Putting aside the chance of Trump causing a nuclear winter and leaving the world for the cockroaches, what do you think the U.S. map (demographically, environmentally, economically, politically, map-o-logically, etc) will look like in 150 years?
A few of my thoughts:
-California exited and became the United States of NoCal, ImpValCal, and SoCal, but due to lack of water, everyone is squished into Humboldt county. Some hardy folk remain in central and Southern Cal, but it’s largely a bleak dustbowl and Mad Maxian politics.
-The East Coast, from Maine to D.C., is the Confederated Eastern States of America. We zip around in our flying cars and our government is a technocracy. Nearly all of the former U.S.'s wealth is concentrated in the CESA.
-Texas, naturally, seceded about 120 years ago and took Oklahoma with it.
If there is any kind of upheaval vivid enough to change paradigms, countries like USA are more likely to evolve into city-states, with a hint of that already apparent on any red-and-blue map of America’s voting results. American cities are largely dominated by populations of people who came from non-traditional American roots, and the cultural compositions of them differ a great deal from each other. Even San Francisco and Los Angeles re unlikely to feel much affinity for each other when push comes to shove, nor Atlanta/Miami, nor Pittsburgh/Philadelphia, nor New York/Boston, nor even Houston/Dallas.
Each large metro area will have its own gravity, with a circle of hinterlands tributary to it. These city-states, like the Holy Roman Empire, will drift in and out of enmity (probably non-belligerent) with each other, and probably eventually reform into a union, as Germany and Italy did 150 years ago.
Much the same. I just figure that by then the Republicans will be back to the party of the oppressed as they were in 1860 and the Democrats the party of the rich and powerful as they were at the same time-frame.
2166 is 150 years from now. For comparison 150 years ago was 1866.
The broad outlines of most major countries today aren’t that different from 1866. With a couple notable exceptions: Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans. Plus the rest of the conversion of the western US from territories to states.
Yes, there are lots of small detail changes beyond those two. Which details felt pretty major locally if you lived right there in the border zone.
In my view society and the economy today are much more interconnected than they were at any time in the past. And they’ll be more so in the future. A consequence of that is that upheaval, particularly violent upheaval, will be vastly more expensive and logistically infeasible now and in the future than it was 100 years ago. So there will be less of it, at least assuming we don’t all chimp out and become rage-aholics.
I agree with jtur88 that economically it’ll be a world of powerful super-cities and comparatively impoverished hinterlands. Whether that’ll get reflected in real realignments of political borders is a whole different matter.
In the Mideast and Africa, where the states are already unstable? Sure. In Europe, much of Asia and the US? Probably not.
Wild cards are continuous and accelerating climate change, that big meteor strike in 2057, the eastern US sliding into the Atlantic after the Big One hits the San Andreas in 2062 (Related? Scientists still debate that a hundred years later in 2166), and other geophysical surprises.
Much of California becomes the West Coast equivalent of Jersey Shore. Trashy Americanized Latino’s vote for a corrupt Democrat Presidential candidate whose surname ends in chez and simultaneously vote in a tough talking, scandal ridden Republican Governor who loves sticking it to media types, liberals and bridges.
President Skynet has just been re-elected to its 23rd consecutive term with the overwhelming support of the Robo-American community.
Complaints that the administration continues to perpetuate a climate of hatred and discrimination against organic meatbags continue to fall on inactive auditory sensors as the administration focuses its priorities on carving the flag onto the face of the Moon and colonizing the Marianas Trench.