Glad you appeared on Danny's show, Peter: I've read several of your books (End Times was my favorite book last year) but until then I didn't realize you had your own substack! Many thanks for your continuing work (which I'm finding useful for my own research into, of all things, constitutions).
A greater push for going at it alone and independently of the West by everyone else, either by BRICS, the SCO and similar, might just be a helpful way to provide an impetus to overturn the status quo in the West. Given the tentacular like hold over narratives by elites in the West gatekeeping the "intelligentsia" and monopolizing the MSM spaces of common folks (yes podcasts and independent journalists are always emerging, but never enough; even back in the early 00s we had "bloggers", but they never quite achieve critical mass), it's difficult to be optimistic unless the titanic hits an iceberg. To this end perhaps the tragedy that is Ukraine could eventually be a way for reality to knock on fantasy. But unfortunately we'll need a big event to bite and jolt enough people out of their dandy complacency and demand critical change. (I need to finish your book on Elites, but I'll go listen to DD; it's great to have your voice out there, thank you!)
What does "Shut Down the Wealth Pump" in terms of actual policies? And does shutting down the wealth pump mean a lower standard of living for most people?
The sanctions on Russia give you a partially answer: the sanctions disconnected the capital flight industrial complex and not very surprisingly the standard of living for common Russians shot up so fast it scared the central bank into a panic.
Other parts of the Wealth Pump, like the MIC or the pharma grift, are more painful to deal with, but that's because they aren't such a Pure loss... 🧐🤔🐸
In America there is a mechanism for resolving these things through what Jefferson called political revolutions. Political scientists characterize these things as critical elections leading to the establishment of a new dispensation:
In short what you need is for a party to gain the dispensation, enact policy that solves the excess elite problem and shuts off the wealth pump.
Last cycle this happened through the establishment of stakeholder capitalism, achieved by the New Dealers and establishing the FDR dispensation. The two key elements are banning stock buybacks and raising the top marginal tax rate to high levels. This article provides some explanation for how this works.
Mike, do you have all those pieces collected in a single academic-style article? If not, would you be interested in writing such an article for Cliodynamics (journal)? If memory serves, you had a couple of articles published there a few years ago.
Not at this time. I did write a draft back in 2019 and submitted it to Cliodynamics. It went around a few times of review and was rejected as being duplicative of previous articles. And it was. So I developed the ideas further in the process of writing a book and had it published by Cambridge Scholars. They did a nice job, and it did not cost me anything :) Since then I have been using Substack as sort of a scratchpad for developing the ideas further. Maybe I have enough now to formulate a new paper or paper(s), so I will think about how to do this. Thanks for the suggestion.
Let's start with this statement. "The replacement of higher-paid corporate employees with lower-paid labor may result in poorer customer service and less innovation, but if reduction in product or service quality is accompanied by lower prices, customers will often put up with it. After everyone has shifted to the new model, customers no longer have any alternative to crappy products"
There are number of factual issues here.
1. The post-1980 economy has actually had tremendous innovation. For example, a pocket communicator was science fiction in the 1970's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek) but now 60% of the world's population has access to a cell phone (with more capability than 1970's science fiction)
2. Customer service has improved. "Wait 6-8 weeks for delivery" has been replaced by next day delivery.
3. Product quality has improved. Compare the cars of the 1980's with those of today. The price is about the same but today's cars are more fuel-efficient, more comfortable, safer, more reliable and last longer. I remember when a car making it to 100,000 miles was unusual.
Innovation, quality and customer service can be hard to measure. Let's see some figures before you say they have declined.
I can't find what you quoted, though I recall writing something like that. The search function here sucks. So if you select it and link to it I can respond to the context of the quote. Here I will proceed based on my thinking of what that quote is talking about.
I think it refers to innovation under SP culture. The policy changes that shifted the economic environment to one that selects for SP culture began around 1980. Cultural evolution takes time. As this figure shows, economic culture (heavy black line) did not pass the halfway up level (around 16) until the end of the 1990's. It is only in the last 25-30 years that SP culture has been dominant.
So I think that quote refers to innovation since then. I was a fan of Harry Dent's innovation curve concept, which I merged with Modelski and Thompson's Leading Sectors concept (I have a post in this) and the economic long wave. We came out of the innovation period with a batch of strong basic innovations, microprocessors (the guts of PCs) in 1971, cell phones in 1973, genetic engineering in 1975, GPS in 1978. These things lead to new industries in the 1980's and 1990's, during which time economic culture was still predominantly stakeholder culture. For example, stock buybacks did not become a big thing until the late 1990's (see figure)
The cell phone example is a basic innovation from this earlier period, as is the PC. The smart phone (a merger of PC and cell phone) is a maturity innovation that extends these two innovations. Now Amazon is an example of SP innovation. But the comparison to Amazon few days delivery is not 4-6 weeks, it is same-day purchase in stores. The Amazon value proposition was never based on speed, it was based on price, initially, and as it became large, on selection. Amazon is the buy anything store, there has never been anything like it, it the real-life version of "Kuttpryce Country" satirized in MAD magazine in the sixties. The idea was very large discount stores (a new concept in the sixties) taken to the ridiculous, a store that sold everything that was so large you could live inside it. In a way, we all do inside the Amazon store. We don't have to leave our homes to go shopping, as long as we are willing to wait a few days to the merch to appear on our doorstep.
Amazon rapid delivery is not an example of customer service. That is the product Amazon sells. It is self-serve. Customer service is the experience a customer has when they have to personally interact with the company.
A core problem with SP innovation is their products are either worthless (i.e. they are free--think Google and social media firms) or their product replicates something that already existed in a new form from which more profit can be extracted (think Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash). None of these create new categories of demand. That is new stuff people spend money on that grows the economy.
The first set simply shifts pre-existing advertising dollars from one industry to a new one. The new one grows while the old one shrinks. On an economy-wide basis nothing has been created. The second batch replaces pre-existing businesses with new ones that do that same thing more efficiently. Again, the new industry grows while another declines.
This is standard Schumpeterian creative destruction and is always part of the picture and a necessary one as the less efficient must be cleared for the more efficient. But it in the past it has always been a mixture of truly new stuff like PCs and cell phones that added new economic activity on top of the old and efficiency boosters that increased labor productivity, freeing up workers to staff the industries building the new stuff. Together this gave us strong growth.
But nowadays we are only getting half of the story. Growth has been way slower considering the really impressive science-fictiony tech we have created. If you told me in the late 1990's how cheap solar PV would become, how advanced AI would become, how blindingly fast and cheap genetic analysis would become, I would have been sure you were high--yet look where we are. But, where is the growth? So that is where I am coming from.
You are defining post-2000 innovation as either being rooted in earlier tech (as if all that was not true of all tech) or not really creating something new. The very fact that people switched to the new tech shows the value of it to me.
" Growth has been way slower considering the really impressive science-fictiony tech we have created."
It is hard to measure of the value of technological innovation which results in the underestimate of economic growth. How do you measure the extra value of a cellphone compared to a land line? You need to try.
Up until the 1970's, much economic growth came from more capital (physical & human) creating more stuff. There was a limit to how much growth can come from more stuff. Since then growth has come from better stuff. What else would you expect? As Alan Greenspan like to point out, the weight of the economy per capita has fallen from its 1950's peak.
For me, the personal computer is like having a second brain and the internet is like having a third brain.
As for customer service, but the best customer service is when you don't need to interact with the seller.
As to stock buybacks, that is an artifact of the tax code. Public corporations can't deduct the cost of dividends (while they can deduct interest on debt). Buybacks are way of getting money to the stockholders under the lower capital gains rate. The increase in buybacks was also a consequence of the poor economic performance of conglomerates. It is better to get the money back to the stockholders than waste it on pointless mergers.
My observation of slower growth does not require measuring the value of innovation. It is what it is. You could argue that growth is slower because we have not had strong innovation. But your thesis is there has been strong innovation, which I agree with. So, if innovation over the last three decades has been strong, why is growth so slow?
Measured growth was strong 1945-1970 because of the motorization of the economy and bounceback from the depression years.
GDP numbers measure costs not benefits and do not do a good job of tracking growth over long periods. Slow growth has been characteristic of all developed economies.
It is easy to forget that we live in an age of miracles. You can basically phone anyone from anywhere. The average life expectancy of Americans has increased by 10 years since my birth. Most goods and information is at your fingertips.
None of that means the USA does not any economic or social problems. But you can't ignore how much our life has improved.
last longer thanks to higher quality or lack of money for a new car? in 2000 Americans drove an average of 14,410 miles per driver in 2025 13,662 miles and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ALTSALES
Just finished reading "End Times" and enjoyed it. Appreciated your description of the perfect storm intersection of the immiseration of common folk coupled with the disaffected dog-eat-dog scenario among the elites. My sense is that we are getting close to that in USA but not there yet. On very anecdotal level, I wear around town (at gym, mall, etc) a t-shirt that shouts out "the rich don't care about you". Very little reaction (good-bad-indifferent) so far, so my sense is that apathy/indifference still overpowers activism. When my t-shirt gets sustained enthusiastic reactions, I will know we are at the tipping point.
I haven’t read your books, but after you’d mentioned the free rider issue, I’d thought you might be leading into advocacy of a flatter federal tax code, c.1986-93, as one of my FB friends prefers (his name escapes me atm, but he was of some prominence at that time).
When asked what could give America the best chance to avoid a violent collapse, Peter Turchin replied: “shut down the wealth pump.” That answer is consistent with his structural-demographic theory, but it misses a decisive factor. Today, the main accelerant of polarization is not economic inequality but the mediological environment. Social media does not amplify wage stagnation or pension disputes; it amplifies identity-based grievances. That is why the pro-Palestinian surge in the West, or the fury over the murder of a young Ukrainian woman and of Charlie Kirk, cannot be explained by class or income. They belong instead to the tribal logics that networks magnify. In this context, polarization works as a positive feedback loop, intensifying itself with each cycle. What is needed is a negative loop to counteract this escalation. In my recent essay on social media friction ([Substack link here]), I argue that slowing down the velocity of networks—through temporal filters, enforced delays, or architectural redesign—may be the only way to dampen the runaway dynamics. Perhaps the decisive challenge is not so much to shut down the wealth pump, but—if anything—to slow down social media.
Overproduction of the elite, in my opinion, has several negative scenarios. The first is the conditional years 1914 and 1938-1939, when the "overproduced elite" in several countries seeks to unleash a world war. The second. This is the conditional "year 1917", when the overproduced elite suffers a defeat and is overthrown by the counter-elite. The third. The conditional year 1937 in the USSR or the 1950s in the USA, harsh purges and repressions within the elite, which partially reduces the level of "overproduction". Of course, there are also "optimistic" but unlikely scenarios associated with the blurring of boundaries between the elite and the rest of society, accelerated economic growth and the emergence of new market niches, as well as a new era of "great geographical discoveries", when "new conquistadors" (hello Elon Musk), instead of destroying each other in turmoil and revolutions, discover new horizons!
I look forward to reading your books. A few weeks ago I found the book “Targeted Beirut” by Jack Carr, Navy Seal, and could not put it down. The horror of that bombing was so personalized and what we need is a way forward beyond such tragic losses. Thank you, Peter, for caring.
The high measured growth rate from 1945-1970 was the anomaly. It reflects the motorization of the economy and bouncing back from the Great Depression and World War 2.
GDP figures measure costs, not benefits. That is why innovation doesn't show up well.
Consider free web search. You can measure the revenue from advertising. You can measure the costs of maintaining the search engine. Can you measure the consumer surplus from the benefits of searching on the web? This conversation would be difficult to do without free web search.
Excellent presentation on Danny's show. Thank you. I think it would also be interesting to consider might have been's: if DNC elites, hadn't shafted Bernie he might have been elected. Could a figure emerge from the Bernie-like counter elites (Ro Khanna,...) emerge, if perhaps Epstein sinks Trump.
"In other words, it is the pressure (military, economic sanctions, ideological) from the West/NATO that is inducing China and Russia (and India, Iran, North Korea) to strengthen their cooperative organization."
Whereas for decades a primary intention of Western geopolitical strategy was to keep them divided and preferably hostile to each other.
Glad you appeared on Danny's show, Peter: I've read several of your books (End Times was my favorite book last year) but until then I didn't realize you had your own substack! Many thanks for your continuing work (which I'm finding useful for my own research into, of all things, constitutions).
Well, Donny ramped up the wealth pump in the last 7 months. Ramped it up big. That's not heartening for future stability.
A greater push for going at it alone and independently of the West by everyone else, either by BRICS, the SCO and similar, might just be a helpful way to provide an impetus to overturn the status quo in the West. Given the tentacular like hold over narratives by elites in the West gatekeeping the "intelligentsia" and monopolizing the MSM spaces of common folks (yes podcasts and independent journalists are always emerging, but never enough; even back in the early 00s we had "bloggers", but they never quite achieve critical mass), it's difficult to be optimistic unless the titanic hits an iceberg. To this end perhaps the tragedy that is Ukraine could eventually be a way for reality to knock on fantasy. But unfortunately we'll need a big event to bite and jolt enough people out of their dandy complacency and demand critical change. (I need to finish your book on Elites, but I'll go listen to DD; it's great to have your voice out there, thank you!)
What does "Shut Down the Wealth Pump" in terms of actual policies? And does shutting down the wealth pump mean a lower standard of living for most people?
The sanctions on Russia give you a partially answer: the sanctions disconnected the capital flight industrial complex and not very surprisingly the standard of living for common Russians shot up so fast it scared the central bank into a panic.
Other parts of the Wealth Pump, like the MIC or the pharma grift, are more painful to deal with, but that's because they aren't such a Pure loss... 🧐🤔🐸
Putting more money in peoples hands without more goods & services means inflation, which is what is happening in Russia. MV=PQ.
I identify the wealth pump for the US here:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/a-critical-review-of-end-times-by#:~:text=In%20his%20first,pump%20in%20action.
I discuss how past Anglo-American secular cycle crises have been resolved here.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-my-analytical-approach-is-different-d76#:~:text=The%20significance%20of%20our%20times%3B%20the%20secular%20cycle%20crisis.
In America there is a mechanism for resolving these things through what Jefferson called political revolutions. Political scientists characterize these things as critical elections leading to the establishment of a new dispensation:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-a-political-dispensation
In short what you need is for a party to gain the dispensation, enact policy that solves the excess elite problem and shuts off the wealth pump.
Last cycle this happened through the establishment of stakeholder capitalism, achieved by the New Dealers and establishing the FDR dispensation. The two key elements are banning stock buybacks and raising the top marginal tax rate to high levels. This article provides some explanation for how this works.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/what-is-neoliberalism-an-empirical
I am sorry this is not more compact, but it is a complex thing and this is a work in progress.
Mike, do you have all those pieces collected in a single academic-style article? If not, would you be interested in writing such an article for Cliodynamics (journal)? If memory serves, you had a couple of articles published there a few years ago.
Not at this time. I did write a draft back in 2019 and submitted it to Cliodynamics. It went around a few times of review and was rejected as being duplicative of previous articles. And it was. So I developed the ideas further in the process of writing a book and had it published by Cambridge Scholars. They did a nice job, and it did not cost me anything :) Since then I have been using Substack as sort of a scratchpad for developing the ideas further. Maybe I have enough now to formulate a new paper or paper(s), so I will think about how to do this. Thanks for the suggestion.
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-9102-8
Let's start with this statement. "The replacement of higher-paid corporate employees with lower-paid labor may result in poorer customer service and less innovation, but if reduction in product or service quality is accompanied by lower prices, customers will often put up with it. After everyone has shifted to the new model, customers no longer have any alternative to crappy products"
There are number of factual issues here.
1. The post-1980 economy has actually had tremendous innovation. For example, a pocket communicator was science fiction in the 1970's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek) but now 60% of the world's population has access to a cell phone (with more capability than 1970's science fiction)
2. Customer service has improved. "Wait 6-8 weeks for delivery" has been replaced by next day delivery.
3. Product quality has improved. Compare the cars of the 1980's with those of today. The price is about the same but today's cars are more fuel-efficient, more comfortable, safer, more reliable and last longer. I remember when a car making it to 100,000 miles was unusual.
Innovation, quality and customer service can be hard to measure. Let's see some figures before you say they have declined.
I can't find what you quoted, though I recall writing something like that. The search function here sucks. So if you select it and link to it I can respond to the context of the quote. Here I will proceed based on my thinking of what that quote is talking about.
I think it refers to innovation under SP culture. The policy changes that shifted the economic environment to one that selects for SP culture began around 1980. Cultural evolution takes time. As this figure shows, economic culture (heavy black line) did not pass the halfway up level (around 16) until the end of the 1990's. It is only in the last 25-30 years that SP culture has been dominant.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HYK-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F31644882-008e-4005-8a84-053489b87746_606x311.gif
So I think that quote refers to innovation since then. I was a fan of Harry Dent's innovation curve concept, which I merged with Modelski and Thompson's Leading Sectors concept (I have a post in this) and the economic long wave. We came out of the innovation period with a batch of strong basic innovations, microprocessors (the guts of PCs) in 1971, cell phones in 1973, genetic engineering in 1975, GPS in 1978. These things lead to new industries in the 1980's and 1990's, during which time economic culture was still predominantly stakeholder culture. For example, stock buybacks did not become a big thing until the late 1990's (see figure)
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!N7aJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F256392ca-fa28-4b59-86d3-d93102c7a419_621x289.gif
The cell phone example is a basic innovation from this earlier period, as is the PC. The smart phone (a merger of PC and cell phone) is a maturity innovation that extends these two innovations. Now Amazon is an example of SP innovation. But the comparison to Amazon few days delivery is not 4-6 weeks, it is same-day purchase in stores. The Amazon value proposition was never based on speed, it was based on price, initially, and as it became large, on selection. Amazon is the buy anything store, there has never been anything like it, it the real-life version of "Kuttpryce Country" satirized in MAD magazine in the sixties. The idea was very large discount stores (a new concept in the sixties) taken to the ridiculous, a store that sold everything that was so large you could live inside it. In a way, we all do inside the Amazon store. We don't have to leave our homes to go shopping, as long as we are willing to wait a few days to the merch to appear on our doorstep.
Amazon rapid delivery is not an example of customer service. That is the product Amazon sells. It is self-serve. Customer service is the experience a customer has when they have to personally interact with the company.
A core problem with SP innovation is their products are either worthless (i.e. they are free--think Google and social media firms) or their product replicates something that already existed in a new form from which more profit can be extracted (think Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash). None of these create new categories of demand. That is new stuff people spend money on that grows the economy.
The first set simply shifts pre-existing advertising dollars from one industry to a new one. The new one grows while the old one shrinks. On an economy-wide basis nothing has been created. The second batch replaces pre-existing businesses with new ones that do that same thing more efficiently. Again, the new industry grows while another declines.
This is standard Schumpeterian creative destruction and is always part of the picture and a necessary one as the less efficient must be cleared for the more efficient. But it in the past it has always been a mixture of truly new stuff like PCs and cell phones that added new economic activity on top of the old and efficiency boosters that increased labor productivity, freeing up workers to staff the industries building the new stuff. Together this gave us strong growth.
But nowadays we are only getting half of the story. Growth has been way slower considering the really impressive science-fictiony tech we have created. If you told me in the late 1990's how cheap solar PV would become, how advanced AI would become, how blindingly fast and cheap genetic analysis would become, I would have been sure you were high--yet look where we are. But, where is the growth? So that is where I am coming from.
My quote from your first link.
You are defining post-2000 innovation as either being rooted in earlier tech (as if all that was not true of all tech) or not really creating something new. The very fact that people switched to the new tech shows the value of it to me.
" Growth has been way slower considering the really impressive science-fictiony tech we have created."
It is hard to measure of the value of technological innovation which results in the underestimate of economic growth. How do you measure the extra value of a cellphone compared to a land line? You need to try.
Up until the 1970's, much economic growth came from more capital (physical & human) creating more stuff. There was a limit to how much growth can come from more stuff. Since then growth has come from better stuff. What else would you expect? As Alan Greenspan like to point out, the weight of the economy per capita has fallen from its 1950's peak.
For me, the personal computer is like having a second brain and the internet is like having a third brain.
As for customer service, but the best customer service is when you don't need to interact with the seller.
As to stock buybacks, that is an artifact of the tax code. Public corporations can't deduct the cost of dividends (while they can deduct interest on debt). Buybacks are way of getting money to the stockholders under the lower capital gains rate. The increase in buybacks was also a consequence of the poor economic performance of conglomerates. It is better to get the money back to the stockholders than waste it on pointless mergers.
My observation of slower growth does not require measuring the value of innovation. It is what it is. You could argue that growth is slower because we have not had strong innovation. But your thesis is there has been strong innovation, which I agree with. So, if innovation over the last three decades has been strong, why is growth so slow?
Measured growth was strong 1945-1970 because of the motorization of the economy and bounceback from the depression years.
GDP numbers measure costs not benefits and do not do a good job of tracking growth over long periods. Slow growth has been characteristic of all developed economies.
It is easy to forget that we live in an age of miracles. You can basically phone anyone from anywhere. The average life expectancy of Americans has increased by 10 years since my birth. Most goods and information is at your fingertips.
None of that means the USA does not any economic or social problems. But you can't ignore how much our life has improved.
Cars last longer? I'm sorry, but that's hilarious.
I will reference https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-trucks-operation-united-states
That is an average of course, you may have been unlucky and had some lemons.
The Toyota Camry's I have owned for most of my life have been very durable. My wife's Honda Odyssey did not do so well.
last longer thanks to higher quality or lack of money for a new car? in 2000 Americans drove an average of 14,410 miles per driver in 2025 13,662 miles and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ALTSALES
Car prices have not gone up faster than other prices or pay. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SETA01
Just finished reading "End Times" and enjoyed it. Appreciated your description of the perfect storm intersection of the immiseration of common folk coupled with the disaffected dog-eat-dog scenario among the elites. My sense is that we are getting close to that in USA but not there yet. On very anecdotal level, I wear around town (at gym, mall, etc) a t-shirt that shouts out "the rich don't care about you". Very little reaction (good-bad-indifferent) so far, so my sense is that apathy/indifference still overpowers activism. When my t-shirt gets sustained enthusiastic reactions, I will know we are at the tipping point.
Europe's shortsightedness in not seeing Russia as European is going to be its biggest historical mistake.
I haven’t read your books, but after you’d mentioned the free rider issue, I’d thought you might be leading into advocacy of a flatter federal tax code, c.1986-93, as one of my FB friends prefers (his name escapes me atm, but he was of some prominence at that time).
When asked what could give America the best chance to avoid a violent collapse, Peter Turchin replied: “shut down the wealth pump.” That answer is consistent with his structural-demographic theory, but it misses a decisive factor. Today, the main accelerant of polarization is not economic inequality but the mediological environment. Social media does not amplify wage stagnation or pension disputes; it amplifies identity-based grievances. That is why the pro-Palestinian surge in the West, or the fury over the murder of a young Ukrainian woman and of Charlie Kirk, cannot be explained by class or income. They belong instead to the tribal logics that networks magnify. In this context, polarization works as a positive feedback loop, intensifying itself with each cycle. What is needed is a negative loop to counteract this escalation. In my recent essay on social media friction ([Substack link here]), I argue that slowing down the velocity of networks—through temporal filters, enforced delays, or architectural redesign—may be the only way to dampen the runaway dynamics. Perhaps the decisive challenge is not so much to shut down the wealth pump, but—if anything—to slow down social media.
https://albertocarrillocanan.substack.com/p/ai-friction-saving-free-speech-and
Overproduction of the elite, in my opinion, has several negative scenarios. The first is the conditional years 1914 and 1938-1939, when the "overproduced elite" in several countries seeks to unleash a world war. The second. This is the conditional "year 1917", when the overproduced elite suffers a defeat and is overthrown by the counter-elite. The third. The conditional year 1937 in the USSR or the 1950s in the USA, harsh purges and repressions within the elite, which partially reduces the level of "overproduction". Of course, there are also "optimistic" but unlikely scenarios associated with the blurring of boundaries between the elite and the rest of society, accelerated economic growth and the emergence of new market niches, as well as a new era of "great geographical discoveries", when "new conquistadors" (hello Elon Musk), instead of destroying each other in turmoil and revolutions, discover new horizons!
I look forward to reading your books. A few weeks ago I found the book “Targeted Beirut” by Jack Carr, Navy Seal, and could not put it down. The horror of that bombing was so personalized and what we need is a way forward beyond such tragic losses. Thank you, Peter, for caring.
The high measured growth rate from 1945-1970 was the anomaly. It reflects the motorization of the economy and bouncing back from the Great Depression and World War 2.
GDP figures measure costs, not benefits. That is why innovation doesn't show up well.
Consider free web search. You can measure the revenue from advertising. You can measure the costs of maintaining the search engine. Can you measure the consumer surplus from the benefits of searching on the web? This conversation would be difficult to do without free web search.
Excellent presentation on Danny's show. Thank you. I think it would also be interesting to consider might have been's: if DNC elites, hadn't shafted Bernie he might have been elected. Could a figure emerge from the Bernie-like counter elites (Ro Khanna,...) emerge, if perhaps Epstein sinks Trump.
"In other words, it is the pressure (military, economic sanctions, ideological) from the West/NATO that is inducing China and Russia (and India, Iran, North Korea) to strengthen their cooperative organization."
Whereas for decades a primary intention of Western geopolitical strategy was to keep them divided and preferably hostile to each other.
TLDR: Fail.