"When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together".
I’m working my way through “The End of the World is Just the Beginning”, and the main thesis is that everyone is preparing for demographic collapse. Global populations are declining almost everywhere, and this breaks the current global order. For example, what does the Chinese economy look like when all the people subject to the one child policy retire? What are the knock on effects of labor becoming more expensive almost everywhere? Can immigration solve this problem? What about the cultural friction of mass immigration? What happens to the places that everyone emigrates from?
The book basically argues that a significant amount of the world is headed for destabilization, and a destabilized world involves a lot less trust.
Side note: personally, I find the writing style and general tone to be hyperbolic, but some of the analysis is interesting.
I think we are already seeing this happening as it is not rocket science. US is not willing to be the world police anymore, because it is more and more expensive and some of the elites and many ordinary people feel that they are not gaining much as return.
So this left and is going to leave a lot of power gaps around the globes, and regional wars are picking up paces.
China is not particularly happy about this, because it is not ready and perhaps don't even want to be the next world police. US has always wanted China to share the responsibility but China is hesitant, which is understandable. Plus most of the people in China do not want a destabilized world, for now.
What I'd expect that China will gradually lose steam (actually people on HN already observed since like 10 years ago) when the people born in the 1970s/1980s retire. The officials who are resistant to the idea of expansion (because it damages their power base) are going to retire then. I'd expect the world to be a LOT hotter then. So that's about 2030-2040 and might come a bit earlier as the other players are already moving the pieces(e.g. Russia).
Not sure how to prepare my family through that time, though. I mean, it's just my guess, so my wife just rolls up her eye and wants to buy more houses/stocks because "houses/stocks always go up if you look at the chart". What I think is that the whole economical-geopolitico logic is going to change forever, and what is gone is gone for good. The next globalization is maybe 50 years away but we will never see it. From hindsight, I believe the 2008 financial crisis was the turning points. They managed to drag it for another 20 years, which I send my kudos.
Again, just my guess. I have always wronged in the pessimistic side so I hope I'm wrong this time again.
We are very far from the "imagine all the people, living live in peace". I wonder why that is...