Reply #73: It may or it may not be.

[liberation]

Alas that will be pretty irrelevant if the "collapse" is at such global scale.

I don't agree with the OP's approach, such perennial cries of wolf tend to be waaaay too politically motivated and miss the forrest from the trees. Empires come and go, that is a given. It is like claiming how someone is going to die at some point. Well, duh... it is a law of nature, at some point everybody dies.

The socio-economic system prevalent around the world is capitalism. and currently it is based and enabled significantly by one single natural resource: oil. The problem is that capitalism expects not only infinite growth but for that growth to be exponential, among other things because it is coupled with population growth which follow exponential curves. So it does not take a genius to see how at some point in the future (where it is near or far is also irrelevant) the exponential demand will collide with the finite nature of oil, as well as basically every other natural resource in the planet. And it will be then when the inevitable rigidity of the laws of nature will show their ugly head: every bubble will eventually pop if inflated beyond its structural capabilities.

That is a given regardless of whether the US, or China, or whoever is the prevalent empire when that happens. Ironically empire, just as capitalism, is unsustainable. Alas imperialistic/expansionist traits seemed to be the favored ones during our process of evolution. So maybe nature's selection processes do not work as intended when it involves self aware beings.