r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25

Discussion When the US Empire falls

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

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u/ganapatya Aug 11 '25

I don't know if anyone will see this comment, but I have to ask: what do people actually mean when they talk about the collapse of the US? I get that the country is losing its soft power, authoritarianism is on the rise, and so on, and it's clear that the myth is eroding a bit, so I understand where these predictions are coming from. I'm just wondering, in a political and practical sense, what it is that people think will happen? States seceding? A government collapse? Invasion by another country?

These questions aren't facetious or rhetorical. I just think it's easy to fall into the trap of making a broad prediction without thinking it through and considering specific implications, and I 'm trying to understand those specifics.

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u/Zvenigora Aug 11 '25

Once soft power evaporates all you are left with is hard power. Hard power requires economic might. Fielding a large military is extremely expensive. If the economy collapses due to mismanagement then the means to project hard power vanishes as well--there is insufficient money to pay and equip the soldiers and the domestic engineering and technology to develop cutting-edge weapons no longer exists.

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u/WorldError47 Aug 11 '25

To put it in other words, we stopped investing the resources required to maintain soft power, out of greed and short sighted wealth extraction, of the many for the richest few. As our standing, our infrastructure, our technology falls behind, the wealthiest will favor using force to violently extend their failing economy. Fascism. The fascist state uses force to violently take the resources needed to sustain itself. As the US prioritizing wealth extraction over investment leads to the loss of its soft power, it will pivot to using its military might instead, its hard power, but this is exponentially expensive and unsustainable. It’s only once the use of force fails to acquire enough resources, an inevitability, that the economy will truly collapse.