美国还能存在多久?
How long will the United States exist?
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网友：如果我们将1776年作为美囯历史的起点，那么它现在已有240年的历史。我们可以说，美囯历史的前5%已经过去，但我们还没有达到其历史的最后5%的阶段时期。因此，我们有90%的把握预测美囯的国祚将在12年至4780年之间。不过，这终究不是一个极为精确的预测手段……
正文翻译
How long will the United States exist?
美国还能存在多久?
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I honestly think that we're wrong to argue about the inevitability of a fall in a classical sense like Rome or Egypt or the USSR or any other go-to powers. I wouldn't be surprised if we're entering a period of human history in which the concept of nation-state subsides to more useful geopolitical configurations. Globalization and technology, potentially combined in the far future with interstellar travel, are going make the concept of nation-state obsolete before America collapses.
Several factors contribute.
我真诚地认为，我们对于像罗马、埃及、苏联或其他典型强国那样不可避免衰落的争论是错误的。如果人类历史正在进入一个时期，其中民族国家的概念逐渐被更有效的地缘政治结构所取代，我也不会感到惊讶。全球化和技术发展，在未来可能与星际旅行相结合，可能会在美囯崩溃之前使民族国家的概念变得过时。
有几个因素促成了这种观点：
Second, many large empires throughout history managed to last for a millennium. The United States is less than 250 years old and arguably the strongest power yet seen on Earth. I agree that it would be naive to suggest that it would never fall were humans to be technologically stagnant for millennium after millennium. However, the technological revolution precludes stagnation, and I bet that the United States only has to make it another few centuries to see a paradigm shift unlike any other in human history.
首先，西方自由民主的兴起与侵略战争的减少同时发生，核武器和其他大规模杀伤性武器的出现也是如此。如今，大国之间不再发生战争，如果地球上某个大型发达国家再次被他国征服，除非在极不寻常的情况下，否则我会感到意外。此外，由于经济体之间高度的相互依存性，两个经济大国之间没有理由相互开战，直到一方认输。
其次，历史上许多大型帝国持续时间能够长达千年。美囯还不到250年历史，但可以说是地球上迄今为止最强大的国家。我认同，若认为人类在持续千年的技术停滞中仍能保持不衰，未免过于幼稚。然而，技术革命已经排除了这种停滞，我确信美囯只需再延续几个世纪，就能经历一场人类历史上前所未有的根本性变革。
(1) energy becomes practically limitless - we ace fusion technology or renewables become crazy efficient or we figure out something even more radical - which therefore significantly reduces inequalities and removes incentives for warfare (no more resource wars, political instability caused by poverty, etc),
(2) humans begin uploading their minds into computers and virtual reality - with less emphasis on geopolitics and nationalism and nation states than exists in the status quo - supplants physical reality to the extent that nation-states become obsolete
(3) the continued expansion of economic and political unxs culminates in an effective one world government (perhaps borders dissolve, but more likely nation-states exist nominally but cede sovereignty) that renders our conceptions of what it means for the United States to fall meaningless because every other nation will have also "fallen" to the next step in political evolution.
我不清楚具体会是怎样，但若出现以下几种情况，我不会感到意外：
能源变得几乎无限 —— 无论是我们掌握了核聚变技术，还是可再生能源变得极其高效，或者我们发现了某种更为激进的能源方式 —— 这将显著减少不平等，消除战争的诱因（比如不再有因资源争夺而引发的战争，或因贫困导致的政治动荡）；
人类开始将意识上传到计算机和虚拟现实中 —— 这将减少对地缘政治、民族主义和民族国家的重视，到一种程度以至于民族国家变得不再重要；
经济和政治联盟的持续扩展最终可能形成一个有效的全球政府（可能边界会消失，但更可能的是民族国家虽然名义上存在，但实际上已经让出了主权），这将使我们对美囯衰落的传统理解变得无关紧要，因为在政治演变的下一个阶段，几乎所有国家都会经历这种“衰落”。
The only really feasible way that I see the United States falling before a unifying event like one-world government or virtual reality or whatever else I can't foresee, is if another system of government emerges that replaces representative democracy (technocracy).
再次强调，这些发展在接下来的几百年里发生，我不会感到惊讶，考虑到帝国持续一千年的情况并不罕见，美国几乎肯定会做到。现在，你可以争辩说放弃主权算作“衰落”，但我认为楼主问的是美国相对于其他国家何时会衰落，因此大多数/所有国家放弃主权的情况并不算在内。
我能想到的美囯在世界统一事件（如全球政府或虚拟现实）出现之前可能衰落的唯一现实途径，就是出现了一种取代代议制民主的新型政府体系（比如技术官僚制）。
(1) a radical new proposed form of government (which is why I suggest technocracy - replacing voting with decision-making computers would be such a shift) and
(2) an incredibly displeased populace.
Some people in this thread suggest that current inequality and increasing automation might prompt a revolution.
这必然是两种因素的结合：
一种彻底新颖的政府组织形式提案（这也是我提出技术官僚制的原因 —— 用计算机决策替代投票将是一个巨大的转变）；
民众极度不满。
一些人在讨论中提出，当前的不平等和自动化的加剧可能会触发一场革命。
(1) overthrowing our current government to replace it with democratic socialism or whatever they suggest is unnecessary. Democratic socialism and more radical wealth redistribution are completely compatible with representative democracy and if enough people agree, then it can easily be resolved by the ballot. The republic would continue to exist. The only way I see a true end of the republic as we know it would be the introduction of a completely foreign system of governance, e.g. technocracy, that voids massive swaths of our Constitution.
(2) despite what people will say on reddit, the standard of living in America is still much too high to foster a USSR-style collapse of our political system or a bloody revolution.
War is uniquely disincentivized in the 21st century compared to the rest of human history, meaning that most large developed nations will probably continue to exist in essentially their current form until something subsumes the concept of nation-state; the concept of nation-state probably only has a few more centuries of usage, and its fairly reasonable to assume the US can make it that long.
这个观点存在双重问题：
没有必要推翻现有政府去用民主社会主义或其他任何他们提议的体制取而代之。民主社会主义和更激进的财富再分配完全可以在代议制民主框架内实现，如果获得足够的共识，那么通过选举就能轻易解决。共和国将继续存在。我认为，只有引入一个完全陌生的治理体系，比如技术官僚制，废除我们宪法的大部分内容，才真正意味着我们所知的共和国的终结。
不管红迪网上的人们怎么说，美国的生活水平仍然非常高，不足以引发像苏联那样的政治体系崩溃或血腥革命。
与人类历史上的其他时期相比，21世纪的战争被特别地抑制了，这表明大多数大型发达国家很可能会继续以它们目前的形式存在，直到出现某种能够吸纳民族国家概念的新现象。民族国家这个概念可能只剩下几个世纪的有效期，而我们可以合理地预期美国能够持续到那个时期。
About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence :
国家生命周期
大约在我们最初的13个州通过新宪法的1787年，爱丁堡大学的历史学教授亚历山大·泰勒对2000年前雅典共和国的衰落发表了以下看法：
“民主政体本质上是暂时性的，它不可能永久存在。民主制度将持续运行，直到选民意识到他们可以通过投票为自己从公共财政中获取丰厚的利益。自那以后，大多数人总是倾向于投票给那些承诺从公共财政中提供最多好处的候选人，这导致每个民主政体最终都可能因财政政策松散而崩溃，而这种崩溃往往会被独裁统治所取代。“
“历史上世界上最伟大的文明的平均寿命大约是200年。在这200年中，这些国家总是经历以下发展阶段：
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage"
从奴役到精神信仰；
从精神信仰到勇敢无畏；
从勇敢到争取自由；
从自由到物质丰富；
从物质丰富到自满安逸；
从自满到漠不关心；
从漠不关心到依赖政府；
从依赖政府最终回到被奴役的状态。
I also like using the Copernican principle for these kinds of predictions. The gist of it is, lacking any other information, in predicting the lifespan of an entity, we can assume with 90% certainty that we are not witnessing the entity at the first 5% of its life or the last 5%.
So if we consider 1776 to be starting date of the US, then it is 240 years old. We can say that the first 5% of US history has passed, but that we have not yet reached the last 5%.
Therefore, we can predict with 90% certainty that the US will last between 12 and 4,780 years. Finally, it's not a highly precise prediction tool.
明尼苏达州圣保罗汉密尔顿大学法学院的约瑟夫·奥尔森教授认为，根据泰勒教授对民主的定义，美囯目前可能处于“自满和冷漠”阶段，大约40%的国民人口已经进入“依赖政府”阶段。
我也倾向于使用哥白尼原则来进行这类预测。其核心思想是，在缺乏其它信息的情况下，预测一个实体的寿命时，我们有90%的把握认为，我们所见证的这个实体不在其生命周期的最初5%或最后5%。
如果我们将1776年作为美囯历史的起点，那么它现在已有240年的历史。我们可以说，美囯历史的前5%已经过去，但我们还没有达到其历史的最后5%的阶段时期。
因此，我们有90%的把握预测美囯的国祚将在12年至4780年之间。不过，这终究不是一个极为精确的预测手段。
I agree that great powers going to genuine war (as opposed to proxy wars in some third world 'shithole') are very unlikely. However the risks to the US are more internal I think.
Whilst it's very, very hard to see any country even openly attacking the US for the next 100 years at least the chance that internal divisions will push for increased regional sovereignty are quite high.
If you take the NE, the Pacific West Coast, the SW and the MW they are four fairly robust blocks. With the increasing divisions between groups an internal collapse can not be ignored.
我认同，大国之间爆发真正的战争（与在第三世界某些落后国家进行的代理战争不同）的可能性非常低。然而，我认为美囯更可能面临的是内部风险。
至少在未来一个世纪里，几乎没有国家会公然攻击美囯，但内部分歧可能推动地区寻求更大自治权的风险却不小。
以东北部、太平洋西岸、西南部和中西部为例，这些地区构成了四个相对稳固的经济和社会板块。随着不同群体间分歧的加剧，国内分裂的可能性不容忽视。
Of course one possibility is that highly disincentivized war DOES happen with nuclear results, leading to an unsurvivsble calamity. Or perhaps even something we can't even comprehend yet. Keep in mind that developments could produce as much new and unforeseen modes of disaster as much as of progress. Or maybe it ends on a positive note - we all move off Earth and then convert it to a nature preserve, thus rendering the United States non-existent by non-inhabitation by humans. Given the timescales of the future - thousands and millions of years - I'd think it rather foolish to rule ANYTHING out - try asking a cave man 100,000 years ago about today. So the only really honest answer I think we can give is “Less than forever”, with the example of the upper bound used to prove that being the heat death of the Universe. Anything other than that is to be too confident and not considerate of possibilities.
当然，存在这样一种可能性：那些本应受到极大抑制的战争如果真的爆发，可能会使用核武器，引发一场无法幸免的灾难。或者，甚至可能导致一些我们目前还无法想象的后果。要记住，技术的发展同样可能带来新的、不可预知的灾难形式，就像它带来的进步一样多。又或者，故事可能会有一个积极的结尾——我们人类全部迁离地球，将其变成一个自然保护区，导致美国因无人居住而不复存在。面对未来的时间尺度——数千甚至数百万年后——我认为现在就排除任何可能性都是不明智的，就像让一个十万年前的洞穴人想象今天的世界一样。因此，我认为我们所能给出的最真诚答案莫过于‘不会永恒’。举例来说，用来说明这一点的极端情况就是宇宙最终的热寂状态。除此之外的任何说法都是过于自信，没有充分考虑各种可能性。
well, if you mean another 12 years, that could be pretty accurate, given the fact we now have president trump.
好吧，如果你指的是再过12年，这可能相当准确，因为我们现在有了特朗普这位总统。
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It's well-pieced out. Mathematically, it checks out only because of the economic model's ability to adapt. Keynesian neoliberal economics are, in essence, able to print debt with little outcome. Last time gold created this international order failure the petrodollar became a more common standard. Odds are, a few possibilities are able to emerge. A new standard for economic valuation is needed. Cashless is an option, but it requires a way to gauge actual human resource consumption. Which would mean a significant decline in human freedom under the concept of nation-states, as you said. Therefore, the idea of nation-states will need readdressed.
它的逻辑是连贯的。从数学角度来看，它之所以讲得通，是因为经济模型具有适应性。本质上，凯恩斯主义的新自由派经济学能够轻而易举地印发债务，几乎不用承担后果。上一次黄金导致国际秩序崩溃时，石油美元成为了更普遍的标准。这次，可能会出现几种不同的可能性。我们需要一个新的经济估值标准。无现金支付是一个选项，但这需要一种衡量实际人力资源消耗的方法。正如你所说，在民族国家的概念下，这意味着人类自由的显著下降。因此，民族国家的概念需要重新定义。
解决这个问题的可能方法是，精英阶层需要有意识地将一些物质资源返还给个人，以鼓励创新。认为火星是我们的下一站是荒谬的，但我们必须认识到，总有一天我们可能不得不离开地球，否则就得接受大规模的绝育或种族灭绝。这也引出了在这种经济体系下人类寿命的问题，因为前面的提议可能会被大多数人直接拒绝，这可能是民主唯一发挥了作用的情况（人类总体上是善良的，当我们受到压力时，我们的一些本性就会显现出来—— 讽刺的是，这恰恰是我们经济体系的缺陷）。
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我不能说美囯会按照哥白尼的原则那样继续存在。虽然不是不可能，但中国（汉文化传统）和印度（特别是印度河-吠陀文明的继承者，即印度教徒）已经在它们的领域和地区内持续发展和繁荣了3800到4500年 —— 它们都没有任何即将消失的迹象。然而，盎格鲁世界确实需要一次重大的文化改革，尤其是上层社会。
You're very right about this and I am sure of it. We are going to see a new system very soon. That is necessity as of now.
与自由派学者相反，大气层不会消失。二氧化碳不太可能通过全球变暖来消灭我们这个物种。它更有可能迫使我们重新考虑资源的使用。自由主义让我们意识到其他地球生物也有其价值。以减少种群为目的的战争可能不会像计划的那样有效。
你在这方面的看法是正确的，我也非常确信。我们很快就会看到一个新体制的出现，这是当前的迫切需要。