I tend to ignore the "endless screeching", and I've long had an optimistic world view somewhat aligned with say Steven Pinker -- we're living through the best times, roughly monotonic progress, with some temporary setbacks.<p>But this recent video by Ray Dalio made me think a lot, and led me to his books: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8</a><p><i>Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order</i><p>He did a bunch of quantitative research and came up with a model for the prosperity of countries, and "the world order".<p>In the model, there were 4 world leaders at various points: Dutch, British, Americans, and Chinese. The basic pattern is that they were productive and industrious, gained military power, and grew to hold the world's reserve concurrency.<p>After they hold the world's reserve concurrency, they stop being as productive. The rich parents can bend the rules and corrupt society for their kids.<p>And there is more internal conflict about how to divvy up a fixed or declining pie. There can be more external conflict once rivals see weakness. In Dalio's view, China is obviously on the rise economically, and you also see signs of their increased military power.<p>There is more to it than that -- see the video and books, but that's my short summary.<p>-----<p>It sounds a little too "clean", but after some reflection, a lot of it is hard to argue with. (I'd definitely be interested in criticisms -- this presentation / framing is pretty new.)<p>This doesn't mean America is "collapsing". But I would now say it's clearly "declining". Our energies are directed more at fighting amongst ourselves than producing things.<p>It always boggled my mind that everything we buy is made in China -- how could that not have an effect? Well it does appear that having the world's reserve concurrency is a huge advantage. That was established long ago, before we were born, and now we're coasting off of it.<p>But then again, Britain and the Netherlands "declined" and they seem to be doing OK. They lost their empires, but they recovered to some degree of civilized society and prosperity.<p>And I'm pretty sure I would not want to live in China right now, e.g. especially with what I hear about the COVID lockdowns. (even though I'm ethnically Chinese)<p>But yeah I think I need to take the idea of decline a lot more seriously. I think the blog post is also "overcorrecting" from the screeching. I think what decline looks like is a bunch of little collapses in all areas of life, and people endlessly arguing about it, while doing little to correct it.