Wednesday Morning Rant [Joe Mannix]

In video games, "speedrunning" is the attempt to finish a game or a section of a game as quickly as possible. It usually doesn't strive for completion (collecting all the prizes and bonuses or hitting every listed objective) or finesse or surviving with maximum health, but it strives for speed. Speedrunners drill and practice to shave seconds off of records. A record-breaking - whether personal or wider - speedrun is a good speedrun, no matter how ugly the win.

There is no shortage of systemic failure in evidence worldwide as the Postwar order continues its crackup, but not all systemic failures are equal. Some countries are speedrunning the failure and subsequent collapse and are, as a result, ahead of the global curve. They blew through the "knee of the curve" and are accelerating down and breakneck pace. Since they are so far ahead, they show a vision of the future elsewhere.

Two very different examples leap immediately to mind: Sri Lanka and South Africa. Sri Lanka ran hard at foreign debt, got snarled in a Red Chinese debt trap, wrecked its own agricultural sector in the name of "organic farming," ran out of money, ran out of energy, ran out of food and collapsed. The country quickly declined from 2019 onward until failing outright in mid 2022. Massive defaults, external bailouts and Sri Lanka's relatively small size has allowed it to limp back to be merely a shambling zombie instead of a starving, violent civil war zone. It was small enough to "save," its infrastructure remained largely intact, and it was pulled back from final failure by the scruff of its neck. Its speedrun was arrested just before completion. For now, anyway.

South Africa may be a different story. That country has been working its way toward failure for longer, but it's been on a speedrun for several years. They have debt problems and major agricultural declines, too, of course, but it goes way beyond that. They also have increasingly widespread social disorder, with near-constant small-scale urban rioting and out-of-control crime. The country is a crushingly-expensive welfare state and the state finances are cracking under the pressure. The "land reform" measures have been ineffective at anything but spreading ruin. Out-of-control crime has contributed to destruction of infrastructure with the theft of everything from power lines to piping to railroad tracks. The bankrupt government and state-owned enterprises cannot maintain what's left. Then there is the corruption - the constant, ever-present corruption of a one-party state with no opposition that is being drained by its ruling class while its underclass steals the rest. Unlike Sri Lanka, South Africa's ruin will be too complete for the IMF to drag them back from the cliff's edge.

These countries show what can happen when a country begins its speedrun to ruin. What will ours look like? Given our country's history of doing everything in a manner that is bigger, faster, louder, more effective and more spectacular than anywhere else, I imagine that our speedrun will be one for the ages once it kicks off.

posted by Open Blogger at 11:00 AM

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