I’m reading about Lebanon and what it has been through, especially in the last several years. Inflation is out of control, where salaries are meaningless and grocers don’t even bother pricing their items because they can’t keep up with the changing rate. Basic human services like trash collection and electricity are not available. Citizens resort to holding banks up at gunpoint to get their own money out.
What happens when a country collapses? What does that really mean? What happens to all its people?
Edit to add another question: Is it actually possible for a country to be so mismanaged that its people literally all die out or leave?
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The definition of a country is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. In other words if someone attempts to use violent force to do something the police will stop them. However consider a country who can no longer afford to pay it’s police or military. It is no longer functioning as a country anymore.
The country collapsing is a statement that the government and economy have collapsed, not the people or the country itself. It generally means that the country falls into anarchy, the government ceases to exist for all practical purposes, and that basic necessities can become difficult or impossible to obtain. Often there is civil war, multiple groups trying to claim to be the government, and without a government there is no money supply so the economy collapses.
The economy collapsing my precede or be caused by the government collapsing. Typically, so long as the government is functioning well enough to be able to claim to be the government, the country itself is not considered to have collapsed.
Yes countries can collapse and it is easier to achieve than many think. All you need is the population losing trust in the government enough and say: you don’t have the right to govern anymore. That’s the point when a country collapses. This results in complete anarchy, because everything in modern society is build on trust, from law enforcement to currency. Laws are just words we all agree to agree on and adhere by. If collectively people stop adhering, the law has no value and defacto seizes to exist. People don’t die from the collapse itself, but from the effects a collapse has on society.
It simply means the government collapses, not the people (imagine thousands of people suddenly falling on the ground lol). It depends on how this was achieved but architects of the collapse, or those with means, usually start vying for power and legitimacy. This is sort of what happened with China-Taiwan (it’s more complex than this ofc). A country is only legit if the people consider the government legit. Some dude saying “I’m king of this country” has no bearing unless people actually start believing that this dude is the king (and acts accordingly). It’s why country recognition by the UN and other countries is VERY important. Even if it’s a symbolic gesture, a government’s legitimacy offers tangible benefits for that government.
Included in this collapse is money/currency. Paper bills have no inherent value. It’s value is largely dependent on the stability of the government (even tho it may be based on different things like gold or pegged to the US dollar or something). What basically happens is the value of money becomes so worthless you can’t use it for transactions anymore. The few times this has happened, people resorted to a barter trade system for a while till either the currency inflation gets fixed, or a different currency is introduced. That’s why there’s a lot of death and suffering when a country collapse. Resources to function are still there (mostly), but you can’t exchange money for goods and services because no one trusts the value of the currency anymore (because the government has collapsed). So goods can’t flow, transactions can’t happen, and the economy stagnates (which is a death knell for an economy).
When a government collapses, it leaves a power vacuum behind. Almost instantly groups attempt to fill this power vacuum. Often this leads to civil war.
As these groups gather territory they will start taxing the population and doing other things that are indicative of a very primitive, basic government.
A country that is splintered like this with various groups vying for power is a collapsed country. Countries can also collapse when invaded by a foreign power.
Countries don’t actually exist. A country is just a social construct that people agree to adhere to. A country is just something that exists in peoples heads. It’s a set of principles and laws and ways of deciding things that people have agreed upon. As long as people think “the country” is a thing, then it is a thing.
As soon as enough people don’t consider it legitimate, or don’t agree with it, or don’t support it, then it stops existing. The authority vested in the people enforcing the laws stops existing. The laws stop having meaning because the institution creating those laws are no longer considered valid.
ELI5 answer: Let’s say you play role playing games with your friends. Your friend Jim is the dungeon master and you’re playing DnD.
Now, Jim is only the DM because you all agree he is the DM, and you only listens to his rulings and story descriptions because you agreed that that’s what a DM should do. The only reason you follow the rules of DnD is because you have agreed that you should play by those rules. In fact you probably came up with some house rules that fit your group, and have agreed to follow those as well. This is just how a country works.
*As soon as* enough people in the group start thinking that Jim shouldn’t be the DM or maybe you should play a different game or whatever, the group is in crisis. This can resolve itself by changing DM or changing game or whatever, and in that case the gaming group still exists. The country version of this is reform or revolutio; the country still exists but it is quite changed.
It could resolve itself by some members leaving and starting a new group, while some remain in the old group. This means the group still exists but is just smaller. The country version of this is secession or independence of part of the country.
And sometimes, the players can’t agree. Some want Jim as DM, some don’t. Some want to play DnD, some don’t. Some want to play in someone elses house, some don’t. And not enough people agree to form a gaming group. Then the group dissolves, nobody has any rules to follow, and nobody listens to Jim because he’s not the DM of anything anymore. The country version of this is collapse.
Wall Street assigns tiers to countries according to the risk of deflauting. The highter the risk, the higther intrest rate for loans from international bank
Inflation is state where there is too much cash in the system compared to GDP, so naturally prices increase for each product/service to bring new balance to cash/gdp ratio
Labanon citizens doing classical bank rush to find out that their money have been turned into securities or lent out with ratio 1:6 ( where every deposited dollar is creating new 6 dollars or more, depending on intrest rates) is classical failure of fractional reserve banking. Their money is gone, because all worth of lebanon curency is based on stability of goverment and (again) it’s ability to collect taxes
I hope you do not belive we still have gold standard system like they teach preschoolers
This is why UE rushed to help Greece in 2008 crysis, deflauting Greece would mean destroying Eurozone
TLDR **Yes, any country can collapse when they cannot guarantee future income from taxes anymore and debt crushes them. When too much people have cash on their hands and not enought things to spend it on , it creates inflation**
Yeah. If you watch the episode of Rick and Morty where Rick defeats a government, he devalues their currency from 1 to 0. If that was to happen to any government in the real world, then our civilisation would collapse.
It is possible. When the government and its institutions cannot enforce their authority and carry out their duties, the country is effectively collapsed since the government has failed.
Unfortunately when this happens it’s usually a handful of oligarchs keeping the country hostage and getting rich out of their desperation. Impoverished people can’t just simply get up and leave, so they’re stuck in this endless cycle of exploitation which cannot easily end since the government is corrupt and they don’t have qualms about quashing protests and revolt with brute force.
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