Decline of the West

[Octavious]

I know Trump is still the headline act, along with Biden grabbing a few headlines by shipping illegal weapons to Ukraine and making a mockery of the justice system, like a formerly kindly grandpa who's suffering from dementia and has taken to swearing and hitting family members with a stick... But is anyone else a tad concerned with the rest of the civilised world falling off a cliff?

We've seen the German government collapse, the French government trying hard to follow suit, and I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell is going on in South Korea... and all in the space of a month.

It's like we're saying to China "go on, give it a go. You won't get a better opportunity for years"

[CaptainFritz28]

I have thought more and more over the last year that there's going to be a major war, revolt, or depression in America in the next few years. Europe will probably follow suit. It seems inevitable to me, it's just a matter of when.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Canada feels like the canary in the coal mine here.

We're in a decade long per capita recession. There's basically no business investment once you strip out the housing sector. It takes many years to complete major infrastructure and industrial projects. Lifetime wealth now depends more on whether you get lucky with housing/have family wealth, rather than your entrepreneurship, education, hard work, etc.

Our experiment with being a "postnational" country and has failed in important ways. The concept of free trade is tarnished and increasingly reviled. Mass immigration now favours low skilled people from just a few geographies, providing few economic benefits and fundamentally altering our supposed "multicultural" framework. No one can articulate what the national culture is, nor even what bare minimum norms are expected of Canadians.

We basically don't have a military at the moment. We would struggle profoundly if we ever needed to actually mobilize and expand recruitment (mass obesity, mental health issues, extremely weak national pride, etc.).

Our politics are not rising to the challenge. The discourse is getting dumber by the day. There are few policy innovations. Interest groups (airlines, banks, dairy farmers) face no real risk of losing their special privileges regardless of who is in power. Taxes and government employment as a share of the economy are reaching critical levels, despite few to no improvements in services.

These problems feel like they're generically true across the West, with the exception of the US' military might.

[Jamiet99uk]

All the time we have been telling you that neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable and will inevitably collapse.

Here it is.

I have been called a stupid commie for predicting exactly this.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

All the time we have been telling you that neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable and will inevitably collapse.

Here it is.

I have been called a stupid commie for predicting exactly this.

We all seem to agree on the decline. I think many of us are very uncertain that a huge expansion in the size of government is a legit way out.

And we're in a moment where we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The neoliberal revolution got a lot right. It just doesn't seem able to outrun it's contradictions.

[CaptainFritz28]

All the time we have been telling you that neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable and will inevitably collapse.

Here it is.

I have been called a stupid commie for predicting exactly this.

On the contrary, our "capitalism" has become a socialist amalgamation of itself. Our problems have been caused by the government, giving them more control just causes more problems.

[Jamiet99uk]

All the time we have been telling you that neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable and will inevitably collapse.

Here it is.

I have been called a stupid commie for predicting exactly this.

On the contrary, our "capitalism" has become a socialist amalgamation of itself. Our problems have been caused by the government, giving them more control just causes more problems.

I do not see very much socialism in practice.

[Doom427]

I'll believe it when I see it- America is still the major Hegemon and everyone else moving up in the world is doing so with the Neo-liberal playbook. There's certainly a lot of governmental collapses going on, but I see little that'll come afterwards besides an Autocracy of the most rich and powerful seeing fit to enact an even more austere approach.

I suppose if you view "the West" as the good guys that'd make you sad, but from where I'm sitting it's just the west living up to its eternal promise

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

There are probably a few reasons to think the West are at least the "better" guys. That's not to excuse the obvious self-interest that characterizes the US-led order. I just don't think a world order dominated by CCP China, Russia, Iran, etc., would be more just or prosperous than the status quo.

I'm also little confused about the idea we're in an unusually austere time. Tax revenues account for 1/3rd of GDP in Canada. One in five people are directly employed by some level of government (and many more provide government services on contract, or work for industries that receive "industrial policy" subsidies). We're running the largest-ever peace time government deficits. Population aging and climate change are basically guaranteed to require a further expansion of government. And these trends are more-or-less mirrored in most OECD countries.

[worcej]

All the time we have been telling you that neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable and will inevitably collapse.

Here it is.

I have been called a stupid commie for predicting exactly this.

On the contrary, our "capitalism" has become a socialist amalgamation of itself. Our problems have been caused by the government, giving them more control just causes more problems.

I do not see very much socialism in practice.

Name a true socialist country that has "succeeded" please - because I don't know of a single one that has.

[Jamiet99uk]

On the contrary, our "capitalism" has become a socialist amalgamation of itself. Our problems have been caused by the government, giving them more control just causes more problems.

I do not see very much socialism in practice.

Name a true socialist country that has "succeeded" please - because I don't know of a single one that has.

I do not see the relevance of this question.