Hikikomori and Lying Flat: When "Making It" Becomes Hopeless

No wonder so many people devote themselves to curating an artificial digital representation of themselves that they reckon is worthy of recognition and status.

What does it take to "make it" in today's economy? As described in Withdrawing from the Rat Race Is Going Global, the world has changed in fundamental ways that have made it much more difficult to "make it" into the ranks of the middle class, and even harder to claw one's way into the higher reaches of the economic order, i.e. the top 10%.

In summary, developed economies have been stripped of secure, well-paid manual-labor work, the purchasing power of wages has declined, prices of assets such as homes have skyrocketed out of reach and the mass overproduction of elites (those with college diplomas and advanced degrees) has created a winner-take-all competitive pressure cooker with few winners and an abundance of also-rans.

In other words, the work-a-day world has become far more complex and far more demanding than it was two generations ago. It's not just making enough to pay the bills that's more demanding; the work is more demanding, as is everyday life, which now demands far more shadow work--work we do to manage life's complexities that we're not paid for. Having children is far more expensive and demanding, too, as the competition for upper-middle class slots now starts in Kindergarten.

Many individuals do not have the armor and weaponry needed to enter the arena and survive the competition. It's easy to dismiss them as "lazy," but that's not the issue. It's also easy to dismiss them as snowflakes, young people who have been shielded from life's rougher edges by overprotective parents, leaving them ill-equipped for the slings and arrows of modern life.

But this isn't the issue, either. The real issue is the social and economic demands now exceed the carrying capacity of many people. Where it was possible to find a secure low-level job that could support a household and find a place in society's pecking order two generations ago with limited social / work skills, now it's essentially impossible: low-level work is insecure and too poorly paid to support a household, and it is viewed as demeaning and unworthy of respect.

How do humans respond when they're viewed as worthless and they feel hopeless? In the Hollywood script, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, gather a discarded shield and sword off the blood-soaked sand of the arena and go out and kick some derriere. ("Take that, nepo scum!")

Many people manage to do this and we applaud their grit and determination. But not every individual wins in this battle. Many pick up the shield and the sword and are immediately trampled. They make a realistic assessment that they can't possibly reach the lofty goals demanded of them, and so they are effectively excluded from what is now considered "normal life."

This comment on a Reddit thread speaks to the increasing demands of "normal life":

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I can give some insight based on my own social withdrawal: modern life is overwhelming. It feels like there's a lot that's expected of you. In many ways modern life is a giant competition for wealth and status, but instead of competing just within your community, you have to compete with millions of people all around the world. It feels daunting, if not impossible. Why compete in a contest you know you can't win? It's pointless, it's a waste of time and energy. I feel very much like, "well, what's the point?"

So they drop out of the competition. Maybe they take a part-time gig job, maybe they move back home to take care of a parent or grandparent, or they become a recluse.

Hikikomori--hiki, to withdraw--komori, inside--is an extreme form of voluntary social isolation from society. The term originated in Japan but the abandonment of conforming to the demands of society is not limited to Japan. Withdrawing from the demands of what passes for "normal life" is not limited to extremes of seclusion; it is a spectrum of withdrawal that includes giving up on striving for upper-middle class membership (which goes by terms such as lying flat and let it rot) to minimizing engagement with the world in a variety of ways.

The medical professions have naturally sought to frame this voluntary seclusion as a psychiatric disorder, but it is not a disease or disorder, it is a psychological response to an impossible set of familial and social-economic demands in a social order that no longer offers a positive role, socially or economically, for the marginalized and those lacking what it takes to meet the increasing demands of an economy of surplus elites striving for the diminishing pool of jobs that provide both 1) a secure middle-class income and 2) a way of life that doesn't strip the worker of everything but work.

This is not so much a mystifying disorder as an understanding that seclusion is viewed as the only available response left to social-economic exclusion.

In a hyper-globalized, hyper-financialized developed economy, there are no social or economic roles left for those who cannot enter the coliseum of "highly productive workers" and emerge victorious. Part-time precarious work is all that's available to them, and it's poorly paid and earns zero status or respect, so the impoverishment of those for whom this is best they can manage is both physical and psychological.

Trying to live up to the standards of "normal life" extracts more than they have to give in return for an awareness of inadequacy and demands more than they can give in return for the impossibility of meeting expectations in a social order in which ridicule, exclusion and harassment are normalized.

Unable to qualify for social approval and validation--winners must have high social skills and oversized ambitions, be willing to work insanely long hours and pass grueling all-or-nothing exams, then work insanely long hours to prove one's social merit, marry and have children whose success in a competitive pressure cooker is a heavy responsibility--those who lack these traits either endure a quite realistic sense of the hopelessness of "succeeding" in a competition they are ill-equipped to survive, much less win, or withdraw from the hell of other people (recalling Sartre's famous line in No Exit: Hell is other people.).

Those who are excluded have said the pain of loneliness is easier to bear than the pain of dealing with other people.

Where working class jobs in factories once offered security, community and a positive identity of being a productive, valued worker, now the physical-labor jobs are viewed as demeaning and those doing the work find their work isn't validated or respected.

In previous generations, education, vehicles, healthcare and housing were all affordable to anyone with steady work who exhibited basic frugality in service of saving. A great many jobs offered security, community, a positive identity and a ladder of social mobility to lower-middle class stability that then served as a platform for one's children to climb even higher.

Now working class jobs are characterized by insecurity and precariousness, a threadbare social circle of other workers and neighbors passing through and very little validation of being a contributing member of society.

No wonder so many people devote themselves to curating an artificial digital representation of themselves that they reckon is worthy of recognition and status, and perhaps even admiration and envy. The real world no longer offers much of an avenue for their real selves to receive what every human wants: to be recognized as an individual who contributes to the greater whole to the best of their ability and is thus worthy of self-respect and the respect of others.

I will have more to say about this striving for an artificial substitute for authentic recognition and identity in my next post.





New podcast: CHS on Leafbox (1:20 hrs)--authentic community, going grey, Doom Loops and more.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Withdrawing from the Rat Race Is Going Global

Mere mortals are left in a hopeless situation. In response, they're withdrawing from the competition en masse.

The world has changed over the past two generations in ways that don't fit the heavily promoted narratives of "growth" and "progress." The "growth" and "progress" narratives hold that everything is getting better in every way and every day--next stop, Mars!--but if we consider everyday life, a much different picture emerges.

1. Globalization shifted high-pay work overseas to the benefit of capital, who reaped the profits from global wage arbitrage and to the detriment of workers in developed-nation economies.

The conventional-economic apologists glorified this as a net positive: everyone who lost their jobs to globalization would move up the food chain and get jobs as currency traders, highly paid tech workers, etc.

2. In reality, most were left with lower pay, precarious jobs as developed economies were producing ever larger cohorts of elites--college graduates and increasingly, those with advanced degrees--competing for those highly paid jobs.

Laid-off production-service workers could not compete with the growing army of credentialed elites for the remaining secure, highly paid jobs.

3. At the same time, the lower levels of the university-educated elites could no longer compete due to the overproduction of elites described by historian-author Peter Turchin as a key destabilizing dynamic in eras of social disorder. Two generations ago, a PhD was scarce enough to guarantee a secure job in academia, government or industry. Today, even a PhD from an elite university is little more than a ticket to enter the next round of cut-throat competition for the few tenure-track positions available.

4. This competition for the remaining secure, highly paid jobs was intensified by another change: the mass entry of women into the labor force in the 1970s led to the rise of households in which both spouses had well-compensated jobs in the upper reaches of the economy. These households had far more resources to pour into the advancement of their children, and a heightened awareness of the winner-take-all nature of elite competition.

5. As this chart from a Financial Times article depicts, the net result is the Millennial generation is highly unequal in wealth and prospects. Two generations ago, about 20% of the workforce had a college diploma; that percentage has roughly doubled, even as the number of jobs that actually require a university education to do the job has declined. Those with the support of two professional parents entered the competition as early as kindergarten and continued apace into their mid-20s, leaving their less-prepared competitors in the dust.



Meanwhile, labor's share of the economy's income has been declining for 50 years, leaving less income, fewer benefits and less security to divide among the workforce.



6. Concurrent with hyper-globalization, the hyper-financialization of the economy generated competition for productive assets and real-world assets such as housing. Workers in the low-pay, insecure reaches of the economy cannot compete with the wealthy elites (the top 10% own 90% of financial assets) for housing or other assets, while this credit-driven bubble has pushed prices higher, further reducing the purchasing power of wages.

Where one secure income was once enough to support a middle class household that owned the family home and sent the children to college, it now takes two secure incomes to support even the lowest rung of middle class expectations.

7. At the same time, society lost respect for essential work in favor of digital visibility. Validation, respect and being recognized for one's work are no longer available for those doing the work that keeps civilization functioning; recognition and admiration--and envy--are reserved for those with high visibility on social media or mass media.

8. This competition for visibility is not only cut-throat, it is artificial. Reserving recognition and respect for the few with high visibility in the world of screens has generated a great many perverse outcomes. Since mere mortals cannot possibly compete, every competitor must present an artificial self that is a pastiche of what's considered essential to gain media visibility: not just being attractive, but super-attractive, not just wealthy but super-wealthy, not just talented but super-talented, and so on.

Mere mortals are left in a hopeless situation. In response, they're withdrawing from the competition en masse. This abandonment of the competition is largely beneath the surface, as the apologists' happy-story narrative collapses once we recognize the hopelessness and the solution--withdrawal from the economy and society.

I'll have more to say on this in my next post.

New podcast: CHS on Leafbox (1:20 hrs)--authentic community, going grey, Doom Loops and more.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Subscribe to my Substack for free

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I'm Looking for 10 Readers Willing to Pony Up a Few Bucks for the Crazy-Valuable Content Here

Sound of coins rattling in a battered bowl.

Every Spring, I rattle the begging bowl. (Thank you for not stepping on my frayed robe.)

So what's the value proposition for you, dear reader, of throwing a few coins in my battered bowl? One way to answer is to ask: what do readers thank me for?

Readers thank me for the following:

Presenting the means to change the direction of their lives in positive ways.

Encapsulating what they sense but haven't yet articulated, i.e. validating their own intuition and observations.

Offering clarity and practicalities to advance their daily lives and long-term objectives.

Changing the direction of our lives is a powerful concept, for it embraces both 1) gaining insight into how the world is changing and 2) what we can do to adapt. Buckminster Fuller's description of trim tabs-- small control surfaces attached to the rudder steering the ship-- offers a useful analogy: modest changes can eventually change the course of mighty ships. The same is true of our own lives, if we choose our small course changes wisely.

The key trim tab is adaptability, which is the difference between grounded optimism and empty optimism: Doom Porn and Empty Optimism.

In sum, readers discern my positive view of the future, my practical nature and my restless quest for a coherent understanding of open (i.e. rapidly evolving, unpredictable) systems and the chaotic trajectory of complex polycrisis.

The goal here is to fashion an island of coherence in an increasingly incoherent world dominated by legacy arrangements optimized for a world that is dissolving before our eyes. These legacy systems are obsolete, but lacking pain-free alternatives, the system keeps doing more of what's already failing.

The net result is that beneath the veneer of normalcy, systems that were once solid are melting into air, and this presents us with a novel challenge. How do we respond to this unmooring without becoming unmoored ourselves? Understanding what lies ahead gives us not certainty--there is none--but confidence that we're on a productive course.

As analyst Donella Meadows explained, all systems have leverage points where small adjustments can change the entire system. Meadows also noted that the way to change a system is to add a new source of information / feedback. This is what I endeavor to provide: leverage points in your own lives and a source of accessible (i.e. only takes a few minutes to read) insight.

The broad range of content here at Of Two Minds flows from 1) insights shared by readers and 2) what can I do to advance my own well-being and agency?

In other words, I focus on what one reader described in this way: "money richness and wealth are vastly different animals." Wealth is far more than money, for it includes ownership / control of our real-world skills, authenticity and trustworthy networks of other productive people. None of these can be bought off the shelf, so they will become increasingly valuable. I summarize this in my book Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.

The global economy is reaching limits that cannot be overcome, and this opens a path to a much more human-scale way of life that is sustainable rather than precarious. Sure, we can cling to the Waste is Growth Landfill Economy, but why self-destruct when a brighter future beckons?

Although I've conjured colorfully imaginary corporate sponsors (Kroika Cookie Company, The Best Kroika Ad Ever!), the fact is my only sponsors are likeminded independents like you.

(Sound of coins rattling in a battered bowl.) I'm asking 10 of you thousands of readers to join the daring, the foolhardy, the insanely generous few who become a patron / subscriber via Substack, Patreon, PayPal or US mail.

$7 a month or $70 a year gets you the weekly Musings Reports, the goal being to not just scrape through crises but emerge with greater skills, adaptability, health and forms of wealth that can't be expropriated.

Subscribers' data is confidential. No data is shared or sold. You receive nothing but the Weekly Musings.

If you need a doorstop, paperweight or sleep-aid, consider buying one of my books; they work splendidly in these utilitarian roles.

Thank you very much for considering supporting this beggar's-content-banquet with your hard-earned quatloos. Of Two Minds is soup to nuts. (Sometimes, just plain nuts, but there's a bit of entertainment value in the nuttiness.) To those rare and precious souls who renew or launch subscriptions: thank you for enabling my work to continue (wai and bow).







New podcast: CHS on Leafbox (1:20 hrs)--authentic community, going grey, Doom Loops and more.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Labor Rising: Will Class Identity Finally Matter Again?

That this level of incendiary outrage has seeped into the mainstream media tells us that the bill for America's gluttony of inequality is long overdue.

Two primary trends may be reversing: wage earners--labor--may be finally starting to regain some of the share of Gross Domestic Income (GDI) lost to capital over the past 54 years, and economic class identity that collapsed in favor of individual identity--enabling the siphoning of $149 trillion in GDI from labor to capital since 1970--may be reviving.

The two trends are intertwined: the cultural dominance of identity politics came at the expense of economic class identity, which effectively blinded us as a nation to the multi-decade transfer of wealth from wage earners to owners / managers of capital.

If we are wondering how the bottom 90% have lost ground, we can start with the social-cultural blindness to the collapse of class identity which enabled the dominance of capital politically, economically and socially, as manifested in the rise of globalization and financialization, the tools used to transfer income from labor to capital.

Capital's increasing share of domestic income was not pre-ordained; it was the result of specific policy decisions, starting with globalization's downward pressure on domestic wages. The fancy term for forcing American workers to compete with other workers around the world whose cost of living is a fraction of ours is global wage arbitrage: capital shifted jobs to low-wage regions at will to increase profits at the expense of domestic wages.

This is the fundamental advantage capital has over labor: capital is globally mobile, labor is grounded in a particular place. Yes, workers can move around the world, too, but there are restrictions, both legal and in cost / sacrifice, as the effort and expense required to move from one country to another are significant.

Capital doesn't care about a place or community; that's up to the residents. If capital shifts overseas to lower costs / increase profits, well folks, make do with what's left.

Financialization amplified capital's dominance of the economy, for capital gained tremendous power as credit and leverage expanded capital's scale and reach at the expense of domestic workers and communities.

It's equally important to note that the corporate dominance generated by globalization and financialization also gutted small business and the local enterprises that provide the bulk of the jobs and cohesion in communities.

The RAND study Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 concluded that capital skimmed $50 trillion from labor from 1975 to 2018. Using data from the Federal Reserve's FRED database (series A4102E1A156NBEA), correspondent Alain M. calculated the actual sum for the period 1970 to 2022 (2022 being the most recent data available) was a staggering $149 trillion: his spreadsheet is available here as a PDF: Employees Share of Gross Domestic Income 1970-2022.

If wage earners' share of Gross Domestic Income had remained at 51% instead of declining to 43%, wage earners would have received an additional $149 trillion over those 52 years. That's roughly $3 trillion a year, which works out to an additional $22,000 annually for America's 134 million full-time workers or an additional $18,000 annually for the nation's entire work force (full-time, part-time, self-employed, gig workers) of 163 million.

No wonder the purchasing power of a day's work has declined to the point many cannot afford to buy a home or start a family or rent an apartment.

Time magazine published a gloves-off summary of the RAND study in September 2020: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% -- And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure.

Consider these excerpts from the article:

"There are some who blame the current plight of working Americans on structural changes in the underlying economy--on automation, and especially on globalization. According to this popular narrative, the lower wages of the past 40 years were the unfortunate but necessary price of keeping American businesses competitive in an increasingly cutthroat global market. But in fact, the $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice--a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people."

That this level of incendiary outrage has seeped into the mainstream media tells us that the bill for America's gluttony of inequality is long overdue. The pendulum reached an extreme and is now starting to swing back, as evidenced by previously anti-union work forces (VW auto workers, for example) starting to vote in favor of unionization. Trillion-dollar cartels / monopolies--the golden children of capital--are finally facing some pushback from their work forces and anti-trust agencies.

Here is the Federal Reserve chart of wage earners' share of Gross Domestic Income:



Note the basic structure of lower highs and lower lows: labor's share of GDI recovers a bit of ground in "good times"--speculative bubbles and massive federal stimulus--and then reverts to trend once the bubbles pop.

The substitution of identity politics for economic class identity has been catastrophic for the bottom 90% of the American work force and the bottom 90% of American households. Capital can buy political influence to obtain policies that favor capital; the work force has no power other than the cohesion generated by shared identity manifested in cooperative action in pursuit of economic shared interests.

Corporate apologists and PR flacks like to demonize labor organizations as "Marxist" to misdirect us from the reality that labor organizations are necessary counterweights to corporate dominance. Once the counterweights have been stripped out, the system decays to what we have today: a hyper-globalized, hyper-financialized corporatocracy with zero interest in anything beyond maximizing private gains by whatever means are available (cough, doing God's work, Pelosi portfolio, cough). The net result is a failed state geared to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

A pendulum can only reach so far before it reverses and proceeds to the opposite extreme (minus a bit due to friction). Labor, capital and class identity are all starting to swing away from 50+ year extremes that decimated the financial security and share of domestic income of the bottom 90%.

Thank you, Alain M., for generously sharing your analysis of wages share of GDI 1970 - 2022.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Thank you, Peter A. ($70), for your astoundingly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Mark S. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Walter S. ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, John D. ($20), for your much-appreciated generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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China and the U.S.: What Matters That's Overlooked

Parsing geopolitics is fun but our attention is better directed to the limits and second-order effects of legacy systems in each of the rival states.

Geopolitics, like any conflict, is dramatic: rivals jostle for hegemony on a 3-D chessboard, war threatens, etc. The focus of this drama is on the leaders' calculations and the pieces being moved around the board in the complex battle for hearts, minds, resources and the high ground.

This is the conventional context of history, and so accounts of the rivalry between the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire read like contemporary accounts of the rivalry between China and the U.S.: the actors and scenery changes, but the dramatic plot remains the same.

A less dramatic but closer reading of history tells a different story: imperial decline stems not from external rivalries but from internal limitations. Externalities--plague, drought, invasion--are not causes so much as events which reveal the limits of the empire's internal legacy institutions.

These rigidities can be structural--economic or political--or cultural / social. There are two dynamics in play here:

1. Once solutions are institutionalized, they become legacy systems that focus not on flexibly solving problems but on sustaining and defending the interests of the institution and its insiders. The solution becomes the problem.

2. Whatever is viewed as a solution generates unanticipated second-order effects which the system is ill-equipped to resolve.

There are many examples of these dynamics in both China and the U.S., and indeed, in every nation / polity.

Consider the goal of increasing homeownership, a laudable ideal that the U.S. pursued after World War II by institutionalizing the heretofore unavailable innovation of 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and government-agency backed mortgages (Veteran Administration-backed mortgages for veterans, FHA, etc.).

Once the institutions promoting homeownership became self-sustaining legacy systems, they changed from "solution" to "problem." As homeownership rates reached 65% of American households, the institutional drive to increase homeownership led to the development of subprime mortgages designed for households that did not qualify for conventional mortgages.

To grease the skids, lending standards were stripped to the point of irrelevance, liar loans took center stage and ratings agencies rubber-stamped risky mortgages as low-risk.

The net result of this institutional self-serving inertia was the collapse of subprime securities and the near-collapse of the global financial system as the dominoes of default and obscured risk started falling.

Turning to China, consider this chart of what happens when a one child per family state policy is enforced for three generations:



The policy was institutionalized with a sensible goal of limiting population growth to increase living standards, but without consideration of the second-order effects down the road.

In three generations, there are four grandparents and two parents who are all single children without siblings, uncles or aunts, and a single child who could be tasked not just with caring for two aging parents but four even older grandparents, should they live beyond the ability of their own aging offspring to care for them.

China has acquired the markers of a great power--missions to the moon and Mars, a mighty military and global economic influence--but it lacks a state-funded universal social welfare system that provides a substantial pension and medical care for every retiree regardless of their employment or earnings. This leaves much of the care of China's rapidly aging generations on the shoulders of the third generation of single offspring.

As in other nations, China's birthrate has declined precipitously as the financial pressures on parents mount, especially on young mothers who desire career opportunities equal to those available to young men.

Social welfare programs become increasingly costly and burdensome as populations age. Any state-funded solution will require diverting enormous sums currently spent elsewhere to the care of a large aging cohort.

The sources of brittleness and failure that are overlooked are internal, not external. Parsing geopolitics is fun but our attention is better directed to the limits and second-order effects of legacy systems in each of the rival states.

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