Published December 5th, 2024
America is the most powerful empire the world has seen. But we are in a state of decline. We are the Roman Empire in the 3rd-century, showing telltale signs of weakening power. A decline of this magnitude would historically have taken centuries. It now happens in decades. And the past two decades have been brutal.
But against all odds, we seem to have manifested some luck. We've taken a metaphorical off ramp from the highway to hell. It's now uncertain whether we'll get back on, or go in a different direction entirely.
The American Empire has been granted a rare chance to reverse its decline. Before examining which road we should take going forward, we need to examine our vehicle and see just how much damage we need to fix.
A rough start to the 21st century
In the past two decades, we have lost geopolitical standing through prolonged (and failed) wars. Our influence against rising competitors has been diminished. China has reached economic parity and largely taken over our manufacturing sector.
Separate from China, our continuous spending in the face of a lethal national debt is beginning to strangle us. Our debt-to-GDP ratio reached 120% in Q2 of 2024. In the first seven months of fiscal year 2024, the U.S. spent $514 billion on net interest payments, surpassing both national defense spending ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). Our debt now exceeds the total annual economic output of the country.
Speaking of the military, our prowess is being called into question. We hear constantly complaints about how high the budget is, and yet a lot of our defense tech feels stuck in time. At least for the leading global power.
From what you see on social media, there's a general sentiment among U.S. citizens that the DoD is falling behind while wasting exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars. Many advocate spending less on defense, although they typically call for shrinking the budget rather than making it more efficient. The other side wants to increase the budget. While the current 3.4% of GDP pales in comparison to our 8-10% of the 1950s, they don't want to touch efficiency. They just want to waste more money.
Neither of these stances has a chance at strengthening America's military standing. Defense is the perfect space to examine an empire's decline. So much of an empire's power is held here, and the output matters so directly.
Of course, other things matter. We are the world's reserve currency, a standing we've strongly weakened through the overuse of largely ineffective sanctions. We remain the top global economy, although just barely. Our tech sector is the strongest in the world, yet we've introduced European-style regulations and corruption that have stifled it in recent decades. We're winning the AI race, but must act carefully. Our education system, largely considered the best in the world, is now mocked when it comes to math and science.
Worst of all, we've begun to eat ourselves alive culturally. We lost the values and traditions that made our melting pot unified. Our institutions have lied and gaslit the population, or have simply failed due to gross incompetence. Social issues around race, identity, and artificial morality consumed us. Social beliefs only a few years old became the new religion. While we complained about not having free health care, we glorified obesity and drug abuse.
This was advanced by a media network controlled by a single party. The apparatus grew comfortable repeating government talking points and blatantly lying to the public, rarely giving a correction or apology. People who disagreed with approved narratives were deplatformed and censored. The administrative state "de-banked" crypto founders, effectively imposing sanctions on private citizens. The COVID is showing us the extent to which things can be controlled and hidden – even inside a democracy.
Agreeing to these new "norms" became coupled with ethics and morality. It didn't matter that the government wasted $40 billion connecting zero people to the internet when they could have granted the project to SpaceX for a fraction of the cost. That's not corruption. In fact it's the right thing to do, for some reason. No one can tell you that reason, but at least it didn't go to the evil electric car guy.
Like a royalty locking themselves in a castle during wartime, we blinded ourselves to what was actually happening. We convinced ourselves that the world really is different now. America doesn't face the threat of real wars, so our focus doesn't need to be on the military or technological advancement. Those are problems of the old world. Now that we won, we should be focusing on building a social safety net and equal outcomes for all.
As a kid reading about declining empires, I often asked how the people could let it happen. When you have wealth, technology, and comforts that surpass any other period in history, how could the civilization that created those things simply let them slip away again? Why wouldn't people keep innovating?
What happens is that a government stops the citizens from improving their own civilization. Maybe an external threat conquers during war. Or maybe their own government strangles them to death.
Note that we are not alone in this decline. Our friends in the UK and most of Europe are far ahead of us in the race towards the bottom. By comparison, it looks like we are accelerating. But we're free to watch our neighbors dabble in socialism, censorship, and anti-sovereignty while making the right decisions ourselves. If we choose to.
A chance for renewal
What are the right decisions to reverse this decline? What would America have to do to renew its empire, and become the undisputed global power on the rise once again?
We've given ourselves a chance, but success is far from guaranteed. Renewing an empire demands an historic display of judgment and execution from individuals in power, and the population as a whole. It requires skill, luck, power, and resources. Even above this, a population must have a desire for its empire to persist.
From here the roadmap is fairly straightforward. Establish irrefutable military superiority. There should be no question of who is the most powerful force in the world. This doesn't mean spending more to waste more. Fix the leaking bucket first.
We're already moving in the right direction. Companies like Anduril and Palantir are working to strengthen our defense through efficiency and innovation. Videos of drone swarms in China are scary. So are Anduril product demos.
Of course it's not just about tactics and production margins. I can't speak much to military strategy, but our current global involvements are a mess. A Frankenstein of poor decisions. We spend unimaginable sums in conflicts that we can't solve but prolong indefinitely. It's time we be more realistic and proactive in our approach.
In a sense, we need to apply the same process to our whole government. We need to fix the leaking hull before improving the engine. Otherwise, we'll just sink faster.
This is what D.O.G.E. is set to do. I'm optimistic that any serious attempt is being made at all. I'm optimistic that Elon Musk, someone proven to be competent at efficiency, has put his reputation on the line to make it happen. But I'm nervous that the new department won't be able to do much without touching our major broken programs like Social Security. You can't fix a 1-foot diameter hole in a boat with duct tape.
Thankfully, we can approach efficiency in other ways. Destroying regulation till catalyze our tech sector. America can absolutely beat any global competitor if we give our people the freedom to do so.
It's time we demonize the EU's lust for regulation. Make a more friendly environment for M&A, and maintain sound economic policy that keeps a healthy financial ecosystem funding our growth.
And growth also depends on people. America was built on immigration, and we should have one of the strongest immigration policies in the world. A policy that lets in the world's brightest, talented and dedicated people. We also need people willing to do jobs we're in need of. Before being selective, we need to have the ability to be selective.
Progress relies on a free flow of ideas. Historically, America has excelled at free speech. But we have let our guard down. We allowed our entire legacy media landscape to be controlled by a system we're just starting to see glimpses of. Thankfully, the free market corrected this, and private media channels are now taking the lead in public favor.
But we run the risk of polarizing our population further, segmented not only by information, but by platform. In this sense, Musk is not succeeding with his town square. We must get back to a place where we hear and embrace new ideas to find the best solution.
This is our highest area of risk, where we are least likely to succeed. But if we do, we can truly revive our empire and usher it into a golden age. It's possible to unite under progress while debating how to make it happen.
What are our chances?
There are reasons to be hopeful and reasons to doubt. I'm optimistic that we've reached an obvious inflection point. America has managed to deal itself a potentially winning hand. But it is still a gamble.
Reversing a country's direction requires such a drastic play. Argentina has made brutally hard decisions that have yielded impressively immediate results. But not without pain, and not without full commitment. I worry that Trump is not a Milei. Still, I'm most optimistic about our economic chances.
Militarily, I'm optimistic but concerned. I believe the private sector will perform a similar transformation on our defense that companies like SpaceX have done on our space industry. I hope somehow D.O.G.E. manages to fix our efficiency problem here and in other sectors. But we have many ongoing conflicts to resolve, and many potential threats to prepare for.
Socially, I'm less optimistic. I'm happy that the majority of America became fed up with lies, corruption, and social fabrications that do nothing more than distract and hinder progress. But I do not think any of these things are going away.
One of the biggest risks of a Trump presidency is an escalating culture war. I'm thankful there was such a strong consensus in the direction our country should move. But if this direction shift fails, the backlash could be catastrophic. We are seeing this play out in the United Kingdom. They seem to be in a death loop of almost intentional idiocracy that will certainly doom the once-great empire.