Dismantling Media Narratives on US Decline // Variant Perception #13

The King is Dead. Long live the king!

Today, there’s a recycled doom-porn obsession going around the media again signifying the death of the dollar, US decline, and inevitable hyperinflation.

The latest crop of this (which is interesting because I have not seen this before) is major news outlets covering Chinese trade deals with other authoritarian countries to trade in Yuan (Chinese currency) versus the dollar.

The argument is that if more and more countries “ditch the dollar” it will lose reserve currency status and collapse in value under the weight of our national debt.

This fits with the compelling narrative that the US is in decline. We’ve lost the American dream that millions have risked life and limb to claim.

One small counterfactual, you don’t see millions of people risking life and limb crossing the borders into Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia like they do in America…

But that’s too inconvenient a truth for the anti-Americans to believe. The U.S. is in decline. We’re on the verge of societal collapse and a loss of all that’s been won post-WWII. The culture war will devour our country.

Why is the appeal of this narrative so strong? Why do people want to believe that the US is failing?

Pointing out narrative distortion is a common theme among my writing. People and institutions with a strong desire to achieve specific outcomes will distort stories in order to achieve their agenda. I guess this isn’t a new phenomenon, but with the internet and immediate global reach the impact of the distortion is greater.

With major news outlets it’s pretty simple. This is a polarizing topic and it gets tons of eyeballs.

While US decline is 100% possible (eventually) here’s why I believe you can ignore the narrative that we’re at the beginning of the end of US exceptionalism, and why the next forty years could rival the boom we had post-WWII.

The United States is still the king of the jungle. Despite all the chronic political mismanagement (of all sides), dedication to grift, crumbling trust in institutions, misguided moral high-grounding, virtue signaling, distraction-inducing, raiding the cookie jar to buy votes, and shameless self-dealing we’re still the king, and it’s not even really close.

Taking China out of the picture, the US has a bigger economy than the next eight countries combined. The US is not just the king. We’re the 800lb silverback gorilla ruling the jungle.

With reserve currency status and other major technological, military, and cultural advantages the US has major tailwinds not shared by our “competitors” on the global stage.

The current disagreements, issues, and failings of our country are bad, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not terminal. Just as all systems move in cycles, so does ours. And we’re at a unique period of history where the end of multiple different cycles (economic, political, social) all converge at the same time.

AKA it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

However, the United States has many key advantages that set us apart from other, competing economies and give us a wide berth for navigating stormy waters.

We have:

• Abundant energy and natural resources

• Two massive coasts with direct access to deepwater

• Deep alliances with the other major wealthy economies

• Massive agricultural production which gives us food security

• Capable and growing manufacturing capacity and heavy industry

• Complete naval control of the ocean and shipping lanes

• Entrepreneurial society and a culture of encouraging innovation

• Leadership position in high-tech industries

• Skilled workforce relevant to 21st century jobs

• A highly desirable culture that fuels immigration and population growth (The American Dream)

I mention this often, and it fits here as well. Beware narratives which orient towards capturing attention and stoking emotions, especially negative emotions (fear, rage, upset, anxiety, frustration, disgust, etc).

If you’d like to go deeper into the details on why de-dollarization is more fantasy than reality, I enjoyed this article that explains more.

So, what could prosperity look like over the next 40 years?

A Vision for Prosperity

As we look ahead to the future, we can envision a world where the United States continues to lead the charge towards global prosperity.

As I shared in my recent newsletter, the main drivers of economic activity are productivity, population, and debt, with debt being a temporary boost. So, let’s focus on productivity and population.

I believe we’re going to see unfathomable gains in productivity through automation, robotics, AI, and other technologies over the next 40 years that lead to incredible amounts of economic growth and prosperity.

These technologies compound exponentially. The impacts they have on society also compound exponentially. And, when they’re combined together they help each other compound even faster.

We're on the cusp of entering a wholly unique period of time in human history because of the scale and speed at which these technologies innovate.

It’s incredibly difficult for our human minds to understand exponential compounding.

One simple example is if you take a standard chessboard with 64 squares and place a single grain of rice on a square. Then, you double the amount of rice in each square as you move across the board. With 64 squares and starting with one grain of rice you end with 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (18.4 quintillion) grains of rice…

Like I said, it’s hard to believe and quite unnatural.

The United States will be a great beneficiary of this exponential growth. As I laid out above, the US and our global allies represent the vast majority of the high-tech innovation, infrastructure, and workforce.

It’s the beginning and the end

Culture, society, politics, economics and everything else is no different than nature. It all moves in cycles. Like I shared before, we’re at the end of multiple cycles happening at the same time.

It’s a recipe for chaos and volatility. However, it does not mean that we’re not getting pushed a distorted, over-simplified narrative.

The incentives of the modern world do not point in the direction of thoughtful, nuanced, complicated takes.

In marketing, we’re taught to write at a 5th grade reading level. Nobody wants to read click-bait yet it consistently and always gets higher engagement.

We simplify and reduce the most important challenges and events to their most emotionally triggering denominators.

The death of the dollar and the collapse of the United States is no different.

Try to step out of the binary, for or against. Create your own opinions. Try on the opinions of others.

Plus remember this equation:

Outrage + Division = Profit

The way I see it, the current culture war and political grifting is a rust on the hull of the ship. Time and demographics will sandblast it away.

This is not a catastrophic engine failure.

Stay vigilant,

-Jared