Based Camp: Could Our Civilization Collapse in the Near Future?

Description written by an evil AI (for SEO not for actual reading): In this thought-provoking conversation, Malcolm and Simone delve deep into the question - can our civilization collapse? They discuss the historical instances of civilizations collapsing, drawing parallels with the Egyptian and Roman empires, and offer insight into what a modern civilization collapse might look like. We also delve into the big societal experiments of our time - globalization, gender equality, and high levels of education. As the conversation evolves, Malcolm and Simone also discuss the implications of such a collapse on everyday life, from disrupted supply lines and increased conservatism to impacts on mobility and job availability. Importantly, they provide invaluable perspectives on how to navigate such uncertain futures, discussing the role of debt, pensions, and investments in a potentially collapsing economy. If you're curious about the past, concerned about the present, and thoughtful about the future, this discussion is not to be missed. Make sure to hit the like button if you found this information useful and subscribe for more insightful conversations like this one.

Hey Malcolm. Hello,

Simone. We have such an exciting topic today.

Yes, indeed. Can our civilization collapse? Discuss? Yeah,

it's, I think this is such an interesting topic because we hear people talk about this and we call them preppers or we, we, I think it's a very easy thing to dismiss because if you look at the past couple hundred years civilization hasn't collapsed,

I think the first thing to establish in terms of thinking about can civilization collapse is, has it happened in the past? And the answer is yes. It's happened a number of times in the past. Whether you're looking at the Egyptian civilization of the Roman civilization or various periods of.

The Egyptians that happened to them like four different times. If you go through history, when you're talking about the New Kingdom versus the old Kingdom versus the middle kingdom, that was three periods of collapse with many collapses in between.

So in Egypt it got so bad they forgot how to write, came up with new systems writing, they forgot how to draw. It's really interesting.

You can see art falling apart and then be. Reinvented, not even rediscover, but reinvented in between these collapse periods. So I think Rome presents probably the best model of a collapse we can look at for what a collapse of our own society might look like. Yeah.

That's what people always discuss, right?

The fall of the Roman Empire and is quote unquote Western civilization falling. Yeah.

Talking about Western civilization today is silly China to an extent evolved on a different civilizational route. Japan evolved on a different civilizational route, Korea did.

If they collapse, we collapse. We're all tied together at this point. There's just civilization now. But to go back in time, with the collapse of the Roman Empire to the average Roman on the street, they probably wouldn't have noticed.

That much change in their daily lives mm-hmm. as the collapse was happening. They may have noticed that rules around religious practices were becoming more orthodox supply lines. Like they, they had less stuff in their local stores or things were getting dramatically more expensive.

Political figures may have been increasingly becoming more radical acting. But from their perspective, and I'm talking about like in the Western Roman Empire, so let's say someone in Spain not that much would've changed from their day-to-day life. And also keep in mind with the collapse of Rome, you had the Western Roman Empire collapse long before the Eastern Roman Empire did the Byzantine Empire.

And so there's this idea that collapse means everywhere. All at once goes road wire, right? Cause that's what we see in media. Yeah.

Yeah. Road Warrior Water World. We're picturing complete lack of infrastructure. No government. But you're saying that's not what civilizational collapse is, what I'm hearing from you is you're saying it's poorer services.

What exactly is it? Be a little more specific

here. It's a collapse of. Supply networks. Okay. It's a collapse of an economic system. The biggest thing that's associated with civilizational collapse is economic system collapse.

To the extent that once you have a collapse of an economic system, then you begin to have a collapse of a geopolitical order.

And presumably this is some kind of irreversible collapse cause otherwise you could define the pandemic. As a temporary

civilization? Well, No. What you have to ask is what does it look like when it's, is what we saw in the pandemic part of what you see during a civilizational collapse?

Yes. No, for sure. So I guess you could say that what many people experienced during the pandemic is what civilizational collapse would feel like. You can't get some products that you really want to get you, you can't go to work or you don't have a job, or people aren't letting you work.

Or traveling becomes more dangerous. That's a really big thing was in civilizational class. Mobility in general. Mobility. And one thing to remember is that culture often doesn't completely go away. It just becomes a lot less. Aggressive in terms of change.

So what you see is culture become dramatically more conservative for often a period of like a hundred, 200 years. Um, and, And before that, often culture is much more promiscuous or permissive, I think is the word. Both promiscuous and purpose. Oh,

so yeah. So you're going from. Freedom, recess to like cracking down.

You're in the middle of math class.

Yeah. But then things begin to open up again after that period if things survive. And that's where this question gets really interesting. So the first big point I'd make about civilizational collapse for a lot of people when they think about the existing world civilization is there's this belief that we have been on a consistent trajectory for the past 300 years or so, and we're not in the middle of any really big experiments at the moment, like at the economic or geopolitical level, and that's just factually wrong. We have started a number of really big worldwide society-wide experiments pretty recently, and these experiments affect people's daily lives.

So let's just talk so

globalism. Gender egalitarian, like sort of women in the workforce and women being educated, high levels of education in general.

So yeah, but was women being educated? I think people look at that and they're they really misunderstand the scope of that one. Women being widely educated and accepted into the workforce was one thing, but the workforce and the economy adapting to that to lower wages.

With the idea that you had doubled the amount of workers in the economy that was the bigger fallout of that. Which meant that it really became almost impossible. Not that it was really that possible before. It was actually a myth that on a global scale, it was ever realistic to raise a family on a single income.

Yeah. But there was a period where in certain parts of the US and Europe, it was possible for a 50 year period to raise a family on a one family income. That possibility is just not there anymore. So I think a lot of people, they're like, oh, you could have women like you actually see pushes for this now.

Oh, you could have women not be educated and that would solve the problem or women not work. But as long as some countries are engaging in women working that doesn't really work, then you're just choosing to be desperately poor. Is really what's going on when you make that change at a society-wide level.

Yes, some people can be wealthy enough to make that decision, but we're past doing that anymore. You see a similar thing with some