Other countries have villages being firebombed and families being slaughtered. I am not uncaring but disenfranchised American’s are way at the back of the queue. The only political parties that are going to preference US political refugees over genuine humanitarian refugees are going to have exactly the sort of bigoted attitudes you are seeking to avoid. Fix your own mess people. Get on a bus, travel to a red state and actually talk to people. You keep bashing them over the head about them being stupid bigots but then you refuse to engage with them. That clearly isn’t working.

As long as the US has wealthy safe haven states they are going to be a more attractive destination for people with high demand, high income jobs. As long as those safe havens and state rights exist I don’t think US citizens are going to qualify for entry as refugees for some time. In the unlikely event the law and society breaks down completely people will need to get in line with all the millions fleeing war and genocide. Those that get in through skilled immigration will need to carefully weigh up the significant financial and career consequences.

The US might be a worse place for lower skilled jobs due to lack of public health and low minimum wage but at the other end of the spectrum most people would be giving up a lot of opportunities and income to move to countries like Australia or NZ. Our economies are comparatively small, undiversified and lacking investment.

The social aspect might be underappreciated. My guess is people are mainly introduced by family and friends and it becomes a big part of their identity. It becomes difficult to separate the individual elements.

Micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS) are extremely successful. You have them in your phone and lots of other devices. It turns out semiconductor manufacturing techniques could be leveraged to make some useful devices but that is about it. There is obviously a lot happening at these scales in biology, semiconductors, materials science etc but the grey goop of nanobots turned out to be a fantasy based on extrapolations that don’t seem to hold up well with physical materials thankfully. One less thing to worry about. Now we only have climate change, pathogens, war etc. Hopefully the machine learning bubble will blow over in a similar fashion, genuinely revolutionary in some areas but increasingly difficult/uneconomical to scale into others.

I have a very pragmatic view on capitalism. It isn’t inherently good or evil. Social democracy provides the best compromise where regulated capitalism generates wealth and funds innovation while responsible democratic government protects employees and the environment and provides services that have a strong social benefit.

Unfortunately social democratic policies are undermined in many countries and resisted in others to the point where some young people become frustrated and look to answers in hateful extremist politics which really is a horseshoe.

Regulated capitalism can direct capital to innovation in low/zero emission technologies and disincentivize investment in polluting technology very effectively,. More effectively than a corrupt command economy could do it. Fossil fuel companies have fought against interventions to push the market towards alternatives but the biggest failure has been on the political class and voters who haven’t done enough to push the market in the correct direction. Photo voltaics, storage technology and wind turbines have received a lot of investment and are growing rapidly despite the work of the big polluters to stall action.