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Anybody else feel like the advanced economy countries are complex and starting to collapse? I do.

• marcosdumay 4y ago
  The world seems to be entering a crisis, but I don't see any overall trend over "advanced economy countries" (you mean rich ones, right?), nor I see reasons for this specific crisis to be very different from any other. You may be thinking about one or two countries, and overgeneralizing.
• dredmorbius 4y ago
  This is a fairly broadly-held view, yes. It's also one that emerges throughout history. The term "Seneca Cliff" refers to an observation by the Roman rhetoritician. Apocalyptic concepts are common in the Bible. Eastern religions tend to take a more cyclical view, of recurring expansion and collapse. Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West is a classic. There's a modern literature largely spawning from the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972) of which I'd include Tainter. James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency is a more recent take on that. Broad-brush observations and gut feelings tend to be less substantive and articulable than specific indicia and mechanisms. Tainter's work is of interest in that he does point to a general rule that is common to multiple instances.