Without agreeing with many points, the main thesis is true but just for one point: XXI century economies are less resilient to isolation than in previous centuries.
We live in a more complex society and countries need each other more than before. Communication is cheap, transport is cheap so it makes sense to rely on other for your own need.
So, this lack of preparedness is true for USA, but also for many countries in Europe, and Asia. The more complex the society the more fragile it is to disruption.
Is it solvable? Yes. Local renewable energy is a good example of reduction on distribution complexity. There is more knowledge involved, but there is less countries participant in the complexity.
To stop believing in politics seems worse advice ever, thou. It seems more a receipt for collapse than a solution to be more resilient.
> "Took 10 years to recover"
Has Russia recovered? That also needs more probe. To be better that you were 10 years ago is not synonym of being recovered. Russia is just less chaotic, maybe.
There's likely a difference between rural and urban parts of the same country as well in terms of preparedness. The less-prepared countries will likely also have very unevenly distributed population densities.
Very good point. Russia is a good example of this. Despite our economic embargoes / sanctions the majority of the population goes on without a beat. Some in big cities surely miss some things, but overall the Obama and Trump sanctions get shrugged off. China would suffer a lot more if the same sanctions were imposed.
Was there anything to recover? Sure they beat everyone to space but the economy wasn't exactly roaring. My family tells me you didn't really have any kind of choice when you lined up to "shop" for groceries, and you had to know someone from the store to get anything good (better meat, rare sweets like jam) before stocks ran out.
That's arguably something else to consider in this comparison. Yes we may have a further distance to go to recover to the US historic norm, but even under a collapse we may be closer to ensuring basic survival and even comfort than immediately post collapse Russia.
"even under a collapse we may be closer to ensuring basic survival and even comfort than immediately post collapse Russia"
One of Orlov's points though is that there is a difference in tolerance levels (i.e. Russians were more accustomed to hardships). Thus the question ought to be, even with an assured higher level of comfort compared to the USSR collapse, will people handle well enough a hypothetical US collapse?
Russia totally recovered by any metric you can pick, from household income to average life expectancy.
Heck, moscow in 80's looked like dumpster fire. Now it looks like a proper european capital city.
Russia isn't the Soviet Union. And Moscow isn't the provinces.
I'm not dumping on Russia, but it's easy to look at the shiny place and forget about the other parts. If you were a time traveller from 1985, NYC looks like a magical fairy-land (at least on the surface). But Syracuse, NY or Utica, NY... not so much.
Well yes. USSR had plenty of different -stans included, they are independent countries now. They are getting back to middle ages since they got independance 30 years ago, thats true.
But you can take stats for russia proper from soviet times and compare it to 2019. Hell, you can take stats from 1993 when russia was not USSR already but was still collapsing.
I see it as a good thing. Russia waste less capital and valuable human resources on vanity projects. I know that HN crowd will dislike my view, since space is hot topic, but well, I would rather focus on something more tangible.
Germany has nothing to show in space industry prowess, but it is nice, wealthy country which focuses on problems at hand.
The space industry is about $400 billion. It’s not “vanity.” Did you think I was just talking about human spaceflight or planetary exploration? Those are only about 5% of the global space industry. Russia has been locked out of modern satellite development and their lead in launch capability continues to decay. This is bad for Russia in terms of export revenue and also overal national defense.
We live in a more complex society and countries need each other more than before. Communication is cheap, transport is cheap so it makes sense to rely on other for your own need.
So, this lack of preparedness is true for USA, but also for many countries in Europe, and Asia. The more complex the society the more fragile it is to disruption.
Is it solvable? Yes. Local renewable energy is a good example of reduction on distribution complexity. There is more knowledge involved, but there is less countries participant in the complexity.
To stop believing in politics seems worse advice ever, thou. It seems more a receipt for collapse than a solution to be more resilient.
> "Took 10 years to recover"
Has Russia recovered? That also needs more probe. To be better that you were 10 years ago is not synonym of being recovered. Russia is just less chaotic, maybe.