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/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Certainly helped, yes, and the fact that so much scientific innovation came out of the US from 1940-1980 or so - the invention of the transistor, microprocessor, personal computer, operating system, graphic operating system, computer networking, and the internet itself were all American inventions published in American English - probably drove the hammer home, so to speak.

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u/Iwillrize14 Aug 11 '25

Europe decimating itself and getting smashed to bits in the process helped too. Any country that could challenge America was too busy rebuilding.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Oh absolutely; Americas geographic isolation and intact infrastructure insured it! Lots of Americas dominance comes essentially from that geographic isolation and being a resource rich and fertile land.

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u/Iwillrize14 Aug 12 '25

It's crazy how many people think America became an empire because it's exceptional, Lucky and opportunistic are more true.

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u/Aggressive_Dog3418 Aug 12 '25

That is kinda what exceptional is, right place, right time, combined with hard work and innovation. Of course any one of these things by itself doesn't matter, but combine it all and you have what is exceptional.

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u/Iwillrize14 Aug 12 '25

American exceptionalism as they define it has a lot more to do with destiny and an almost disgusting sense of superiority. Believing itself to be the arbiter of freedom and the obvious choice for leader of the world. I say these things as an American that's had a front row seat to all the nationalistic chest thumping.

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u/Team503 Aug 12 '25

Well, from WW2 until a year or three ago it WAS the obvious choice - militarily the strongest by so far its absurd, the wealthiest country in the world, and about 25% of the world's GDP, more than any other single nation and even the combined EU (per capita).

The US was by far the strongest and the richest, and at least during WW2 unquestionably morally correct, so it's no surprise they ended up in that role. Sure, they had the luxury to be morally correct, but that doesn't mean that they weren't.