@lesseroftwoweevilsVery well, together these ideas frame an unlovely picture of the developed world's prospects. When nation states expand their empires across the globe such as the British Empire and its colonial expansion, violence is relatively rare and situated at the periphery. When superpowers diminish in power and strength there is a huge upsurge in violence because of the power vacuum. The retreat of the western powers from the African continent is an excellent example of this.I posit that America and Europe are declining in political, social and economic power. Part of this is a natural artifact of 'growth catchup' by other nations, but it is also because productivity in the West is declining greatly if you factor in the whole population as your sample. Compare and contrast. People are in the habit of imagining that globalization, the freeing up of the trade of goods and services in the world economy is a never ending, always unfolding process. This is completely wrong. When measured on a per capita basis the world was about as globalized before WW1 as it is today. It is the conceit of every generation to believe they are in an especially favorable period of propensity and freedom, but it doesn't stack up well against the actual statistics. Globalization rather abruptly came to a halt with WW1 and some aspects of it have still not recovered, such as capital flows and labor controls (the requirement for becoming an American citizen used to be the possession of a boat ticket, compare and contrast).Globalization stalled from 1914 to 1970 or thereabouts and only recovered afterwards. That is a long long time. The antithesis of globalization is protectionism. Many economists are afraid we may have trade wars with developing countries.I posit we are in for higher levels of protectionism.  The intergenerational gap business I mentioned is partly experience looking around me. My taxi drivers and waiters have 2 or 3 degrees apiece. It's just ridiculous. Our economic growth has not resulted in new and better jobs for the new generations of young people for some time now. The reason for that is technological progress has essentially stalled, existing industries have become radically more efficient over time (fewer workers) but there are no new industries (the relationship between workforce volume and technology industry tends to be bell curve shaped over time). This may sound like a daft argument to you but I assure you it is not. The only newish industries providing work I can think of are technology as relates to computing and the Internet, and shale gas extraction/discovery. Take those out of the equation, and that's it, there's almost nothing else. Just a big empty. This has driven down labor costs down to the point that high school graduates are going to higher level education as a means of keeping them off the ranks of the unemployed, but they ultimately exit to a world without actual jobs. There are so many people going 'back for an MBA' or postgrad for the sake of it it's incredible. There is huge unemployment among the scientists, the engineers and others, these are core STEM areas I'm talking about, the jobs that are supposed to be good. I'm looking at statistics which say less than 25% of new graduates are doing work they were educated to do, of the ones that are working at all.In short, this is an catastrophe for an entire generation. Eventually, slowly, they'll realize they've been duped and then we'll have a real problem.I posit that 'the devil has work for idle hands', that Chuck Palahniuk has a lot more to say to this generation than Barrack Obama. In short, protest/civil unrest, high suicide rates, at an absolute minimum. The national debt of developed countries is the highest it's ever been in world history in most countries. Japan for example is almost 1 quadrillion yen in debt. If you've studied history you'll already know this is the most dangerous sign of them all, because historically it has been at periods of higher than normal indebtedness we've experienced social breakdown or war. Being in debt puts additional tensions on every other part of society because the interest payments leech the power to be effective in other areas from the State. The taxes of Europe and the USA are set to increase due to demographic trends. Basically we are going to have way more old people who will require support. The problem is that we're already in enormous debt and taxes (most especially in Europe) are already very high. Europeans fully expect that taxation will tip over from ~50% of GDP to 60% or 70% of GDP as a result of social entitlement spending and state pensions etc. Quick economics lesson. Higher taxes, just like the way higher taxes on cigarettes and alcohol reduce consumption, reduce the consumption of labor by businesses, resulting in a situation where fewer people work. The future holds either unemployment rates in the high 20s or 30s as a constant norm and with vastly more people working for the State. Europeans are hitting a tax saturation ceiling where it doesn't make sense to increase taxes long term, but which they are politically motivated to do so in a kind of terrible Faustian deal with the devil. No matter what happens the result is the same, younger generations are going to be sacrificed by a political consensus on the economy they have little hope of influencing.I posit this will lead to civil unrest and the potential for civil war. It's so old we've forgotten what it was like, but I think its logic shall return with a vengeance possibly as a result of dim memory and scant respect for the danger of civil disorder. Do you understand why China is so keen on harmony? I do, and I empathize with the Communist leadership completely on that score. They understand something horrible, the war of sibling vs sibling and parent against child from their cultural revolution, we have long since forgotten the bitterness of that particular cup in the West. That developing countries like Brazil, China and other contenders, it is inconceivable they will not joust to become world powers militarily, it's practically the default next step right after rapid economic development. The world has been peaceful in macro since the fall of Soviet style Communism, and that's going to change in this coming century one way or the other. How far that goes I'm not willing to speculate, my crystal ball is cloudy on the motivations and political aspirations of the developing countries and where they might lead. I would point out however that China's colonization program for Africa is predicated on resource extraction, and so that is the kind of logic we might see for a considerable time. e.g. cats paw conflicts between distant nation states in areas of resource extraction.I posit that we will see, for the first time in a long time, wars between well equipped and powerful nation states. That last genuine conflict of that kind was WII. For all the Soviet's flag waving and tank parading, they could never defeat NATO in open warfare without nuclear weapons, they simply never had the economic strength to back it up, the illusion was so complete that many western spectators thought they were experiencing economic growth, but it was almost all smoke and mirrors. Modern warfare will be much more terrifying than what we've come to expect, such as the easy conquest of Iraq or Afghanistan.--The result is that many observers believe we are headed for a 'Great Stagnation' in the West. I don't believe that, I believe there will be a reaction and it'll get nasty instead. I think Civil War is a realistic prospect. I place the prospect of civil war at an 8. I place the prospect of serious nation state conflicts at 7.5.I place the prospect of lesser evils such as the ones described above at 10. For us, like Limet, I think business is going to be excellent due to the variance and spread of arbitrage opportunities (inequalities and the black market are closely connected, we are like the back-up system when the traditional routes fail). In this world we shall create our own Empire of sorts, the future of the West looks a lot like Russia's situation but that's a topic for another day.If you don't think this, ok. I hardly expect everybody to agree with everything I say. But you have to back up your world view with your ideas and references to the world around you.