I am aware that the West’s best time was essentially at the expense of the rest of the world - but where can one find opportunity and prosperity of those times today? Was this a great anomaly of history? Is it time to hedge your bets on living out the Chinese dream?
Is it time for the West to accept that what our parents experienced will never exist again?
Will the world overall need to accept that the western living standard of that time will never be reached again? (It’s too unsustainable - for the planet, and because superprofits won’t flow as they once did)
What has actually happened that’s caused it to collapse?
I think it’s possible but unlikely. The structural forces that capitalism generates tend towards an ever shrinking share for the worker, and that sure suggests that this continues until something breaks, like finally prompting a revolution, or collapsing into neo-feudalism. But that’s just the main, most likely future. It’s tempting to reduce predictions down to the most likely handful of options, but history is full of chaotic bullshit. Maybe the next time capitalism reinvents itself leads to a lull in how much workers are exploited, maybe some new ideological movement causes a change completely sideways to “socialism or barbarism”, maybe tech actually does save us after all.
But most likely, yeah, continually worsening conditions until something breaks.