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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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.
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