Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Secret History #2: How Societies Collapse

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Secret History #2: How Societies Collapse

Okay, so let's start class. I'm going to review very quickly what we did last class. So last class, we learned about monotheism, which is the idea of one true God. And as I said, last class, this marked an intellectual revolution in human history. And for monotheism, we developed three new ones. ideas which are money individual and the nation state it's important to note

that these ideas have always existed in human history but with monotheism these ideas became the dominant paradigms and together they will give us modernity and create the world that we live in today so that's what we last class. And remember last class, we also discussed that this created a lot of problems for us. There are a lot of benefits, but there are also a lot of consequences. Okay, so we're going to continue the story of humanity today. And today I want to focus on a very specific question. Why do societies rise and why do they fall? Okay. And I know that that these first few classes may seem abstract and theoretical,

but that's because we're developing the ethical models in order to better understand our world. So as we move on, we'll start looking at very concrete examples. But for the first few classes, please be patient, we are going to develop a theory to understand the world. All right? So let's discuss societies, why they rise and why they decline.

Now, unfortunately, we live in a world in decline. So there are lots of signs that the world is in decline. What are these signs? Shout out some signs. Yeah, very good, okay? So you have conflict and wars. You look at the situation, in Ukraine, look at the situation in the Middle East.

But also, you may have seen the news and you have seen conflicts arising in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Myanmar, also Trump is about to send US troops to Mexico and Venezuela. So we live in a world of conflict, and that tells us that the world is in decline. What are some other signs? Good, yes. So you have climate change. Okay, we are putting too much pressure on the environment so the air, the water, the land is becoming much more toxic. Okay, good.

What else? Good, yes. Unemployment is going up. But not only that, but people's attitude towards work is declining. We live in an age when people don't take work that seriously. People are not as enthusiastic, they're not as motivated to work hard as before. We call this in China the Ba'lan age, right? The age of Ba'lan, meaning let it rot. Like who cares? Don't take things too seriously. In America, the term is called quite quitting.

You pretend to work, but you're not really working. What are some other signs? So also you have lower birth rate. And this is a very important sign, right? Because if you think about it, if young people refuse to get married and have babies, eventually the world is going to die off, right? So this is actually a very important sign that the world is in decline. And we're seeing this happen throughout the entire world in all societies. The only exception is Israel and Georgia, but these are very small,

rear cases for most societies there's rapid decline in birth rate what are some other signs okay you see a lower standard of living and all this means is that inflation right so people make less money and they can afford less prices go up but people's wages go down so that's sign of decline? What are some other signs? Okay, you also see higher stress, right? Higher stress, people feel more anxious, people feel more depressed, people feel more stress. Emotionally, they feel drain. Okay, what else? Okay, people are less optimistic, right? Okay, greater pessimism. Okay, also,

So, this is really important, is the idea of debt, right? Both public and private. There are lots of governments around the world that are facing a fiscal crisis. A fiscal crisis just means that they spend more than they take in in tax revenue. There are many families in China, in the United States, throughout the world, that are heavily in debt. So debt is a huge issue for the world today. Also, lower cohesion and trust.

And what this means is that people no longer trust each other as they did before. Society is less cohesive. If you see, you walk on the street and you see a man on the street, bleeding or hurt you're less likely to help him and this is very true not only in China but also elsewhere as well so lower trust issues what are some other signs okay greater disease yeah okay increase in disease people are less healthy than before people are more stressed than before people are less optimistic so we go on and on and on because the summer

Signs of rapid social decline are too many. Now, these are signs of decline. Well, if we look at rise, then obviously, it's the opposite, right? People are much more willing to trust each other. Rather than going to debt, people will save money. People are healthier. People are much more optimistic. People are having lots and lots of babies.

Right? people are employed. Okay? So these are all signs that society is declined. The rise, it's the opposite. Also, another sign of decline that's very important that doesn't really happen in China. What happens in the Western world is immigration. Okay? Immigration.

Immigration is a huge issue in the Western world. world and we will discuss immigration in future classes. But immigration is a sign of decline because it reduces cohesion and it also reduces a standard of living. Another sign of decline is also housing prices go up. So people can no longer afford to buy a house. This is true in China, young people can no longer afford to buy a house, but it's also true throughout the world, okay?

It's really hard for young people to get by. Okay? All right, also fiscal crisis, right? We talked about this, but the idea of fiscal crisis is the government cannot afford a lot of public expenditures. In the future, maybe five, 10 years from now, pension will be a huge problem for governments. Okay? So these are all signs of rapid decline. All right, now having done this, what I'm going to do now is go over some theories as to why this is happening.

Why is the world in decline? Okay? And there are lots and lots of theories, but I will present three three things. theories to you that I think are interesting. The first is the idea of financialization. And this theory is proposed by an economist, a French economist named Thomas Piccadie. And he wrote a book called Capital in the 21st century. It is a fantastic book. You don't have to read the book, but if you have a chance, you should definitely pick it up

because it is a very easy but very illuminating read. And what he argues is that what happens in society is that capitalism transitions from face to face to face. In the beginning, you have consumer capitalism, meaning that what the society is trying do is great goods that consumers want to buy. This is an era of rapid wealth generation. Then you move into financial capitalism, which is a period of investment. Rather than build factories, you put the money into the stock market. Okay. So you're trying to generate as much money as possible. But what we discussed last class, that's very important, is wealth and

money are not the same thing. So in the first phase, in super capitalism, you focus on the generation of wealth. In financial capitalism, you focus on the generation of money. And then you move on to monopoly capitalism, which is where just a few companies control everything. and we live in an era of monopolical capitalism. And this happens because it is much more profitable for companies to be monopolies than to be in competition with each other. Financial capitalism is looking to create as much money as possible,

not as much wealth. And so a few companies come to dominate, become monopolies. And that's the age we live in today. Now, why is this, why is this, important. It's important because when we make this transition, people are no longer focused on working hard, they're only focused on speculating. All right? So let me give an example. Let's just say I'm an entrepreneur and I want to make as much money as possible. Well, what I do is I build a factory. When I build a

factory, I'm creating real wealth. Because a factory requires you to hire workers. It requires you to build technology. It requires you to build goods that people want to buy. But after I build a factory and I make a lot of money, I want to take this money and let it grow as fast as possible. So I put it in a stock market. And that's just how people behave.

The problem is that if too many people do that, no one's really working. No one's creating real wealth in the economy. The other problem is that because of the way capital is set up, if everyone's putting the money in a stock market, the stock market grows too fast. And the real economy does not grow that fast, okay? And the difference is stark.

Thomas Piccaddy spent a lot of time going over income tax, just looking at how much. much tax people paid. He did a lot of statistical analysis and what he discovered is the real economy in late-state capitalism will go about 2%. The financial economy will go at 5%. Okay? And this is really key. What this is telling us is that if you have a million dollars, you could choose to go and open a restaurant or you could choose to invest in the stock market. If you open a restaurant, you will make at most $20,000 a year. But if you were to put it in the stock market, you would make $50,000 a year.

So everyone's going to put all the money in the stock market, which allows for the stock market to increase. But the real economy is not improving. And therefore, you have all these issues arise. Greater unemployment, greater debt. really working okay so that's the idea of financialization and what Piccadie argues is that this is just a natural cycle this is just a natural byproduct of capitalism we live in a state we live in an age of late-stage

capitalism this is clear to you guys any questions before I move on to the second theory all right let's move on to the second theory elite overproduction and this was proposed by historian named Peter Turchin and Peter Turchin spent decades looking at why societies rise and fall he looked at the Roman Empire he looked at the French Revolution he looked at many different examples and what he believed is society's fall decline collapse because of the idea of elite overproduction, meaning you have too many powerful people

competing for limited positions of power. All right? So to understand this, I'm gonna talk about another experiment called Rat Utopia. And Rat Utopia was a series of experiments conducted by an American scientist named James B. Cahoon. And what James Cahoon was trying to do in his experiment, was trying to figure out what living in a world of abundance and wealth and security meant.

After World War II, the world was divided between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was the Cold War. But it was also a time of increasing abundance due to technology and peace. And the population was increasing. So James Calhoun conducted these experiences in the world. these experiments to figure out what this meant for the world. So what he did was this. He had a room, okay, that was sealed off from the world.

And in the room, he put in food and water and housing for a colony of rats. Maybe like 10 rats at first, but they quickly became 400, 500 rats. And at first, the rats were really happy. But no matter how Kahun configured the experiment, ultimately, the rats always ended up killing each other. Okay? So what he discovered is,

if you live in a world of abundance and security, the end result is the rats always kill each other. and he kept on doing this for 20 years. And he could never ever create a situation in which the rats lived peacefully. And he can never figure out why this was the case. And even today, there's a huge debate as to why this is a case. But they did a theory, okay? The theory is this.

The rats were not competing for food. They were really competing for status. All right, so let's think of this, okay? In a state of nature, in the real world, rats compete each other for mating rights, right? So you see a beautiful rat, and you fight over her, right? The rat who wins out is now the alpha male.

And the alpha male can have as many female companions as he wants. Okay? And what do the other rats do? In nature, what will the other rats do? Well, the other rats will probably run away, go somewhere else, and find other female companions, right? Because everyone's trying to be the alpha male.

But in, what's the problem with James Calhoun's experiment? Why do they fight each other? There's no place for them to go. They're stuck where they are. You understand? So status is what we call a zero sum game. game. I win, you lose. Okay? There can only be one winner. But in nature, if I win, then the other rats run away and try to figure out, try to try to build their own colony.

But in James Calhoun's experiment, there's no place for them to go. And so all that happens is they keep on fighting each other until they die. Okay? And that's the idea of lead overproduction. And that's what Peter Turchin says. The elite, the children of elite, are always fighting for positions of power. Not normal people, it's the children of elite. But eventually they have too many children and there are not enough positions of power. Another way of saying this is that in China today, there are too many graduates of Peking University, Beda, and Qinghua University.

Right? They want to be the big boss. They want to have the power. But there's too many of them. Okay? There's no place for them to go. And that leads to conflict in society. And ultimately, what Peter Churchin has discovered is, if that's the case, then the lead

overproduction will ultimately lead to either war or revolution. It will lead to the collapse of society. And there's no way around this. Okay? That's Peter Turchin. Now I want to go to the third theory. And the third theory is the idea of a civilizational life cycle. And this is proposed by a German philosopher

scholar named Oswald Spangler. And what he argues is that society, culture, civilization, is no different from a person. As a person, as a human being, We go through a life cycle. We are born, we grow up, we mature, then we die. Right? And there's no way around this.

We all have limited life cycles. You can live to 100. You can live to 150, but eventually you'll die. And what also Spengler says is that happens to society as well. And there's nothing anyone can do all of this. So let's go over the life cycle for civilization, okay? In the beginning, you are in the village. Then you move to the town.

Then you move to the city. Then you develop the megacity. Okay? Not all civilizations will go through the cycle, but the successful ones will go through the cycle. You start off, so the Romans, right? The Qing dynasty. you start off in a village, then if you're successful in a village, you build a town,

then when you're in a town and you're successful, you defeat other towns and you build a city, and become a mega city. Okay? And what Oscebo-Spanor says is, at the height of the civilization, the civilization must now die. Okay? So let's go over the theory. Well, in the village, life is pretty simple. People work hard, they are united, they have a collective mentality. Everyone's helping each other.

And also, what's really important is lots of babies, right? It's very common for mothers to give birth to 10, 11 kids in the village, right? And the reason why is kids are free labor. So you're incentivized to have as many children as possible. Okay, so this is the framework of a village. But as you go up the civilization ladder,

as you mature as a civilization, what happens is you have increased abstraction. Abstraction is just a fancy word for you're removed from reality. Okay? So when you're in a village, you understand everything, right? You understand, oh, the food that I eat comes from the seeds I implant. Right? When you're in a city, guess what?

That those drinks you're drinking, you have no idea what it comes from, right? The food you're eating, you have no idea where it comes from. It's all abstract to you. It's all removed from reality. Okay? So, in the village, People are engaged in working hard and in helping each other. But as you move up, people become much more individualistic.

You're concerned about your own personal pleasure. You're concerned about how do I derive benefit from this. So another way of saying this is, in a village, what keeps people together are emotions and tradition, relationships. But when you move to megacity, what is it that holds people together? It's money. Right? Money is the greatest abstraction. The problem with money is that it means we don't have to ever trust each other. In a village, if you get sick, everyone comes and helps you, right? But in the city, if you get sick, you go to the hospital and

and pay the doctor. Your neighbors don't have to care. Your family doesn't have to help you. Okay, so you become individualized. You become atomized. Okay? And in this megacity, what happens is because you are concerned only about your own individual pleasure,

you don't work hard anymore. In fact, what you want to do is you want immigrants to work for you, right? You don't, you don't, you don't care about other people or you care about is yourself. And guess what guys, you don't want to have any children. And that's why the megacity represents the death of civilization. And what is Beijing? What is Shanghai?

What is Washington, D.C., what is New York, what is Paris, what is London, they're all megacities. Okay? And that's why we have these trends. And what Oswald Spangler says is there's nothing anyone can do all this. It is a natural life cycle. All right. So these are the three major theories. I want you guys to remember.

Okay. Sorry, can you give the microphone? Yeah, can you just speak to the microphone? But what if there is a universal target that force everyone needs to work together? Will that work out to like everyone just put down all of these problems and figure out that? Yeah, okay, I understand. That is a great question, okay? So the question, to rephrase it, okay, is, yeah, but what if there's a question,

an external threat okay an external threat if there's an external threat then surely this system this life cycle can be extended right and external threats are examples of hey let's say there's an alien invasion let's just say China's being attacked by the United States right and unfortunately the answer is it does not matter. Because once you've reached the point of a megacity, first of all, you're so selfish, yourself self-absorbed, you are not aware of external threats. The other issue is you're no longer capable of working together because you don't trust each other. Okay? So the external threats factor doesn't really matter. But that's a great question. Thank you for asking. Okay? Yes. In theory

Oh my god, if aliens come, then humans would unite. No, that's not what would happen, okay? What would happen is certain factions of humans would try to align the aliens to conquer everyone else. All right. All right, so having gone through these three theories, what I'm gonna do is combine them together to create a comprehensive, holistic,

broad theory of why societies rise and fall. Okay? All right. And the problem with theories is they are simplistic and inaccurate and imprecise. So I warn you that this theory has limitations. But for our purposes, what we want to do is have a working framework. And then when we apply this framework to concrete examples, we can better refine this framework, okay? All right, so I warn you that this framework,

there are a lot of problems with it, but it is a useful tool for us to analyze society in the past. Okay? All right, so I'm going to make generalizations about how society is structured. So, at the core of society, the very powerful people, these are certain families, okay? These are the founding families, all of this nation. And there's not that many of them, maybe 10, maybe 100,

maybe 10, maybe 100, but almost 100. So if you go back to the Roman Empire, and Roman Empire controlled most of Europe, as well as Anatolia, Egypt. It was a huge area, but really, they're only about 200 families that control the Roman Empire, okay? All right, so how these families express power,

how they control power in society is through three mechanisms, okay? three pillars of power. And these three pillars are finance. Finance, we talked about last class. It's just central banking. Second pillar is religion. Religion is just what people believe.

How to control what people believe. Now, the religion of today is science and technology. And the third pillar is intelligence or spies. Now, for the purpose to save time, I'm not going to go too deeply into intelligence and religion, but I will in future classes, okay? I just need you to remember that there are three pillars of power at the core society, finance, intelligence, and religion. And it's their nexus, their combination that allows the elite to control everyone else. Okay? So from this nexus, they will control all aspects of society, including schools, including the military, including government, including the media, including culture, including crime, the mafia.

Okay? Every aspect of society that you can imagine is being controlled in some respect by this nexus of power. Okay? Also you have like corporations, right? And then at the outer edge are the people, okay? The people, because they're so massive, the massive people, they're the ones who generate wealth for society.

So this system is designed to... create as much energy as possible through the people, okay? Energy. Because the heart of the people work, the more wealth is generated in society. All right? So a metaphor that we can use is this. Think of society as a corporation. The people are the workers, right? They're the ones who do the real work. The elite, these families are the owners. And these people in between the middle class are the managers. Okay?

So again, this is a very simple metaphor, and it's not accurate, but it's useful for analysis. Okay, so the families are the owners of the corporation, the people, the workers, the people in between the managers or the managers. And we call these people the middle class. There have been other names for it in China before in history. We call them the scholar officials, right? Another name for them is something called the professional managerial class, PMC. Also, another name for them is the Petit Bourgeoisie. Okay?

Again, you don't need to know these names. For the purpose of simplicity, we will just call them the middle class. All right. Doesn't make sense. Okay. So having gone through the structure of society, let's talk about what happens when society rises and falls. When it rises, the dynamic of these three groups, it's very interesting. When it rises, the families who own the nation are happy to let the managers control society.

And this is what we call democracy, right? And the managers are always providing feedback to the families and saying, we should treat workers better. We treat workers better than they will work harder. And at this point, things are great. The people feel that they have a voice in the system. They're making good money. Everyone's really happy. But what happens because of elite production is these families produce.

too many children who want pictures of power. Basically, they want to spend money from the corporation. And now the corporation is in trouble. It's in debt. So at this point, what happens is this? You would think the managers would say the families, listen, guys, we need to be more fair to the people. But what really happens in reality is

the managers exploit the people. The managers will now deceive. They will lie to the people. They will commit fraud. They will exploit the people. Why? The reason why is this. What the managers really do is something called rent-seeking behavior.

Rent-seeking behavior just means they have a certain power that they want. to exploit in order to extract wealth from other people. So for example, the more classic example is you own an apartment in Beijing, right? So you rent it out to someone who needs to live in Beijing and you collect rent. Well, this is true for a lot of people. So if you are a lawyer, you collect rent because only you can work in the court system. So if you want to sue someone, or if you have a contract dispute, you have to go to the lawyer okay the lawyer's collecting rent and that's what the middle class the

professional manager class do they are rent seekers okay and always saying this is guys if you go to a company you know what the workers do right you know what the managers do they really don't do that much okay and this is true for the middle class like um the managers the middle class live very nice lives. And so when the company's in trouble, the managers are like, well, I have a very nice life,

I'm a very nice job, but I don't really don't do anything. So I'll probably be the first get fired. So they have to show their worth. They have to prove their worth. And therefore, they exploit the workers. Okay, do you understand? They push the workers harder

to generate more wealth. So in the decline phase, this is not really a problem. But what happens over time, is the conflict within the elite gets worse and worse, elite overproduction, and what will eventually happen is they will form into factions that compete against each other for power. Okay? And when that happens, then society becomes a line into factions. The factions will bring in certain elements of the middle class, which

will then bring in certain elements of the people. And now, What happened is civil war or revolution. And this marks the collapse of society. What's really important for us to remember is this is a natural cycle and no amount of external threat will change that dynamic. Why? Because it's very common for these factions to align with mercenaries. Okay? So there's foreign invasions not because some guy overseas is like, oh, this society is unstable or come and invade.

What happens often is a certain faction invites mercenaries into the nation as part of the power struggle. And then the mercenaries realize, you know what? We instig this for ourselves. So when you reach a collapse phase, the society is much too insular, much too rack with infighting, to care about external friends. And that's why if there's an alien invasion, it really wouldn't change anything. All right? Is this clear to you guys?

So again, this is the model working with to explain the rise and fall of societies. At first, in this system, the elite families are willing to let the manager class incentivize and motivate the workers to do the best. And you do that through democracy. through democracy, through openness, through meritocracy, through innovation.

But over time, as these elite families have more and more children, and these children are engaged in ransom behavior, they basically want to steal profits from the corporation. The corporation runs into trouble, and the managers are forced to coerce the people, which leads to greater conflict. And eventually over time, the collapse happens when society breaks up into different factions,

which leads to civil war. or revolution or war. So that's a model working with. All right, any questions? Are you guys clear about this? Yeah. What if they just like don't have that much children? Excuse me, what's the question? Like, would it the family, the families don't have that much children? Will these models do, it works? Oh, that's a great question. Okay.

So what if families don't have that many children? Okay, that's a really interesting question, and the answer is these families, first and foremost, want to have as many children as possible, right? Because how do you pass on your power? So maybe the middle class don't want that many children, but they elite will have a lot of children, because they need to be able to pass on their power and privilege to their children.

In fact, the elite is first and foremost concerned with passing on the privilege to the next generation. Okay, and that's why these two families expand so fast. And also, who wants to marry into elite families? Who wants to marry into them? Everyone. All right? And they have to marry into other families in order to maintain their power. Okay?

So having children in a marriage is a way for the elite to maintain their power. Okay, but that's a good question. And any more questions before I continue? Okay, so let us summarize what we've learned so far and discuss what is it that allow societies to rise and fall. So we'll look at three phases. The rise, the decline, and the collapse.

Okay, so what I mean decline? I don't mean like things are getting worse. I mean things aren't improving, okay? So rise is when things get better, the client is when things are stagnant or getting slightly worse, collapse is when the society is about to fall apart. Okay?

So if you look at these three particular phases of society, there are different characteristics. In the, when the society rises, it is first and foremost open. Open just means that, you have opportunities for social mobility in the society. If you're a poor person, you can make money. You can become wealthy.

Your talent is appreciated. It's a meritocracy. It's innovative. If you criticize society, people are like, thank you for criticizing us because criticism makes us better people. There's open debate. Now, what's really interesting is most young societies are open societies. So, for example, in 1950s, America was a democracy, right?

China was communist. But this was really interesting. In 1950s, they were both open societies. You could criticize leaders. In fact, you were encouraged to criticize leaders. China was as democratic back then as the United States. Okay? So it's not about political systems.

It's just about what state you are in, social development. So if you're young, you're going to be open. You're going to be democratic. You're going to be meritocratic. You want to learn so you will listen to criticism. That's the first great characteristic of a society on the rise. It's openness.

But when you reach a decline phase, guess what? Society becomes bureaucratic. Birocratic. Why? Because if we go back to this model, as the company loses more and more money, The manager class is concerned with maintaining their jobs. So they become bureaucrats. They have to prove their work.

So they create a lot of paperwork. They make everyone follow the rules. Society becomes more and more bureaucratic. Then in the cloud space, society becomes authoritarian. Before the client is following the rules. Now it's just rule by force. But there's no way of saying this. In the rise phase, what matters is the consent.

Okay? So these three groups, the elite, the middle class, and the people, they're all working together to improve society. There's consent. But when you hit the decline phase, now it's there's deception. And then when you hit the collapse phase, it's coercion. So let me give an example. Let's just say we are in the rise phase.

Right? Well, we want to go to lunch. So we discuss where we go to lunch. I want to go McDonald's, but you guys want to go to Pizza Hut or KFC. We have a debate, and then eventually we vote and whoever wants to go, the majority wins, okay? That's a consent phase. When we hit the decline phase, deception,

I'm the teacher, so I say to you, hey guys, let's go McDonald's because Wong Fei will be there, or Jack Ma will be there, or it's free hamburger. today, okay? I'm lying to you to get what I want. And then in the class phase is, I say you, I'm the teacher and I will beat you up if you don't, if you don't listen to me. Okay. So in the rise phase, what matters first and foremost is unity of the people. We're all working together. There's empathy. There's concern for other people. I want to be a friend. We need to work together to make society better, okay?

But in the decline phase, it's really about stability. It's about making sure that society maintains a status quo. Okay? When we reach a collapse phase, it is survival. Screw you, I want to live, and if I'll kill you, I'll kill you. All right? So this is a map that shows us what happens when society rises, declines, and collapses. Now, it's really interesting about this is the timing, okay?

So if you actually look at societies, the timeline, it goes like this, okay? There's a steep rise, the decline is slow, and the collapse is sudden. So people think, oh, decline, you know, things get worse, worse, but you know, with father's trend, we'll still be here, but actually the collapse happens really,

fast. Why? The reason why is this system cannot survive external shocks. So external shocks is a perfect storm of crises. So another we're saying this is maybe society prepares for, okay, if there's a plague, we'll do this. If there's a climate crisis, we'll do this. If there's a drought, we'll do this. If there's a war, we'll do this. Okay? What society is not prepared for is these things happening all at once. The plague, the drought, war, it's a revolution.

They're all happening at once. It's a perfect storm. And that's what leads to the clouds because society is not prepared for this. And why is society not prepared for this? Because when you get the authoritarian phase, you're not allowed to criticize the system anymore. The problem are those who speak

out. The problem is those who point out the problems of society. In the rise phase, those who criticizes society are the heroes. They are appreciated. They are rewarded. In the collapse phase, those who speak out are the enemies of society. And therefore, society cannot be prepared for any external threats, which leads to its collapse. Any questions? Okay. So, This is the analytical model that we're working with. And again, we're going to apply it to the present, and then we're going to apply it to the past. So with this analytical model,

what we can do is make sure predictions about the future. So I will make these predictions. And I expect these things happen in the next five to 10 years. 5 to 10 years, or 10 to 20 years. OK, I'm not, I don't know the time for them. They expect these things to happen. The first thing that's going to happen in the Western world is decline of democracy and freedom.

So remember, in the rise phase, society is democratic and open and meritocratic. But as you move on, it becomes more bureaucratic and ultimately authoritarian, okay? So we will see the United States, Europe, become much more authoritarian. You will see a collapse of democracy and freedom in these nations.

And already we're seeing this happening in the United States where Trump is using more, more military to resolve issues. Right? So that's the first prediction. And this is going to happen throughout the Western world. Second thing is economic collapse. So as people have less and less right to speak up,

they feel less invested in the system, they're less willing to work. Therefore you have economic collapse. People don't believe in the system anymore. The system is in crisis. This will lead to immigration. The government is like, you know what, if the people don't want to work, screw them. Let's bring in immigrants to do the work.

Okay, this is, let's replace our population. But the people are not going to sit back and take it, right? This leads to civil war. People are not going to each other on the streets. And the government is like, you know what, But if we continue to let them fight, eventually they're going to come out through us. So what we'll do is send them off to like these stupid pointless wars overseas. So now you have stupid wars, stupid foreign wars.

And these are my five predictions for the world for the next five, 10, 20 years. Europe and America will see less freedom and democracy. They are going to collapse, increase immigration, civil conflict, and then ultimately stupid foreign wars. And I'm not saying this happens in a sequence. I'm saying you'll see all five things, okay? But they may happen in different order. Any questions?

Was this clear to you guys? Yeah, thank you. Is there any chance that the government tries to use a war to distract the people. They're trying to hide all of the collapse of their society and their country. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question, and the answer is,

that's what wars are for. It's to distract the people, right? Because if you don't distract the people, they'll come and revolt against you. So you either send them to a war, or you could have a French Revolution on your hands. Right? That's your option. War or revolution?

I think war's a better option. That's why we're heading into a world at war. Okay, no, no, I'm saying like, if you don't send the people to war, they will revolt against you. So you send them off to war to distract them, to get rid of them. There's no right and wrong here, okay, guys, okay?

Okay, I apologize, okay? But one thing that you will do in my class is there's no right and wrong. There's no logic, okay? It's not like, it is immoral to send people to war. I know that, thank you very much. Okay, but I'm trying to explain to you how power works. That's a theme of this course.

I'm trying to explain to you how people empower think and behave. All right. And again, I keep on saying this. I don't know if I'm right, but what I'm doing is I'm presenting a theory, a model that we can use to make predictions. And if these predictions work out, if it actually happens, then a model, there's some accuracy to our model, okay? We'll have to refine our model, but there's some accurate. to it. But hey, hey, if tomorrow Trump, Putin, see, all get together and says, let's be

best friends, then I'm wrong, right? Okay? So that's what we're trying to do in this class. We're not trying to argue what is right, what is wrong, what it's just. Because quite honestly, it doesn't matter. Right? Morality doesn't matter here. It's about power. We're trying to understand how the world works. And if we do that, then maybe we can work together and build a more just world. But first we need to figure out how the world really, really works. Any more questions?

Okay, great guys. So we'll continue this story next class. I'll see you guys next class.