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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 6 May \ on: The Half Life of Empire (measured as share of world energy consumption) econ
I've never thought to look at a metric like this. It is very interesting.
I wonder how hard it would be to push back into earlier historical periods that predominantly used more mechanical energy sources, like muscles or wind.
There are many metrics you can look at and compare.
Across nearly all of them the USA is now in decline and China is rising.
Very rarely do citizens of empires in decline see and acknowledge the process, until it is too late.
It is arguably the sense of entitlement and invulnerability that slowly grows like a cancer in dominant societies, that is their ultimate undoing.
US exceptionalism being perhaps a case in point.
The naivety of the Libertarians 'markets fix everything' dogma and their dismissal of the importance of government in determining the wealth of nations being another.
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