One definition of a collapse is a sudden drastic reduction in the complexity of a thing.

I’m not sure whether we’re going to have a societal collapse or a slow decline, but either way the US is in a downward spiral. I think Trump increases the likelihood of us going into the collapse trajectory.

All that said, on the other side of a collapse, there is some room for hope. The incendiary portion of the collapse will definitely suck to live through (if you’re lucky enough to do so), but our country could probably use some simplification long-term because the people within it largely cannot navigate a country this Byzantine. A lot of this country’s systems are too complex for an average person to understand let alone administer.

Most of these complexities were probably birthed via intentional decisions by the system creators, and others were a product of unintended consequences. I think the gap in education between our commoners and “the elite” – to borrow an awful trope – also played a part here.

No matter how we arrived, I don’t think the current population can actually operate these systems anymore and long-term one way or another our people require a drastic reduction in the complexity of our society.

There is another path in which the United States invests more in education and scales up the average intelligence of its citizens so that they can handle the complexity of modern life, nuance, do research, and create better policy…but at this point I think we’re frankly too far fucked to ever go down that path.