Fun read, if only because the bad guys get what they deserved and justice was served. I had to come back to suggest an alternate but likely more plausible scenario. Instead of Tesla crash, Researchers in China launch a new AI architecture that does not require huge data centers to train and can run on phones and laptops. Overnight Nvidia drops by 90%. A group of engineers launch a version of Linux that replaces Windows and a Mac and blocks all adds and algorithmic feeds leading to other pillars of mag 7 rapidly falling in value. This leads to fire sale of inflated assets and rapid valuation drops for private companies propped up by VC and PE money. (and the story goes on)
A pleasing tale. The only questionable part (in my mind) is the effect of a crypto crash on the banking system. The banks have done remarkably well in shifting derivatives risk onto others: both in the 1998 Asian banking crisis and the 2008-09 global financial crisis. (AIG--to the extent you want to consider it a bank--was the exception.) Big banks are pretty good at handling known unknowns. What trips them up are the unknown unknowns, such as the sudden illiquidity of repo collateral in 2008. Or their risk managers' ignorance of the mortgage risk retained on the banks' books.
Everybody and their dog knows that crypto is gonna crash some day, and no sophisticated party trusts Tether. There will be a lot of pain after the crash, but the victims are most likely to be doctors and dentists, widows and orphans.
My only note is that JD Vance gets off too lightly. How about Congress/the Supreme Court rapidly pointing out that the assurances of impunity were worth about as much as a Trump promise? Or some sort of betrayal of Vance by Trump? The former might give the story some pleasing symmetry in the middle.
In fact, you could add some more symmetry with something about self-driving buses or road safety at the end.
The general point is of course true- a modern infantrymen disposes of an overwhelming superiority of force and organisation over untrained civilians, and regular armies can only lose a conflict with these through mutiny. The gap opened up in the 18th century, see Culloden. The British county militias played no part in the Napoleonic war and were disbanded as useless after these ended. After Bunker Hill their American counterparts played an insignificant part in the American Revolution, and the gloss in the Second Amendment was sentimental nonsense at the time.
The Tesla share price is hanging by a thread, and its collapse is very odds-on, especially as Musk has rebelled against the Emperor and can expect no help or mercy from the spray-on Gold House. I do like the twist that Musk's fall will ensnare Trump through the crypto link.
There are other collapse scenarios that follow entirely different paths. One is a financial crisis triggered by Trump's war with the Fed, leading to a flight from the dollar and a bond-sell-off. A second is a major epidemic enabled by deranged antivaxxer RFK. A third is an acceleration of Trump's physical and mental decline. More than one path leads though the 25th Amendment, so the overall probability is less than the sum of the separate probabilities, but they are cumulstive not alternative.
I do wish pundits (not JQ) would stop likening Trump to Louis XIV. There is no proof he ever said "l'Etat, c'est moi", and his policies clearly included a concern for the French monarchy as a multi-generational institution. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the launching of the War of the Spanish Succession were grave mistakes of policy, but they were not the result of delusions or whims. The defeat of France by a ramshackle coalition was not a forgone conclusion. It resulted in part from flukes: the personal bond between the sexually very attractive John Churchill and the gay Austrian general Eugene of Savoy, and the long but turbulent friendship or affair of his wife Sarah with Queen Anne. Trump is your actual mad king, more like Caligula or Ivan the Terrible.
I'd like to read the same tale without reference to current player's and events, in other words I think we live in an era deserving of it's own great 'tragedy', 'myth', 'fable' or fairy tale.
the bit which doesn't seem right any more is the idea that taking a few key people out will make it all collapse like a house of cards. i think there is now a deeper and stronger framework around trump himself - who seems weaker all the time - and it's nasty and it's going to fight tooth and nail to stay where it is. a return to the good old days based on some kind of shared consensus are all gone now. there's a point of no return in a break up and we are past that now -- the only way is through, towards some new system.
I didn’t mean to imply a return to the status quo ante, and I can’t really see how you read that in. A breakup of both MAGA and the Republican party, and the end of the two-party system are spelt out.
Fun read, if only because the bad guys get what they deserved and justice was served. I had to come back to suggest an alternate but likely more plausible scenario. Instead of Tesla crash, Researchers in China launch a new AI architecture that does not require huge data centers to train and can run on phones and laptops. Overnight Nvidia drops by 90%. A group of engineers launch a version of Linux that replaces Windows and a Mac and blocks all adds and algorithmic feeds leading to other pillars of mag 7 rapidly falling in value. This leads to fire sale of inflated assets and rapid valuation drops for private companies propped up by VC and PE money. (and the story goes on)
It all seems entirely reasonable, more a hypothesis than fiction.
If only
Yeah, we wish.
A pleasing tale. The only questionable part (in my mind) is the effect of a crypto crash on the banking system. The banks have done remarkably well in shifting derivatives risk onto others: both in the 1998 Asian banking crisis and the 2008-09 global financial crisis. (AIG--to the extent you want to consider it a bank--was the exception.) Big banks are pretty good at handling known unknowns. What trips them up are the unknown unknowns, such as the sudden illiquidity of repo collateral in 2008. Or their risk managers' ignorance of the mortgage risk retained on the banks' books.
Everybody and their dog knows that crypto is gonna crash some day, and no sophisticated party trusts Tether. There will be a lot of pain after the crash, but the victims are most likely to be doctors and dentists, widows and orphans.
As you’ve drawn on here, military intervention is a very real possibly if MAGA & Trump start getting *too* reckless.
It’s a great background setting to place characters on.
My only note is that JD Vance gets off too lightly. How about Congress/the Supreme Court rapidly pointing out that the assurances of impunity were worth about as much as a Trump promise? Or some sort of betrayal of Vance by Trump? The former might give the story some pleasing symmetry in the middle.
In fact, you could add some more symmetry with something about self-driving buses or road safety at the end.
That’s not true, John. You wrote a speculative fiction piece about a socialist future that was published in the Guardian. I really liked that.
You’re right. My memory fades as I get older. Hope you like this one too.
"But this time they [rioters] were met by the army, with fixed bayonets and machine-gun emplacements."
I quibble on the technology here. Machine guns are too indiscriminate for riot control;-SFIK the Chinese Army did not use them at Tienanmien. Bayonets are too in-your-face. The US Army (though not the Marines) have dropped bayonets from combat training. https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Army-in-the-USA-no-longer-train-with-bayonets-even-if-they-are-still-issued-How-are-soldiers-supposed-to-make-the-most-out-of-them-if-they-find-themselves-in-a-desperate-situation-without-training (actual URL).
The general point is of course true- a modern infantrymen disposes of an overwhelming superiority of force and organisation over untrained civilians, and regular armies can only lose a conflict with these through mutiny. The gap opened up in the 18th century, see Culloden. The British county militias played no part in the Napoleonic war and were disbanded as useless after these ended. After Bunker Hill their American counterparts played an insignificant part in the American Revolution, and the gloss in the Second Amendment was sentimental nonsense at the time.
If only, I would rather have seen Musk & Trump in the Teslas at the start though.
The Tesla share price is hanging by a thread, and its collapse is very odds-on, especially as Musk has rebelled against the Emperor and can expect no help or mercy from the spray-on Gold House. I do like the twist that Musk's fall will ensnare Trump through the crypto link.
There are other collapse scenarios that follow entirely different paths. One is a financial crisis triggered by Trump's war with the Fed, leading to a flight from the dollar and a bond-sell-off. A second is a major epidemic enabled by deranged antivaxxer RFK. A third is an acceleration of Trump's physical and mental decline. More than one path leads though the 25th Amendment, so the overall probability is less than the sum of the separate probabilities, but they are cumulstive not alternative.
I do wish pundits (not JQ) would stop likening Trump to Louis XIV. There is no proof he ever said "l'Etat, c'est moi", and his policies clearly included a concern for the French monarchy as a multi-generational institution. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the launching of the War of the Spanish Succession were grave mistakes of policy, but they were not the result of delusions or whims. The defeat of France by a ramshackle coalition was not a forgone conclusion. It resulted in part from flukes: the personal bond between the sexually very attractive John Churchill and the gay Austrian general Eugene of Savoy, and the long but turbulent friendship or affair of his wife Sarah with Queen Anne. Trump is your actual mad king, more like Caligula or Ivan the Terrible.
I'd like to read the same tale without reference to current player's and events, in other words I think we live in an era deserving of it's own great 'tragedy', 'myth', 'fable' or fairy tale.
the bit which doesn't seem right any more is the idea that taking a few key people out will make it all collapse like a house of cards. i think there is now a deeper and stronger framework around trump himself - who seems weaker all the time - and it's nasty and it's going to fight tooth and nail to stay where it is. a return to the good old days based on some kind of shared consensus are all gone now. there's a point of no return in a break up and we are past that now -- the only way is through, towards some new system.
I didn’t mean to imply a return to the status quo ante, and I can’t really see how you read that in. A breakup of both MAGA and the Republican party, and the end of the two-party system are spelt out.
Fantastic! In at least 2 meanings of that word! First a cartoon booklet, now economic fiction. Excellent!