Quote:
Originally Posted by bstanko6
Here is what it will look like
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You have issues, man...
On topic. You could not have picked a time where this was more difficult to predict, with the possible exception of the cuban crisis and a couple others. I of course don't believe the future in 2040 will look like the future of the 80ies. The US is in a difficult position, with big oil on decline and a lot of people not stomaching that so well. A key driver for innovation would be a sharp rise in energy pricing (because innovation never happens unless it has to). So a train of thought would be to think of the economic effect when US is left behind and still relies on fossiles when they get scarcer and scarcer.
I also hate to bring up this parallel, but you may want to take a look at the weimar republic, which was a naive democracy with little safety features against people who wanted to rise to absolute power. Could this happen to a US society? dividing it into "we" and "them", ~burning~ media that is not pleasant to ones cause, using peasants with torches to scare opposition, repeating lies in public until it practically becomes truth. Making the ordinary man believe that everything in ones power is done to improve his situation.
I'm sorry for this unordered list, which wasn't my intention as I started writing. but, for an academic, this "could this happen in the US" might be an interesting thesis.