Cheer up! Trump isn't the problem. We are simply dying.

Submitted by Michael S, Nov 22, 2016 at 07:22

I keep checking in here, seeing whether Daniel will have further comment on world events. Instead, I find nearly complete silence, since the election.

Trump won the election, and will probably be our 45th President. End of (that) story. The world moves on, though; and who is President of the US will make very little difference on the course of things.

We are a civilization in collapse. We were before the election, and we will be after the election. Here are signs of a civilization in collapse.

1. Civilizations collapse right in the middle of their "Golden Ages".
2. The cause of the collapse if the very things that made the civilization great. In our case, some of these things are: industrialization, (social & industrial) integration, specialization, free trade due to an excellent infrastructure, the information revolution.
3. These "strengths" of a civilization, over time, bring in lower and lower marginal returns. In its early days, Microsoft shares brought in 1000% return over a short time. As the years have progressed, that has steadily decreased.
4. As the returns decrease, the society doubles down on the things it does best. We produce more and fancier goods, faster and faster, regardless of the real need.
5. As the returns decrease, political and business leaders are put on shorter and shorter-term expectation cycles: people expect our leaders to "restore our greatness" in 4-8 years for instance, an impossible task.

You can see all these things at work in the US; and they have been at work for hundreds of years. We are now at the crisis point, and we are due to collapse any time -- not just the US, but the entire modern civilization of the world: The US is collapsing; China is collapsing; Africa is collapsing; the Muslim World is collapsing; India is collapsing. Nobody can see that we are in collapse, because we are in our "Golden Age". Commerce is booming. Products keep getting more innovative. But we are dying.

cf: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/odd-lots-here-are-the-signs-that-a-civilization-is-about-to-collapse

So, cheer up, Daniel! Trump's election isn't the earth-shaking event people think it is, after all.

Shalom shalom :-)

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