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From the 1935 to 1975, Will and Ariel Durant published 11 large volumes on “The Story of Civilization”. Over many of these books they recounted the rise and fall of societies or civilizations. Again and again, the decline and fall of a society had two major components: (1) financial failure and (2) social failure. If we look at the current financial state of the USA, the key measurement is here:
This debt level would put us in range for hyper-inflation and a currency collapse if we follow past trends. To be sure, we have been able — so far — to kick that can down the road. But how far can we go? Historically speaking, we are well along the "Durant scale" for fiscal collapse.
The other failure component Durant noted in many societal failures was the erosion of what made the society grow in the first place. In 1968, as the major book series was wrapping up, the Durants wrote a short book “The Lessons of History,” where they summarized what they had learned writing the history of many societies over many years.
Was Durant a perfect forecaster? No. For example, he thought that by now the US would be largely Roman Catholic because he assumed the Catholic birth rate would dominate the US population. (He didn’t foresee massive immigration, for example.) But I think he had some interesting (and even eerily prescient) views on how societies rot from within.
Here is one short quote from The Lessons of History:
And another:
To me, these passages remind me A LOT of where we are socially.
This is why I do not share the optimistic view of the future.
Discussion (50)
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That looks all the world to me like an exponential curve. If you plot it on a log scale, it will be a straight line.
And more specifically (checking...) yep, it doubles every 10 years.
Exponential curves are a "fingerprint" of one very specific process; positive feedback. For every increase in the value, the rate increases. Like compound interest. Like Moore's Law.
Which means Congress, which controls the budget, has this mechanism where every time it increases spending, that causes the rate of spending to increase.
And that will keep on going like this until the process changes.
Which means the solution involves changing the way Congress operates.
I think Donald Trump understands this, and that it's entirely possible he will push Congress into adopting a mechanism that substantially reduces spending instead of exponentially increasing spending.
Solutions could include:
And that's just scratching the surface.
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Optimism is necessary. Fortunately I think it is realistic. The positives are big: technology is advancing apace again, billions are less poor (or dead) than they once would have been, and resistance to the narrative is spreading. The negatives - well, our ‘elites’ are so awful surely they can’t last. Unless, of course, they succeed in suppressing progress and optimism.
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Question: How does this compare to other nations? Is the US debt effectively relative to other nations, and it's not that bad compared to the others? I dunno. The obvious Wikipedia page seems wildly incorrect.
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Fire their asses and sell the buildings.
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Not to be flip - I think it doesn’t matter what the neighbors do. It’s our house whose roof is leaking. Badly. But I also think it’s awful everywhere. Symptoms vary - in the US it’s welfare, agriculture and medical malfeasance. In Europe I think it’s nonenergy, non energy, non energy and more not energy.
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