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US history as synecdoche for world history really begins in 1854. Not coincidentally that was peak UK too.
Everything before that is mostly provincial backwater prequel stuff.
Bleeding Kansas, Perry in Japan, US tech at London world fair (1851) were the turning points.
Everything before that is mostly provincial backwater prequel stuff.
Bleeding Kansas, Perry in Japan, US tech at London world fair (1851) were the turning points.
There's a bunch of literature on this as a turning point... here is a take that the US upstaged hosts UK at the 1851 world's fair. The colt revolver and the McCormick harvester were key breakthroughs. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017645148/
If you treat 2014 as peak US, that's 160 years after 1854. So how long might a decline future be?
The UK as precedent for rise/fall of world powers: rise from 1600 to 1854 (roughly contemporaneous with East India Company), and fall from 1854 to 1944 (end of WW2).
The UK as precedent for rise/fall of world powers: rise from 1600 to 1854 (roughly contemporaneous with East India Company), and fall from 1854 to 1944 (end of WW2).
Similarity triangle math. If UK took 254 years to rise, and 90 years to fall, the US, which took 160 years to rise should take about 57 years. Rise and fall of empires aren't equally rapid. It's not straight up Lindy effect, but sawtooth Lindy effect. The fall is 2.8x faster.
So by this math, 2014+57 = 2071.
In this UK-rhyming history, and assuming you buy the 2014-peak thesis, by 2071, the US will be down to the level the UK was in 1944 at the end of WW2.
In this UK-rhyming history, and assuming you buy the 2014-peak thesis, by 2071, the US will be down to the level the UK was in 1944 at the end of WW2.
What can we expect? The UK in decline 1854-1944 is a hugely romanticized and powerful narrative. It was the Victorian+Edwardian era which is still the favorite era of Anglophiles. Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, H. G. Wells, modernist culture, key role in winning 2 world wars
Whatever the reality of the "new cold war vs. China" or "rise of the rest" or "clash of civilizations" or "climate apocalypse" or whatever, anyone expecting a quick decline narrative is going to be disappointed. Declines are faster than rises, but not THAT rapid.
If you're (say) 25, betting on an apocalyptic future and doing a bunch of prepping for a Mad Max future, you're going to have a long, painful wait even if you're right. It might be 2060 by the time your future actually arrives. You'll be a 65-year old. You'll have lived life.
I'm still, on balance, more optimistic than pessimistic about the future of the US. Despite the spectacular bungling of Covid etc. China in 2020 isn't the US in 1854. It isn't a young, hungry nation arriving. It's one of the oldest nations trying to renew civilizational vigor.
Until a couple of years ago, I still thought the "Chinese alternative" was overstated and overrated, destined to be overhyped and collapse like the Japanese or Soviet examples before it. But Trump+Covid response have convinced me it's a serious alternative of some sort.
But I don't think the future is one of Cold War or any sort of zero-sum ideological contest among 2 or 4 or 7 ideologies. It's more one of gradual mutual disengagement as the centralizing concern of oil-based economics starts to weaken. Renewables are a decentering force.
Remember, the rise of the US 1854-1944 was accompanied by the rise of Standard Oil and the dominance of the oil economy by the US. I think we don't appreciate the extent to which unipolar and bilpolar world orders were an artifact of oil competition.
There is still resource contention over plenty of other things, but the structure of competition is unlikely to be that drastically convergent. More than a change in the competitive order of large political entities (countries, block, Stephensonian clades...) it is a "loosening"
This is partially me seeking confirmation for a divergentist worldview. Things growing apart. Think "expanding universe" (as in galactic redshift, galaxies retreating from each other) model for epistemes and polities https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/12/01/can-you-hear-me-now/
The US and USSR were in closely entangled competition 1950-74, matching each other's every move. So were the US and Japan 1974-90. But the US-China axis feels different. First, it's more cooperative than competitive. Second it is marked by divergence, not a circling-in.
The previous ideological conflicts felt like wrestlers circling in a ring looking to grapple. This one feels like a live-and-let-live mutual retreat. You don't have to agree on most things. You share an economy, you share science and technology, you go your own way elsewhere.
I started with a future-like-the-past analogy between the US and UK rise-and-fall, but the future is mostly not like the past now. The biggest difference is that we now live in a rapidly greying world. A retired world of aging populations.
A good mental model of world of the next 40 years is:
1. Global divergence of civilizations
2. Energy transition (whether or not you believe in climate change)
3. Aging population
4. Technological progress decoupling from nation-states, and turning into a political commodity
1. Global divergence of civilizations
2. Energy transition (whether or not you believe in climate change)
3. Aging population
4. Technological progress decoupling from nation-states, and turning into a political commodity
4. is huge and we're only now beginning to appreciate how huge. 1851 to 1939 was the heyday of World's Fairs, when technological prowess was synonymous with national identity. The World's Fairs went into decline after that and become a joke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair#Industrialization_(1851%E2%80%931938)
After 1939 the World's Fair stopped being some sort of national tech olympics and became a kind of boring bureaucrat show (something similar is going to happen to the sports olympics soon...).
Tech became a political commodity after 1939, not a way to build national identity.
Tech became a political commodity after 1939, not a way to build national identity.
I think the starting point was the race to grab Nazi rocket scientists at the close of WW2. Once that chapter closed, it became clear that science and tech had gotten complex and valuable enough that they could not respect national boundaries.
Complex advances would be the result of developments in a dozen countries, orchestrated by MNCs, and distributed to global markets, with only a little bit of border friction. Open source takes that logic to an extreme. Countries don't compete on tech anymore, corporations do.
This creates an interesting political puzzle. To the extent nations continue to persist as the primary political units (at least another century imo), what will they be competing on if not technology?
Modern nation-states date to 1648 (westphalia being the conventional starting point), so for 200 years or so, nations *didn't* compete on tech. They competed on mercantile economics and early-modern warfare. So one scenario is going back to that, which is what Trump wanted.
I frankly don't think a reactionary turn to neomercantilism is plausible. The world is too dependent on non-zero-sum trade, which is dependent on technological progress, which is now owned by corporate forces, not national.
Corporations are still nominally governed by nations. The US started a trade-war. The Chinese state interferes in IPOs. But in general, the ability to own corporations is weak because corporations are globally mobile.
So if not tech or mercantilism, what then?
So if not tech or mercantilism, what then?
Healthcare is actually a big candidate. Covid revealed public health governance and care delivery as a huge differentiator among nations, regardless of governance systems. With aging populations reliant on a service sector of relatively poor people, this is a big deal.
There is a popular social darwinist view that pandemics are culls. This was kinda true in 1919 with the Spanish Flu, with the weak and aged succumbing at the margins leaving behind a healthier pool. Even if you buy this ideologically, it is descriptively a poor model for 2020.
Off the top of my head, around WW2, around 16 young/working people supported 1 aged person in the US. Now it's down to 4:1 or 3:1 or so, and heading that way globally. And most of the 3 workers today are low-skill service workers with hard-to-automate jobs. "Cull" is bad model.
The population structure of 2020 cannot handle "culls" from pandemics. We are at 7.5B headed to about a 9B peak in a couple of decades, with a very slow service automation trend in a barbell population of poor young people serving weak old people.
Countries will compete on how well they solve this problem. So we now see a world marked by:
a) relative American decline
b) tech progress driven by corps still staffed by educated globalized elite
c) nation-states competing on healthcare with barbell service+aged populations
a) relative American decline
b) tech progress driven by corps still staffed by educated globalized elite
c) nation-states competing on healthcare with barbell service+aged populations
This boils down to how individuals see their lives: work for the most innovative companies remotely while living in the countries that manage healthcare best.
This is a FAR cry from the world of even 1980 when nationality was identity rather than a healthcare provider.
This is a FAR cry from the world of even 1980 when nationality was identity rather than a healthcare provider.
I'm not even exaggerating. Healthcare is increasingly the reason people choose to live in specific places, and constrains where they move to, both within and between countries.
For the time being, your healthcare system determines your global mobility. Your certificate of recent Covid testing matters more than your passport. This acute condition will pass, but I suspect leave behind a "healthcare theater" on par with TSA "security theater"
I think this is the biggest point of disconnect in the US even among believers in a positive, optimistic US future. Market fundamentalists who think healthcare is no different from any other good, and those who think it's an entirely different beast.
The Obamacare debates of a decade ago are very interesting in light of the pandemic. Back then as now, the debate was over individual mandates, individual responsibility, individualism was key issue. Antivaxxers began their rise then too. Collective health was a marginal concern.
It is still possible to argue with a straight face that healthcare should primarily be an individually purchased market commodity, and you should get what you can afford, same as the logic of diamond rings or pizza or cars.
But the flip side of that is: if you make individuals responsible for their own health, they won't accept any share of responsibility for collective health. They won't accept lockdowns or isolation or masking mandates, let alone allow state-enforced quarantines. Result: 267k dead
Healthcare, unlike say transportation, is *irreducibly* collective due to the existence of pandemic threats. There is no meaningful debate like there is between private cars vs public transit. A market fundamentalist who does not recognize this is signing up for death-by-market.
You could argue that energy can become irreducibly collective if climate change progresses enough, but healthcare is already there. Healthcare has to be minimally collectivized at a level I suspect private insurance alone cannot achieve.
So back to nation-state competitiveness... if nations compete on healthcare, and are forced by nature to do it in a collectivized way over the objections of screaming red-scare types as the bodies pile up... how do they pay for it? What's the tax base in this world?
If wealth and income gravitate to the wealthy and middle classes, linked to employment or work for MNCs, income and corporate taxability become as mobile as capital itself. Countries were already trying to fence in capital, and will get way more aggressive in the future.
Both human and capital mobility will go down in the future, but I suspect capital mobility will go down more. Covid has created a small, tight window of opportunity where the corporate world is in bad trouble and needs state bailouts across the board.
For a few years, the corporate world is basically like a public utility. Especially things like airlines. I expect countries to move aggressively to maintain ability to generate tax revenue. This even affects solopreneur internet commerce (tried selling courses in Europe?)
This will succeed to only a moderate level since the imperative to make a profit and operate in the best markets precedes tax opportunities. Overall, I think governments will never fully dig out of the Covid hole, especially federal levels worldwide.
My suspicion is that city-states will get stronger in their ability to create captive tax-revenue streams from a low base, while nations will weaken from a high base. And healthcare will increasingly get linked to cities.
Already the best hospitals are in cities... where collective health threats are also highest. You can temporarily flee cities for the countryside, but the diseases will eventually reach you, but you'll have to go to the healthcare in the cities.
So that's the future. Nations competing for tax revenue ultimately linked to multinationals driving tech progress, and using it to compete with each other on healthcare for aging populations... while US and oil decline from a peak and divergence rules and cities rise > nations
I'm not sure how crypto will play frankly. At the moment it seems like some mix of nations and corps will be able to control it. https://twitter.com/dhruvbansal/status/1333497900748431362
Footnote: things that are probably over-rated analytically and probably have no big part to play in the future:
1. UBI
2. Georgism/LVT
3. Anarchism of any flavor
4. Fully decentralized anything
5. "Post-capitalism"
1. UBI
2. Georgism/LVT
3. Anarchism of any flavor
4. Fully decentralized anything
5. "Post-capitalism"
