The decline can be captured in the changing mentality of the western world voter: Three billion people in the emerging world finally awaken from their mandatory collectivist stupor, and start applying competitive pressure to the western world. Western world middle class voters, accustomed to a prosperity level 3x-6x the world average see their 3x-6x multiple slipping away against the backdrop of an average world prosperity rising 4-5% per year. Rather than steepening the incentive effort/reward curve, to regain competitiveness, western voters suicide by embarking on a delusional attempt to maintain their prosperity multiples, not by productivity gains, but through redistribution and central planning. Yes, the very same redistribution and central planning that once kept in stupor their now formidable competition.

How can this possibly end in anything but decline.

So Western World voters self-destruct. The more their competitive advantage declines, the more they desperately try to hang on to their advantage, not by increasing competition incentives, but by voting for politicians who offer them the very temporary relief of redistribution, and the innovation stifling homogenization of central planning.

When looked from a historical perspective, the decline of the west in the early 21st century is precipitous – this is because in the modern world, everything moves faster so declines are also swift. “Never before had such a major global rearrangement of prosperity occurred in such a short period of time…” historians will write in 2050. This is not some distant decline to be experienced by our children. Unless your life expectancy is less than five years, brace to experience the decline yourself. It is already happening. The western world’s recessions and recoveries are already happening against the backdrop of a 1-2% average annual growth trendline – an arithmetically certain path to swift prosperity convergence to the world average.

I see no national exit from this spiral. Only individual exits – if you keep a flexible approach to where in the world you and your children will live in the upcoming decades.