2025 - American Democracy and Federal Government programs would be destroyed by an orange tyrant with a vendetta, with a pet billionaire who hates regulations.

That one wasn't on the bingo card...

Umm... 2025... Orange tyrant of America tries to enact martial law due to increased public dissidence with public satisfaction at an all time low, as communities and families are torn apart.

Canada shuts off all supplies to America amid rampant on-going tariff wars and pressures to annex them into being a 51st state but fails as a result, and opens new and stronger trade paths to the EU and Mexico.

Japan dumps US Dollar, along with Stocks and Bonds giving themselves new and better trade opportunities with other countries without conditional strings or tariffs attached. While also making the US Dollar the weakest and fall off the global trade reserve.

Russia faces new regime change with the fall of Vladimir Putin who loses control of power against factions who want him gone in a bid to save their falling economy, and reform Russia into a democracy.

just to name a few things that could happen, not all in 2025 however, but it's possible, given how fast things have been moved in those directions in just 3 months.

So a regime change doesn't happen when the people are angry, it happens when the people who keep people in power get angry. In an oligarchy that would be the people who run the big businesses that have contracts with the government, because those contracts tend to go to supporters. In capitalism this would be the people who can afford to pay for political rallies and lobbying who also get government contracts. This is easier to detect as a complex, which is when a organization lobbies the government to make it harder for their customers to get them to solve the problems they are paid to solve. Military is paid for peace so they want war to be on everyones minds a lot, medical wants to make aid unaffordable, education wants it to be impossible to learn cheaply, etc. Complexes happen no matter what style of government there is, but they will always fight to keep things in their favor, and elections generally make that harder, so the more complexes a country has, the more likely it will tilt in favor of oligarchy where the people benefiting from those complexes also get more say in how the government operates.

I don't think Russia will have that happen, there's too many people who stand to gain from keeping things as they are and just outlasting that. The only real solution would be for the people to actually fight them, but that's unlikely to happen for a number of propaganda reasons. Predicting when the people have had enough is really really hard, because people can put up with a lot if they think their living conditions are survivable. It's very hard if they believe they will definitely die if they fight back and fail. Russia reforming into a democracy completely misses the fact it's still got an oligarchy problem, and they won't agree to anything unless it gets them more than what they would gain another way. After a certain point in time money loses meaning and all their purchases are made based on the prospect of future growth, so they aren't gonna just take money if the result is a slower growth for them, because money is worthless to them.

Governments will all consider these things when making decisions, but citizens don't have to. Boycotting is a democratic means of tariffing, it's built on communication and unity. Because the citizens are spending money with intent instead of as an additional cost, this means they might not be losing that much money but the corporation losing out is down 100% of a sale, where a tariff would still get them the sale but the government made the sale less likely. Protests, civil disobedience, unions, and boycotting are great tools for pressuring things to change in a way that affects companies the most.

My prediction, the US struggles to continue paying off its debt until it reaches a point where it's no longer possible, and the nations credit rating tanks, becomes harder to use debt in the economy, and the nation goes through some reforms. Part of this prediction goes with the idea that trump and company are aware this will happen and are trying to position themselves so that once the trade economy collapses the US will at least have a few new factories up and running so the US can return to being an industrial nation once the banks and everything have failed. I think the citizens should prepare for that and get into a better position to ensure the country remains democratic, still has free speech, etc, because the super rich will not want a system where they get one vote in an election same as everyone else, they'll want something more favorable.

I don't think you really understand what's going on in Russia at the moment, or how fragile their economy is right now. They are on the brink of total collapse the longer Putin keeps up his war against Ukraine, and factions are waiting to siege for a take over to replace Putin. Russia's population shrinks by 1 million annually, on top of losing 1 million in their war against Ukraine by overspending. Birth rates are also way down. The death or weakening of a leader leads to a domino effect, and Putin's power is slipping, there is rising social apathy and radicalization as the propaganda the people once believed in is faltering, the economy is just that unstable which is leading to more protests and violence. Russian soldiers returning from Ukraine are disillusionment with the state betrayed them who have been repressed and they're the ones forming factions against Putin, forming a common goal to get rid of Putin. You might not understand that the population across Russia is very sparse in various territories, and the state can't maintain control of them. It's pretty huge territories. Moscow is just but one of many territories. Putin's Russia is built into a kleptocracy which is paralyzing their economic development and it's a corrupt state model. This has created the conditions for an atomized and opportunistic society, which could see Russia becoming a democracy, but it would also be likely for a Warlord scenario with private and armed veterans against wealthy elites controlling their own territories.

The big problem with predicting the future is that you're flinging darts, and you don't have the sight of any black swan events.

Though, to be honest, reality has been taking fictions' notes and telling it to hold its beer...

My guess is that the US will be under a military and intelligence dictatorship in the near future, as relations between the GOP and the guys with intelligence and the guns worsen.

My guess is that governments favor people who pay to support them same way a plant favors sunlight for growth, a government that doesn't get help in elections will likely not reach everyone who would support them in a country where media is owned by the people who pay to support their government. This will inevitably lead to "complexes" and oligarchy. The solution is simple, democracy emphasizes the power of the people over the power of money, anything that can be done with numbers and can't be replicated with funding is inherently democratic, so I predict that people will continue boycotting and protesting and rioting and starting unions so long as they feel that the alternative doesn't benefit them. It always comes down to economics and survival, people will change their behavior if they don't feel safe and they are losing money, anything that increases risk will push people to behave in a democratic way even if they aren't actively protesting anything. Organized groups are the ones who can put a thumb on the scale and speed things up beyond incidental shifts in decision making.

So yeah, if someone's telling you to buy something to support a cause, and it's expensive as hell, then the cause is likely to be in favor of the oligarchs. If people are telling each other not to buy something, then there are always alternatives, and it likely won't cost extra, but it will do tremendous harm to the company being rejected. At the very least it's an easier cause to get behind than one which calls for high costs to you.

No, the reality of the situation is that technology determies practically everything, including how governments function. In our technological state, democracy as we know it can't function.

Not when you have mature information and memetic warfare divisions out and about.

Democracy is a bunch of people agreeing on something and making it policy. Anything less than that isn't democracy. If a few people tell you they should represent you, and then they don't do what everyone wants because its not politically advantageous, then that's not democracy. You and everyone else deciding not to buy a product because you all don't like the company is fundamentally democratic. Doesn't matter what the action is, doesn't have to be a vote, just needs a majority of people to decide on something and act on it.

... you're not listening on this matter. Technology determines practically everything, including things like rights and freedoms and how governments function. Due to some seriously erroneous assumptions on rights (the sad reality is that the freer the rights, the LESS FREE the people, paradoxically enough) and a major shift in technology, democracy literally breaks down. One of the key pillars of democracy is an informed voting public, but that is no longer possible due to the incredibly complex systems that keep the world going and, more importantly, the rise of mature information and memetic warfare (why fight your enemies on the field of battle when you can effectively hack their brains?).

In essence, democracy can't function as we know it.

Let me dig up a modified 4X quote:
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the best tool for tyranny... Beware of he who would give you free access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

Your argument only works if you can argue that the rights and freedoms and economic divide between rich and poor and control over news and media was not controlled by the wealthy at any other point in time to the degree it is now. The gilded age was very similar, but it didn't have the technology we have today.

My argument is that the fewer of something there is, the easier it is to buy control with power or money. Democracy works by making control impossible to buy. Courts are fair with a numerous jury holding different social values. Elections are fair with no parties and multiple contenders. Voting is fair when choices can shift once the lesser options are removed from the running, and a vote is never wasted as a result.

Countries are fictional, corporations are fictional, digital domains are fictional. We make up how they work, we agree on them, and the rules could always be different. There is no rule saying that Youtube had to run the servers that store videos and provide the means to access those servers, they could always have done the storage stuff and allowed hundreds of other sites to compete for quality of service. But it would be less profitable, so they handle it all themselves, leading to duplicates as people post on multiple streaming sites that all do roughly the same thing. And why have one storage site, why not have several so even if one goes down most of what's online will still exist?

With hundreds of sites having different goals to attract people, it becomes harder to game the system. Decentralizing is worse for people who want to control everyone. Combine decentralization and ease of access, and you'd solve the whole problem.

Free access to information isn't a problem, the problem is not providing enough information about it. Where did it come from, is this a misquote, does anyone remember the original source, is the person saying this an expert in the subject or are they an expert in a different subject? What information do I not know that would be useful to know when reading this? Is there a service that can verify this just in case it turns out to be a quote of a typo made by a monk who thought the ink bleeding from the other side of the page was a damaged part of the letter they were transcribing? That happened at least once, not all misinformation comes from ill intent, and the only way to find out is to hire experts to spend a few years looking into it if they feel something is wrong.

Anyways, this isn't the first time in history things have looked the way they do now in the makeup of society, and the reason has always been wealthy people taking power, not technology. Technology is a tool and the wealthy are very good at using tools to their benefit, especially if they make them, but tools can be made for other things, and computers are more flexible than most other kinds of tools. All it would take to make them more democratic is to make the internet less centralized.