There are many ways in which Trump could cause a global collapse. Here is how to survive if that happens George Monbiot

THough, we may find it difficult to imagine, we cannot exclude it now: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The relegation of the federal government Donald Trump and Elon Musk could cause a series of converging and composite crises, which leads to social, financial and industrial failure.

There are various possible mechanisms. Let’s start with an obvious: their attack on financial regulations. Trump’s appointed to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Russell Vought, has All activities of the agency suspendedreduced his budget and could pursue the ambition of Musk to “to delete“The desk. The CFPB was founded by the Congress after the 2008 financial crisis, to protect people against the predatory activity that caused the crash. The signal from the financial sector cannot be clearer: “Fill your boots, boys.” A financial crisis in the US would immediately become a global crisis.

But the dangers extend much further. Musk, calls for a “Wholesale removal of regulations“,” sends his child soldiers To attack government services that stabilize the entire American system. Regulations, although endless malignant by business and oligarchic propaganda, are everything that protects us against multiple disasters. In his first effects, the Legulation War, which touches the poorest and the middle class on behalf of the rich. As the effects spread, it becomes an attack on everyone’s well -being.

To give a few examples, the fires in Los Angeles are expected this year to cost on different estimates, on different estimates, Between $ 28 billion and $ 75 billion Only in insured losses. Estimates of total losses vary from $ 160 billion to $ 275 billion. These immense costs are likely to be overshadowed by future climate disasters. As Trump Removes environmental protection And Distribute federal responsivenessThe effects will spiral. They can include non-linear shocks The insurance sector Or homeowners, escalating in the US-wide economic and social crisis.

If (or when) strikes a different pandemic, which can withhold a pathogenic more transferable and even more fatal than COVID-19 (that has killed 1.2 million so far people in the US), it will touch a nation whose The defense has ended. Basic measures for public health, such as vaccination and quarantine, can be inaccessible for most. A pandemic in these circumstances can put an end to millions of lives and cause spontaneous economic closure.

Because there is little public insight into how complex systems work, Collapse tends to surprise almost everyone. Complex systems (such as economies and human societies) have characteristics that they also make resilient or fragile. A system that loses its diversity, redundancy, modularity (the degree of compartmentalization) is “power interrupers” (such as government regulations) and back -up strategies (alternative means to achieve a goal) is less resilient than one that retains these characteristics. This also applies to a system whose processes are synchronized. In a fragile system, shocks can strengthen faster and become more transferable: a disruption in one place everywhere spreads in a disaster. This, such as Andy Haldane, former chief economist at the Bank of England, has explained skillfullyis What happened to the financial system in 2008.

A consistent characteristic of globalized capitalism is An unintended attack on systemic resilience. While companies are striving for comparable profitable strategies and penetrate financialization and digitization, the economic system loses its diversity and begins to synchronize. While they consolidate, and the largest conglomerates become hubs with which many other companies are connected (think of Amazon or the food and agricultural giant Cargill), large failures can be done with amazing speed.

Since every company seeks efficiency, the system loses its redundancy. Since trade rules and physical infrastructure are standardized (think of those identical container terminals, shipping and truck networks), the system loses both modularity and backup strategies. When a system has lost its resilience, a small external shock in the cascade can cause.

Paradoxically, with his trade wars and mistreatment of worldwide standards, Trump would help to disynchronize the system and re -introduce some modularity. But while at the same time he takes up power interrupers, undermines readyness and treats earth systems as an enemy to be crushed, the net effect is likely to make human systems More susceptible to collapse.

At least in the short term, the far right tends to take advantage of chaos and disruption: this is another of the feedback klussen that can change a catastrophe of a crisis. Trump presents himself as the hero who will save the nation of the fractures he has caused, while bending the blame on scapegoats.

As an alternative, as a collapse seems to be, Trump and his team may not want to respond. Like many of the ultra -rich, entertainment figures in or around the administration The kind of psychopathic fantasies that Ayn Rand surrendered in her novels Atlas Shugged and the fountainhead, in which Plutocrats leave the proles to die in the inferno they have created, while they migrate to their new -Zeeland bunkers, Mars or The ocean floor (Forgotten, as they always do, that their wealth, power and survival is completely dependent on other people). Or they long for another Apocalypse, in which the rest of us roasts while They party with Jesus In his restored Kingdom.

Every government must hope and prepare for the worst. But as they do Climate and ecological breakdown” freshwater exhaustionthe possibility of food system collapses” antibiotic resistance And nuclear proliferationMost governments, including those of the UK, now seem to hope and leave it behind. So, although there is no replacement for an effective government, we must try to create our own back -up systems.

Start with this principle: don’t just look at your fears. Make friends, meet neighbors, set up support networks, help those who are struggling. Since the beginning of humanity, people with robust social networks have been more resilient than those without.

Discuss what we confront, explore the resources we can respond to. Start to build a deliberative, participatory democracy through neighborhood networks, to solve at least some of the problems that can be solved at the local level. If you can, secure local sources for the community (in England this will be made easier Community right to buyLike Scotland’s).

From democratized neighborhoods we can try to develop a new politics, presented in the lines by Murray BookchinIn which decisions are made up, not down, with the aim of creating a political system, not only more democratically than we are currently suffering, but that also enable more diversity, redundancy and modularity.

Yes, we also need – and urgently – national and worldwide action, through governments. But it starts to look like nobody has our back. Prepare for the worst.