Is the US devolving into several major wealthy city-state regions, much like Italy during the Renaissance period?

America’s federal republic is becoming ungovernable and actually so are individual states. For example, the rise of quasi-military militias in Western states is much more advanced than generally realized. There could be a period of complete anarchy a few decades hence. Climate catastrophes, which overwhelm state and federal responses, could aid and abet the decoherence of the republic.

One feature that’s undermining the ability of the country to function as a single entity is overpopulation. The U.S. has gone from about 220 million people in 1980 to about 340 million now. It’s counter to what has been occurring in other “advanced” countries, where population growth has slowed to a crawl or actually gone into reverse. These countries have focused on caring for their aging populations much better and enabled them to provide superior education, health care, and general infrastructure for a somewhat egalitarian populace. When you have a ballooning population and you don’t invest in their progress, you get something that looks a lot like the U.S.

Of course, this kind of observation is all too general to make precise predictions from. Relative to most regions of the world, North America still has numerous resource advantages. A few administrations with a modicum of competence - like the current one, seriously - could right the ship of state and restore a semblance of reason and balance to the system. There is virtue in planning for the future. It’s obviously a necessity. We do it individually as citizens trying to make rational economic decisions. Only when the advantages of federalism are outweighed by the disadvantages will the republic have outlived its usefulness.

Last I saw stats on this, all but eight states benefit from the largess of Washington, and the U.S. Treasury relies on the world’s willingness to go along with the dollar’s exalted state as its reserve currency. The dollar is a commodity, and the country has effectively become a single-commodity economy over the decades - the production and export of dollars. That’s why the financial system is so huge, centered in New York of course. The third arm of the chair is the entertainment part of the bread and circus provided by celebrities and politicians (and other prominent “coastal elite”) removed from the travails of “average” Americans.

The economies of the individual states have been hollowed out by the export of jobs to lower-wage economies - and Washington’s policies are directly to blame for that. Because the federal structure has been a certain way for a couple of centuries, it’s taken for granted by most it will continue this way. But strong regional identities have not disappeared - they’ve just been repressed for a long time. You can see how if there were a series of plagues and natural disasters following COVID, regions like New England might just seal off their borders from the rest of the country. Exactly how and when the federal system falls apart is hard to say. But given the way the current unfolding political and social crises are going, worst-case within a couple of stolen elections. More realistically, it will occur over the course of many decades and enormous precipitating events - even including famine, if the climate becomes too severe for farming in the Midwest.

It’s an ugly-looking future viewed through the darkest glass.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats