As a practical matter, when large parts of the population are heavily motivated by manufactured/social fears (as opposed to practical fears of things like bad weather bringing famine), civil unrest and instability is not far behind.

The United States faces a grave situation in which a significant portion of the electorate may reject the outcome next month if it does not go their way, and the side that is more likely to lose is also the side that is most heavily armed because it is most fearful. Scared people with significant access to weapons is a recipe for disaster, as we already see in the context of many individual situations.

This might seem an overly pessimistic view of the US election context, which after all has often evoked bitter rivalries many times in the past only for them to evaporate by election day. I think this time is significantly different not only for historical reasons that need not be rehearsed here, but because this time the Us is in line with a global trend of rejecting democratic institutions and market solutions in favor of ideology and force - hence the rise of so many far-right parties and strongmen everywhere from Europe to the Philippines.

Most people don't have the intelligence or education to fully comprehend the complexity of a global marketplace and the regulatory and technological structures that underpin it. Further, most people don't have the resources or patience to wait for long-promised economic benefits to reach them in a time of deep economic uncertainty. The last 25 years have been a fantastic time to make money - if you're inclined or drawn towards certain styles of entrepeneurship. If you're not a business person and just want to make a living and raise a family, and you didn't happen to pick a career in the right sector of the right growth industry, they've been pretty shitty; a lot of people have seen their household incomes fall in real terms, and the ones without the know-how to see the reasons for such economic changes are pretty angry.

Most people just want to go to work, get paid, and raise a family with a similar or slightly better standard of living than they experienced as children. They're not interested in becoming too knowledgeable in economics, political theory, law, technology and so on. Their parents didn't bother with much of that and they did fine, because the developed world saw huge economic growth during the cold war and earlier generations experienced at great standard of living at a reasonable cost, in many cases leaving much of the bill for future generations. This seemed rational at a time when unlimited economic growth seemed inevitable and there was no real awareness of global environmental impacts. Automation was supposed to allow us all to work a bit less and enjoy more and more leisure, etc. etc. The fact that many of these expectations have turned out to be ill-founded may be the result of conspiracy, or of simple naive optimism, or some combination of the two. It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that the socio-economic-political consensus of 'western civilization' has broken down and we are now facing the possibility of massive structural instability and existential risk. To put it bluntly, I would say there's a 50% possibility of global scale war within the next 5 years. The best outcome I foresee is limited civil unrest followed by a second cold war.

Long-time readers may recall that I'm not big on hyperbole.