Grinding down to third world status as infrastructure investments of prior decades wear out...
The funniest thing I’ve read about was the idiotic design of solar roofs in California.
Fewer than 2% of home owners have a solar battery system, and most don’t even have the solar panel roofs connected to their home. They are designed as cheaply as possible to send power to the grid so that the family gets rebates and tax credits. And that setup lets them tap into the grid for the power demand above what solar panels generate.
The end result is that when the grid is down, 99% of people with solar roofs have no power. They can’t even run their homes during the daytime, because utilities said you aren’t allowed to wire it unless you pay a fortune and nearly none of them wanted to pay for a power wall.