While we focus on AI and finance, society is crumbling beneath our feet.
According to both the mainstream media and social media, the forces that will shape the future are:
1) AI (i.e. technology's impact on jobs and growth),
2) geopolitical competition for AI dominance, energy, resources, trade, military and financial power,
3) finance, which includes cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), federal deficits, hyperinflation / currency devaluation and precious metals --all of which boil down to "what can I do to ensure that my wealth will remain intact whatever happens."
The key issues are technology, finance and market forces--the core drivers of the global economy. Society isn't on the menu other than as a quickly dismissed source of dutiful hand-wringing.
While all these will be influential, no one seems to see the domestic crisis hidden in plain sight or the revolution it makes inevitable. In my analysis, these will be the dominant forces shaping the coming decade.
As I have documented in recent posts-- If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We'd Be In a Depression, For Many, This Recession Will Feel Like a Depression and Crunch Time for Cities, Counties and States--the system has reached its limits and is coming apart.
What is the crisis? There are three self-reinforcing dynamics in play......
1) AI (i.e. technology's impact on jobs and growth),
2) geopolitical competition for AI dominance, energy, resources, trade, military and financial power,
3) finance, which includes cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), federal deficits, hyperinflation / currency devaluation and precious metals --all of which boil down to "what can I do to ensure that my wealth will remain intact whatever happens."
The key issues are technology, finance and market forces--the core drivers of the global economy. Society isn't on the menu other than as a quickly dismissed source of dutiful hand-wringing.
While all these will be influential, no one seems to see the domestic crisis hidden in plain sight or the revolution it makes inevitable. In my analysis, these will be the dominant forces shaping the coming decade.
As I have documented in recent posts-- If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We'd Be In a Depression, For Many, This Recession Will Feel Like a Depression and Crunch Time for Cities, Counties and States--the system has reached its limits and is coming apart.
What is the crisis? There are three self-reinforcing dynamics in play......
....Though it's unseen, the economy and society both rest on moral foundations. As moral decay consumes those foundations, the consequences are social and economic decay.
The authentic market--defined by transparency and competition--has been replaced by monopolies and cartels that generate outsized profits not by increasing value but by reducing the value of products and services.
Profits flow not from improving durability and quality but by reducing them. There are words that describe our economy: exploitation, profiteering, predation, extraction.
Since political influence is now an open auction in which corporations place the winning bids, there is zero political interest or will to address the inequality divide. The current administration's core economic policies are unchanged from 2008-09: cut taxes paid by the 10% (because they pay most of the income taxes), push interest rates down to goose borrowing, and inflate asset bubbles to create "the wealth effect." That these only increase wealth and income inequality--who cares? Not the political class of either party.
We've succumbed to normalization: all this is "the way it is."
But this is artifice: normalizing extremes doesn't make them stable. The system has reached its limits and the social order is crumbling.
The authentic market--defined by transparency and competition--has been replaced by monopolies and cartels that generate outsized profits not by increasing value but by reducing the value of products and services.
Profits flow not from improving durability and quality but by reducing them. There are words that describe our economy: exploitation, profiteering, predation, extraction.
Since political influence is now an open auction in which corporations place the winning bids, there is zero political interest or will to address the inequality divide. The current administration's core economic policies are unchanged from 2008-09: cut taxes paid by the 10% (because they pay most of the income taxes), push interest rates down to goose borrowing, and inflate asset bubbles to create "the wealth effect." That these only increase wealth and income inequality--who cares? Not the political class of either party.
We've succumbed to normalization: all this is "the way it is."
But this is artifice: normalizing extremes doesn't make them stable. The system has reached its limits and the social order is crumbling.
