War Is Coming

[Independent voter]

"War Is Coming" is the name of the blogger's article. I admit I don't see it his way, I'm much more optimistic. The economic strife caused by globalization is a passing thing, the division between the haves and the have nots will eventually narrow. We've had 60+ years of relative peace in the industrialized world, I think we'll go another 60 at least. I am concerned about the changes automation will bring, but not war so much.

Historically I have to say he's right, we're long over due for a war by about 40 years.







http://sudoscript.com/war-is-coming/

Something dark is swelling up in the world. A fear, a dangerous fear, boiling over into anger and hate.

The kind of fear we've seen before. The kind that leads down a road we know too well.

The signs are happening everywhere, all at once. People are rising to the clarion calls of nationalism. Brexit in the UK. Trump in the US. Far-right chauvinism in Europe. Jingoism in Russia. Machoism in China and India. Sectarianism in the Middle East. Scary identity politics, everywhere you look.

Where did this come from? Why are people everywhere turning to nationalism? Why does everyone suddenly want to draw a line between themselves and the rest of the world?

Because of fear. A single, gripping fear that's sweeping the world, from England to Ohio, from Vienna to Moscow to Raqqa to Delhi to Rome.

The fear that the future isn't nearly as big as we were promised it was. That it doesn't have space for all of us.

This fear is very real, and it's driving people to fight for their place in a suddenly shrinking future. What we're seeing them do, all over the world, is decide who they're willing to fight alongside, and who they're not.

What we're watching is the world draw battle lines.


To be honest, the future has never had space for everyone. There have always been winners and losers, and not everyone makes it. Why would we expect anything else now?

Because we made the cardinal mistake of history: we thought things would be different this time. We believed we live in a new age, an age of technology and globalization, where we can solve the problems to build a future large enough to hold everyone. An age where anyone with the dream of a better life could have it. All they had to do was try.

That promise might just have doomed us all.

True, technology and globalization did solve a lot of problems. They unequivocally improved the standard of living around the world, and they did make the future bigger. They just happened to do it for a much smaller share of people than we thought they would.

In fact, that's the problem: technology and globalization radically expanded the pie, but they also shrank the number of people who got the big pieces.

How? By simple economics. Globalization collapsed multiple, smaller markets into single, winner-take-all ones -- expanding the size of the prizes, while reducing the number of prizes overall. Meanwhile, technology provided the leverage of automation, letting much smaller groups of people capture those prizes. The model of the future are tech startups -- small teams winning giant global markets.

So instead of a harmonious global order with lots of winners, we got hegemonies of very few. We got globe-spanning corporations in winner-take-all markets. We got corrupt governments selling their country to the highest bidder. We got powerful elites who wrote rulebooks for everyone else that they didn't follow themselves. We got gridlocked political systems, widening inequality, and smaller pieces of the pie.

Yes, in absolute terms, technology and globalization gave people more things. Thanks to lower costs of production, many people have access to cheap cell phones and a wide array of consumer choice -- more than the richest kings did 500 years ago.

But human psychology doesn't work in absolute terms. It works in relative ones. And in relative terms, technology and globalization have led to a shrinking winners' circle. In relative terms, the number of people who feel like they're losing, like they don't even have a chance in this new game, far outweigh the ones who do.


This brings us back to the crazies. The Donald Trumps and the Marine LePens. See, the scariest thing about them isn't what they say. The scariest thing about them is how many people agree.

When Trump says no one's winning any more, when Putin says the system is rigged, when Brexiteers say they want to take their country back, it makes sense to a lot of people in a very visceral way. Even to people who vehemently dislike them. Because across the political spectrum, we know these things are real.

That's why the crazies are not going away. Maybe Trump won't win. The UK might even reverse Brexit. But we won't get back to the way things were. What's supporting the rise of Trump, what's behind Brexit, what's driving all the unrest is not going away. At its root, it's about something much bigger than immigration and jobs and the fears of old, white people. At its root, it's about a fundamental shift in the way the world works.

It's about the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer winners. It's about all the people who feel left out. It's about their fear, and what they're willing to do about it.

Now, here's the scary part. We know where this kind of fear utlimately leads. We've taken this road many, many times in our history, and we know exactly where it goes.

It leads to people looking out for their own. It leads to them making enemies out of others. It leads to mob nationalism, to strongmen, to brinksmanship. It leads to us frantically searching for alternatives, desparately trying to hold onto the hope we still live in a new age.

And ultimately, when all the alternatives have been found lacking, when there are still too many people who feel the future doesn't have space for them, it leads to the inevitable conclusion.

War.

Not the small-scale, proxy wars we've been fighting off and on for the last 50 years. Big war. The kind that happens when an irresistable force meets an immovable object. The kind that breaks the world.

You might think there are some really obvious reasons the world won't go to war on a large scale. Not the least because large-scale warfare today would be a blind jump by humanity into the abyss. But fear doesn't obey logic. Especially not on this scale.

Believing, really believing that the future doesn't have space for you, your loved ones, and your way of life -- believing that you are on the verge of extinction -- is so scary that people will fight to the death for it. It is almost always why we do.

And that's exactly how many, many people feel today. Too many people. Sure, we can sneer at them. We can call them racist for blaming immigrants and stupid for blaming trade. But it frankly doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that they're pissed off. It doesn't change the fact that we don't have enough to go around -- not enough energy, not enough water, not enough jobs. It doesn't change the truth that there are winners and losers on a scale we've rarely if ever seen before.

We still have some time. For now, most people are fighting peacefully enough, with words and votes. We might still be able to find a way out from under the steamroller of history, but the chances look slim and we're running out of time.

Because if history teaches us one thing, it's that ultimately, push come to shove, people will fight any way they have to, in order to survive. And make no mistake. Push is coming to shove.

The future is coming, whether we're ready or not.

[Gamdwelf]

Row row fight the powah

Idk I think their might be some more greater unrest in the Western world Europe and USA for some similar reasons like wealth inequality and racial tensions etc.

[Deleted]

Globalism IS the problem.

[HillaryJtrump]

Fear-mongering it works

[Gamdwelf]

Globalism IS the problem.

No, not really.

[Nihilist74]

I think the article is full of shit. Their are a lot of places in the world that are not nice places to live but even for them the quality of life is improving. Technology is reaching more and more people everyday. I don't think we will ever see a full scale war like world war 2 ever again unless there is a major crisis that brings peoples quality of life way down. I think all we will see is guerilla and terrorist warfare from fringe groups like isis and al quida.

[BarelyLegalBear]

Yeah really, my ass is about to explode.

[zenkai]

I stopped reading at "blogger"

[PC2]

Increasing social tension will be a good thing, it will help strengthen borders. I don't see large scale war on the horizon though, there isn't enough reward in it.

[Crispin]

Nonsense, some people seem to think that world wars need a sequel, like its a James Bond movie.

The author doesnt come around, how nuclear weapons mean that everyone will loose far more than they'll gain from a major war, furthermore the powergap between NATO and number 2, is so big that a non-nuclear war is as big of a loss as a nuclear one.

But I think it's human nature to see our doom right around the corner.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

wtf is this lol? Some doomsday speech?
I expected there to be something worth discussing when I clicked this title, but it looks like it was just clickbait.

Anyone can pontificate on why "War is coming."
Its either coming very soon or it isn't though.
Its like saying "Winter is coming" when you are a Stark.
No shit, it snows in the summer.
When will it effect me though?

[Gheld]

No, not really.

Yeah. It actually is. It wouldn't be if Feudalism were completely dead and feudalists hadn't completely hijacked the idea from the get go.

But they have. The architects of the system built corruptions into it from the get-go. As long as they or their progeny still draw breath nobody with any shred of reason could ever expect the system to become uncorrupted.

Maybe some time in the future a more equitable model can be developed. But this particular model is broken. The powers that be in this world are a bunch of Feudalist shitlords, and anybody who defends their precious little system is a shit lord by association.

Inequity is growing because of this system. Because those who benefit from that inequity control the system.

And if you people don't drop your naive marxist star trek utopian fantasies we are all going to be fucked, in our lifetime.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I'd say that it's a case of allowing terrorism to win.

[Forogil]

Regarding globalization and the haves and have-nots the article is right on perception, but wrong on facts. Unfortunately people respond more to perception than facts.

[Theodarzna]

Well all orders die out eventually.

[Kalis]

It will be an internet war of words.

We shall fight on the forums, we shall fight on the Youtube comments, we shall fight in the blogs and on Facebook, we shall fight in the Twittersphere; we shall never surrender.

[kail]

Globalism IS the problem.

That tends to come with the tech evolution package. Hopeless to fight against, better off adapting to it.

We can complain about our economic situation all day, but we are still among the strongest countries thanks to the globalized industries.

[Gheld]

It will be an internet war of words.

We shall fight on the forums, we shall fight on the Youtube comments, we shall fight in the blogs and on Facebook, we shall fight in the Twittersphere; we shall never surrender.

But ultimately, standing alone, /pol/ shall Triumph.

[Bartumus22]

Naaaah. Trumps are idiots and everyone knows it.

[Theodarzna]

It will be an internet war of words.

We shall fight on the forums, we shall fight on the Youtube comments, we shall fight in the blogs and on Facebook, we shall fight in the Twittersphere; we shall never surrender.

Actually, as the internet becomes indispensable to the affairs and function of the government, cyber warfare will become pretty damn common place.

That is actually the major threat of the future, as technology grows the power of just a single disgruntled Doctor Doom to unleash havoc goes up exponentially.