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?
Its worthwhile too to look at what happened with imperial Rome’s decline. A few hundred years of civil wars, imperial overextension, political instability, famine/food shortages, disease and plagues, until everyone either left or died. By the time rome was finally conquered, it had something like 1% of its max population.
I firmly believe this process will happen much quicker than a few hundred years for the US and other imperial core countries. We are watching these countries eat themselves in real time, and the pillars that held up their imperialist system (US military and dollar hegemony), are quickly falling out from under it.