Secret History #2: Measuring the Resilience of Societies
The world is in decline, and a perfect storm of crises are coming. Here’s how to know which communities will best weather it.
The signs of rapid global decline are everywhere. Young people cannot afford homes, and refuse to have children. Immigration is tearing apart the delicate fabric of Western societies. At their college graduation ceremony, students despair at a life drowning in debt.
Why is this happening? There are three compelling theories.
The first comes to us from French economist Thomas Piketty. In his best-seller “Capital in the 21st Century,” he analyzes tax data to reveal how capital accumulates and consolidates, which leads to the over-financialization of society. In late-stage capitalism, the ROI of speculation is greater than the ROI of entrepreneurship. This leads to a rentier economy, and a crisis of faith in capitalism.
The second theory comes to us from historian Peter Turchin. He believes societies fall and collapse because of “elite over-production,” or when too many elites compete for limited positions of status and power. In his analysis, that is what led to the civil wars of the late Roman Republic, and also to the French Revolution. He tells us that we are living in a period of intense elite over-production. There are too many Harvard and Oxford graduates, and the Baby Boomers are not retiring from positions of status and power.
The third theory comes to us from Oswald Spengler, whose magnus opus “Decline of the West” argues that societies have life cycles. As they progress from the village to the town to the city to the mega-city, societies adopt a greater level of abstraction (individuality, money, and intellectualism) that saps their energy, and dilutes social cohesion. Ultimately, people are so focused on pursuing pleasure that they refuse to have children.
These three theories together paint a bleak picture for humanity. The world is about to fall apart, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It’s all a natural cycle of life, death, and re-birth. To attempt to stop it is as vain as attempting to concoct the elixir of immortality.
So how can we best prepare for the decline and collapse of the world we live in? I have been asked to prognosticate about Brazil, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, and other nations that I know nothing about.
Let me provide a simple framework in which we can use to analyze the fate of all societies.
There are three metrics of a healthy and strong society: energy, openness, and cohesion.
Energy is the measure of how many people are working, and their attitude towards work. A society on the rise is one in which young people are being mentored in the trades and professions, and taking pride and satisfaction in their work. A society on the decline is one in which people hate their jobs, try to do as little work as possible, and engage in day-trading.
Openness is the measure of how mobile and meritocratic a society is. Are people rewarded for the work they do, or are they rewarded for who they know? Are people allowed to voice dissent and criticism, or are people who point out problems considered the problem?
Cohesion is the measure of trust and empathy in society. Are people willing to help strangers in need? Do people have genuine concern for the well-being of others? Are people willing to make sacrifices for the good of society?
In a world in decline, most nation-states will see a rapid decrease in these three metrics. The trick is to appreciate that nation-states are artificial constructs, and most will wither away. What will replace the nation-state is the city-state. We need to take a hard cold look at what sort of community we live in, and if it scores low in these three metrics we may consider moving to a more resilient community, even though it will probably be smaller, poorer, and more isolated.
There is another solution, which is to help build resilient communities that are most prepared to weather the perfect storm of crises fast approaching us. That is the project that I am currently contemplating. Over time, I will reveal the blueprint for such communities.
Recommended Readings:
1. Please do yourself a favor, and read Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century.” It’s surprisingly clear and simple, and his evidence is striking and overwhelming.
2. It’s essential to read Peter Turchin. I recommend starting with one of his earlier works: “War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires.”
3. C. Wright Mills’ “The Power Elite” is a classic sociological survey on how power works. You can read it for free here: https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507694
Paraguay. The more you research it, the more you’ll find it’s one of the top spots to ride out the coming decades. I do not usually advertise it cause immigration is continually growing, but I think anybody who watches Predictive History is probably the type of person I’d want to meet there.
Great summary and overview. I'm personally quite happy I've come across your material from the YT channel and now your substack.
However, I can't help but shake the feeling that while "keeping it simple" (in terms of the explanation) is a very positive sign of being correct ("on the money"), and keeping in mind it's better to be generally right than exactly wrong, when we step into the weeds and look under hood about how societies function, it gets very complicated and complex.
For instance, today I read a wonderful short essay here on substack on psychopaths and their proclivity towards working in the financial industry and politics. And in my comment I lamented the lack of justice in our Western societies, how decreasing institutional trust and social capital are symptomatic of perceived and actual injustices, from financial services and bureaucracy/politics, when encountering dishonesty and psychopaths, which can be connected to your metric of openness and/or cohesiveness.
But finding an adequate solution for psychopathy, both in terms of a corrective and preventive, or even acknowledging this, at the very least it's complex and otherwise downright complicated.
It's clear smaller communities (village vs Town vs city) can overcome the coordination problem and can use social reputation to better effect, but even here, this requires a degree of honesty (a complicated metric to measure if ever there was one).
In general I really like your work. Thank you for sharing it and all the best!