksuppet]

It's a financial accident. After World War 2, the USA was the least damaged country on the winning side, so it got to own the western world's financial system. It used that [exorbitant privilege](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege) - possibly unintentionally - to import money and export inflation for decades, keeping the exchange rate skewed in its favor.

People aren't coming for the scenic canyons, they're coming to get some of that USA money, so they can be on the benefitting side of the skewed exchange rate, instead of the losing side. Many of them exchange part of their salary for their home currency and send it home, in quantities that would be impossible to accrue if you did the same work in that country.

[nyargh]

> So why do so many people want to keep coming here?

They don't, in fact, at least not anymore:

"We estimate that net migration was between –10,000 and –295,000 in 2025, the first time in at least half a century it has been negative."

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/macroeconomic-implication...

[raincom]

Still better than the third world. For instance, UK is seen as a vassal state of US, and it lost its old glory. Still people want to migrate to UK. Many French speaking folks from Africa want to migrate to France and others.

Politicians and folks in the third world are not keen on developing their own countries. Clean water, clean energy, better education, less corruption are not something they are striving for. Politicians there want to make money for generations, while sending their kids to US/UK/EU for studies, while at the same time selling bad policies for public (freebies, this or that scheme just to garner power to make more money off looting via contracts, natural resources).

[dh2022]

The Uber drivers I talked have their families back home. That is how we end up comparing airports. That tells you where third world people see their future.

[pocksuppet]

The first world is defined as the countries that are affiliated with the USA, so that's not strictly accurate. However, we can say it's a developing country - a first-world developing country.

[joquarky]

It's probably time to sit down, drink a cold one (or whatever relaxes you) and admit to yourself that the semantics have drifted.

[autoexec]

We can't be a developing country when we're doing the opposite of developing.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> It'd take decades to rebuild that trust that was lost in a matter of weeks.

There is some truth to this. Other examples of crossing the line and breaking long-term trust would be:

To Canada: Statements about Canada last year.

To Europe: The idiocy around Greenland earlier this year

To the Middle East: Current events.

[input_sh]

If I may go a step further in history: tearing up the JCPOA (AKA the Iran deal) was like shouting from a megaphone "the US word means nothing now". Even the Palestine situation could've been predicted 6 years before Oct 7th when the US was the very first nation to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, before 5 others followed (none of them "significant").

Things have definitely accelerated in the second term, but it's not like there weren't signs that political leaders definitely noticed were disruptive, even if the wider public weren't as aware at the time.

[MSFT_Edging]

I do wonder how far certain acts could go in rebuilding the trust.

Ie real actual legal liability. Line up anyone who did insider trading, the doge guys, the big mouths in the big house, and put them through a zero tolerance military tribunal.

No bullshit kangaroo court where they're let off with a slap on the wrist because they're rich.

I mean strip every last one of these motherfuckers of everything they're worth. 180 the kangaroo court. Make a public mockery of them. Posters everywhere.

Think of it as a peace offering for the rest of the world. We could even include the war on terror guys in there, all the liars who claimed WMDs could go to the same federal prison. No cushions.

[b3ing]

The Supreme Court doesn’t care. That’s the #1 sign the country is over, it’d take a miracle to get out of this decline. And then everyone is just going to be pardoned. There were no ethics baked into the constitution, that was the fatal flaw, even businesses have such things to prevent lawsuits or internal drama or issues

[intended]

These would be table stakes. They would only indicate that America is moving in another direction than currently.

The rest of the world would then take a wait and watch approach.

Besides, even getting to that point would need to mean that this situation would not arise again.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> The rest of the world would then take a wait and watch approach.

Agreed, as I have said before (1) even if the next administration is very different, that has happened before in 2020-2024. The lesson that the USA just is a country that does this from time to time. Expecting it to happen a third time is reasonable. Wait and watch would be an appropriate response.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46217131

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46837147

[xienze]

So your answer to restoring trust is to create a kangaroo court in the opposite direction?

[MSFT_Edging]

"Hey sorry all these guys completely hijacked our checks and balances in their favor, we're going to remove them completely from societal circulation and try again"

[specialist]

IMHO Pax Americana ended (passed the point of no return) with GWB. Iraq, 2008 financial crisis, SCOTUS picks, unitary executive, extraordinary rendition, breaking of weapons treaties (nuke testing, bio & chem warfare), abandoning peace between Isreal & Palestinians, etc, etc.

Forfieted any remaining goodwill.

(Post 9/11, It would have been so easy to choose the other path.)

Trump just made it undeniable.

[JumpCrisscross]

> would argue the empire already collapsed

The republic may be collapsing. The empire comes after. The rich benefit if we transition to an autocratic empire based on American military might.

[samrus]

When the roman republic collapsed, they were still at their upwards inflection point. Ceasar was still on a roll. They hadnt peaked yet. This feels more like when the empire was in the early stages of coming down from its peak.

I think the roman republic to empire transition doesnt have much to do with the trajectory of rome at all. Their institutions were still strong. With america, her institutional knowledge is being stripped apart. Thats hard to pull up from

[JumpCrisscross]

> This feels more like when the empire was in the early stages of coming down from its peak

Based on which contemporaneous source? Personally, this feels like Cicero. Not Caligula.

[frm88]

... American military might...

Trump urges US allies to send warships to Strait of Hormuz as Iran vows to retaliate https://apnews.com/article/iran-iraq-us-trump-march-15-2026-...

[hackyhacky]

> It's just that the production base was sold off to foreign lands

It wasn't. You are conflating "production" with "manufacturing." They're not the same. The US, for better or worse, produces a lot of value.

> moral project of "America" was effectively discontinued

I'm not sure America was ever a "moral project," considering the many many dark parts of its history. Nevertheless, at the moment moment, it seems to be on a quest find the bottom of the pit of depravity.

[twoodfin]

We are also still manufacturing more in constant-$ value than we ever have, we just use a lot fewer person-hours/$ to do it.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USMANRGSP

[nine_k]

The land of the free, and all that. America was a radical moral project when it was founded, as a republic (when monarchies dominated the world) with enshrined religious freedom (when state-enforced religions were the norm). The Civil War arguably had a large moral dimension, too.

[suzzer99]

* Does not apply to native Americans or slaves.

[nine_k]

Slavery was not supported in half of the initial US of A, and initially Native Americans had relatively benign relationships with the settlers, while the latter were weak. The course of America as a moral project was pretty meandering, but the moral dimension was almost always there.

[hackyhacky]

> Native Americans had relatively benign relationships with the settlers, while the latter were weak

Translation: Native Americans were nice to the European settlers, until the European settlers were in a position to murder and expel in the Native Americans. The genocide against the Native Americans happened both before and after the founding of the United States, which casts serious doubt on a claim that the US has a "moral" mission.

> Slavery was not supported in half of the initial US of A,

Not sure where this math came from. Slavery was legal in all 13 colonies at the time of the revolutionary war. It wasn't until later, and in some cases much later, that the so-called "free states" actually freed slaves.

[quacked]

The US had a highly moral mission at the time of its founding; but that moral platform differs significantly from our own today. The adjective "moral" does not mean "in good standing with what I believe is proper morality", it means "of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior".

I do not believe that the majority of Americans today believe that there is any "moral" purpose for the American government to exist. The left wing sees the US as a fundamentally illegitimate country founded by the dual sins of slavery and genocide that should be improved by dismantling its own myth structure and importing as many foreign cultures as possible to supplant whatever came before. The right wing is only interested in the existence of American hegemony insofar as it can use it to crush its cultural enemies or enrich itself, and is happy to violate by theft or violence any American principle in name or in spirit so long as there's good short term gain.

Neither is thinking of the Nation as an aesthetic and moral project to advance the state of mankind under God, or even Science, or Human Rights, which was how its founders explicitly thought and wrote about it.

[hackyhacky]

Or women. Or non-white immigrants. Or former slaves or their descendants. Etc etc

[kelseyfrog]

"Sold off" isn't wrong per se, but glosses over the root cause: Triffin dilemma.

The USD cannot exist as a reserve currency and support domestic manufacturing. That is to say, the US political engine and its benefactors sold out domestic manufacturing for international leverage.

Did it have to be this way? No, we could have implemented the Bancor, but the appeal of dominating international politics was irresistible. We cannot reindustrialize without giving up international financial power and with that in mind, who would still decide to switch?

[pixelready]

Yeah, the more I learn about American history, the more I realize American elites were never bought in to the “moral project”, but were happy to use it as PR to a largely religious public.

Though I’m not particularly looking forward to living through the decline of the empire, I cling to the hope that a post-imperial America can emerge and attempt to live up to the dream of FDR, MLK, and that Jesus guy everyone seems to like so much but ignores all the inconvenient tolerance and sharing stuff he was so obsessed with.