Fewer children meant fewer resources needed to be expended upon child rearing and education, while more could be splashed out on cars and condos. Older populations had accrued more capital, enabling more money to be saved and invested. These aging societies did not become less dynamic, but instead more so because they were able to develop and

As the decades ticked into centuries, expectations changed because the economics changed. No longer was the pie singular and stagnant. It was growing. It would never stop growing. And that, above all else, is the world we know. More products. More players. Bigger markets. More markets. Easier transport. More interconnectivity. More trade. More

As a voting bloc, retirees don’t so much fear change as endlessly bitch about it, resulting in cultures both reactionary and brittle. One outcome is governments that increasingly cater to populist demands, walling themselves off from others economically and taking more aggressive stances on military matters.

the Chinese boom stressed global commodities markets between 2003 and 2007, with oil prices reaching historical, inflation-adjusted highs in 2007 of approximately $150 a barrel. Another result is massive overproduction. China is worried about idle hands, not bottom lines. China is by far the world’s largest exporter of steel and aluminum and cement

meaningful cultivation of nearly half of the lands we do farm first required the pumping technologies of the Industrial Age. Deindustrialization doesn’t simply mean an end to industry; it means an end to large-scale food production and the return of large-scale famine.

In a world of circumscribed shipping, the inputs needed to maintain modern manufacturing systems—a long list of materials that range from high-grade silicon to cobalt to nickel to rare earths to bauxite—are going to be top-tier targets. It’s far easier to nab those slow-moving bulk ships than to occupy a country for its mining capacity.

Modern ports—and especially modern megaports—can only function as transit and distribution hubs for megaships that will no longer be sailing. That will decrease the popularity of containerization and necessitate a return to the structure of more, smaller ports closer to consumption points. More secure? Certainly. But also more costly. Between the

The American-led Order (big O) did more than change the rules of the game; it institutionalized order (little o), which in turn allowed industrialization and urbanization to spread everywhere. That shifted the global demographic from one of lots of children to lots of young and mature workers, generating a sustained consumption and investment boom

China sits at the end of the world’s longest supply routes for nearly everything it imports, including roughly 80 percent of its oil needs. China’s navy lacks the range necessary to secure, via trade or conquest, agricultural products—or even the inputs to grow and raise its own. China’s demographic collapse suggests imminent labor force and