I’ll keep it short and simple. ASI is finally turned on and is now the apex predator. There will only be two classes the Billionaires and us the poor people. So millionaires that are out there will fall even more substantially and harder, to where a lot might (pew pew) themselves. No surprise. You are a billionaire and part of the boys club or you are on the streets starving to death because you don’t have enough social credits to sleep at a hotel and your water balance just got cut off until next month as you slave away in a robotic suit somewhere at Amazon or Walmart. The pay is barely to where you can even purchase a piece of bread. And you die at the end of the next month because you didn’t work hard enough and meet quota at Amazon warehouse so no oxygen for you. Plus the inflation just made it to where you can subscribe for 100$ a month to breathe. So to all of the managers, CEOs and those that are pathetic narco greedy losers (net worth is in the mil)… your time has ended. It will be hell on earth.

The rise of fascism will continue in the West, to the benefit of billionaire techbros. The very rich wil live in unimaginable luxury and technology. The rest will fall increasingly into third world poverty, leading a very low-tech existence when out of the office. Most employment will be of a gig nature; those who have a regular position will sign themselves into what amounts to indentured servitude. Education will be work oriented and provided through long apprenticeship.

Following a string of economic disasters, the United States will abolish all social services. These will be available from the private sector at very high prices. The use of highways, police and fire, will all follow a subscription model.

Retirement will be death; the existing elderly will be killed off through systematic denial of health care. As public trust in science dies, modern medicine will become unavailable to most. Traditional practices like “healing women” will be all most workers can access. Diseases such as diphtheria, polio, measles will be endemic. Viral outbreaks such as COVID-19 and H5N1 will regularly decimate the non-wealthy population.

Women will be second class citizens, with strong legal barriers to independence. Arranged marriage will be common, and young girls will be exploited by rule of law. No birth control will mean a skyrocketing birth rate, but childhood death will.be endemic. Evangelical Christianity will be the instrument of social control.

In a fascist society, a constant state of war is necessary. The United States and Europe will be subject to Russia, and war with China is inevitable, probably in the form of small brush fire wars all over the world. Eventually, manpower and natural resources will begin to diminish. Widespread incompetence will hamper the military. As the war machine weakens and can’t hold us together by force, countries like the United States may become balkanized, dividing by language or culture.

Billionaires have finally achieved attaining 100% of the world wealth. Everyone not a billionaire is homeless. Although destitute, every citizen owns a pair of Meta glasses whose latest version allows the corporation to harvest brainpower through the ocular socket, powering the entire MetaVerse. In exchange for their brainpower, the glasses will convert the user’s cardboard box home into visual representations of expensive homes. The economy is driven solely by billionaires selling to other billionaires. Epstein Island has been made a historical landmark where the billionaires come every year to pray in front of the lifesize statue of Donald Trump blowing Clinton.

A mix between Cyberpunk 2077 without the cool tech, Black Mirror, and 1984.

The way things are going right now? Cyberpunk dystopia, but with fewer neon lights.

Well I used to think it was this:

But looks like it’s gonna be more like this:

The Expanse minus the sci-fi-y alien stuff.

But every city is a Baltimore

Every politician is Admiral Nguyen

Every doctor is a mad scientist with the empathy completely deleted from their brain

Also the UN Government cuts your UBI if you criticize then. You have to shill for the Secretary General to keep your UBI.

Also we get EPSTEIN drive powered by the labor of abused children (that name did not age will lmfao)

We should already be a quarter of the way into this by now.

We’re not because we have corrupt dinosaurs holding us back from it.

Fragmentation of society. Can’t decide whether closer to Stephenson’s Snow Crash or Palmer’s Terra Ignota.

I’m hopeful. Short term, maybe not, but to quote Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator “To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…”

The world has less and less resources, and it’s more and more polluted… it’s not looking good.

More cancer, more crazy weather, more fires.

You will own nothing, and rent everything…

I’m just hopeful for FOSS software and devices, buying less junk we don’t need, and hopefully I can get a little garden going and collect rainwater soon.

The longest period the world has seen without a great power conflict was 99 years, between 1815 and 1914. The second longest is since WWII.

I have my doubts we will break the record.

I think someone will get fed up enough to engineer a virus that removes greed and psychopathy from the entire human genome so that we can finally stop being ruled by greedy psychopaths. This will usher in a golden age of humanity

Dead. Life on Earth will be nothing more complex then algae.

[off topic?]

The science fiction novel “Stand On Zanzibar” won the 1969 Hugo award.

It’s set in the early 21st century and it’s scary how many things the author got right.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/stand-on-zanzibar-the-hugo-award-winning-novel-john-brunner/e3302202ddb6578d