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From that graph, it seems to just be about other parts of the world catching up, rather than an actual decline in the West. It is clearer after switching the gr

• ajross 3y ago
  Yeah, that argument was taking data that says essentially "global trade driven by western rule of law regimes lifts all boats" and tries to say "western rule of law is bad because the other boats were lifted". The ideological bent on HN threads really has gotten a little out of control in recent years. We're literally in a topic where the bulk of the posting volume is from the "money laundering is good, actually" camp.
• roenxi 3y ago
  If you are ahead and then everyone else catches up, what does that say about your running performance? It says achieving average speed, but recent performance was a bit sedentary. And it isn't KYC/AML laws doing that in isolation because it is too big a trend and too much happens over a century. But "Western capitalism was going gangbusters through the whole period in the 20th century where cash flow tracking was being introduced." - no it wasn't. Western capitalism has been slowly mean-reverting to fall in line with all the authoritarian states and tinpot dictatorships. The economic strategy that the west has been using does not seem to be creating vast amounts of wealth in the west. Most of the wealth is being created in Asia. And big investments take 20-30 years to pay off, so we're probably seeing the results of policies from 1940 through to around 2000 in that chart.