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Language: en
In the last year, the price of gold has
increased by more than 50%
and crossed 4,000 for the first time in
history. This happens in times of crisis
when people have lost faith in the
current system. And consider this, the
US has shut down 22 times in the past 50
years, but a full half of them have
happened in the last 10 years alone.
Recent polling shows that the majority
of Americans believe the country is on
the wrong track. The US national debt
has passed 37 trillion and we add
roughly 1 trillion every 100 days and
interest payments will top 1.1 trillion
this year, more than defense or
Medicare. Soon enough, it will be the
single largest expense the government
has. Nearly 1th3 of young adults now
believe violence may be necessary to fix
politics. Debt has driven inequality to
truly unsustainable proportions.
Something is going very wrong in
America. The signs are everywhere.
Economic decay, social division,
political chaos. The loadbearing walls
of the American system are cracking. The
American dream is dead. And most people
are too angry and hopeless to try and
fix it. The question now isn't if
America is failing. The question is how
did we get here? Can we turn things
around? And if not, what comes after the
American Empire? That's what I'm
covering today in four critical parts.
Do not skip part three because that's
what's actually driving the collapse,
though many are going to continue to try
and deny it. And in part four, we're
going to zoom out and look back at what
comes next if America falls. Along the
way, I'll make sure you know what to do
to protect yourself, even if your
government continues to insist on
committing suicide. Buckle up. This one
is rough, but it contains the info you
need to thrive no matter what happens.
But we first have to look at the raw
naked truth of what's going on. Welcome
to part one, social division and the
death of our shared myths. A recent
Harvard poll showed a 17point drop in
Americans belief that hard work
guarantees success. A 2025 Gallup poll
showed that only 38% of Americans
believe the US is still the greatest
country in the world. A drop of more
than 30% in just 6 years.
Psychologically, America is in freef
fall. I don't want that to be true any
more than you do. But the reality is, if
we do not face where we're at, we're
never going to be able to dig our way
out. We have lost faith in ourselves. We
no longer have a shared sense of what it
means to be an American. 80% 80% of
Americans say the country is more
divided now than ever. As the recent
political assassinations attest to, we
are increasingly willing to murder our
political opponents. America has
fractured into tribes of narrative. We
are all living in our own
algorithmically driven bubbles that are
increasingly partisan. 65% of
Republicans trust Fox News. 67% of
Democrats trust CNN. And yet overall
media trust? Is it just 28%. We listen
to our tribes, but rarely to reason. We
have become revolutionaries in the worst
sense of the word, prepared to watch our
enemies beheaded in the streets.
Virtually everyone is part of a group,
and those groups live inside of their
own reality. They have their own feeds,
facts, and most distressingly of all,
their own moral framework. The result is
a country that can no longer even agree
on what is true. Think about how
foundational that problem is. We can
look at the same events and fail to
agree on what just happened. We can't
even agree on our history. Are we the
most powerful and prosperous nation the
world has ever seen? or are we a morally
bankrupt country built on the backs of
slaves and colonialism? For most of
American history, the glue that held the
system together wasn't the government.
It was our culture, our beliefs, values,
and institutions, family, faith,
churches, neighborhoods, and local
communities gave people a shared
identity, a sense of belonging, and
purpose. But our culture has shattered
and our institutions have eroded. Our
institutions have been a part of the
problem. Church membership has fallen
below 50% for the first time in US
history. Marriage rates are at record
lows. And 1 in four young adults now say
they don't have a single close friend. A
society can survive disagreement. It
absolutely cannot survive this degree of
disconnection. Without a deeply
cherished, shared myth about who we are.
We lack the necessary center of gravity
needed to hold us all together. When
Americans used to talk about the melting
pot, we meant it literally a shared
identity forged from diversity. Today,
we're not melting. We're bumper cars
slamming into one another. The point of
facing this very uncomfortable truth is
not to get angry and it's certainly not
to get scared. It is to understand the
problem so we can unwind it. But before
we get to that, let's follow how
everything is playing out now forward
because plenty of people are going to
get this far and say that I'm just being
an alarmist. But what I'm saying is no
more alarmist than a doctor who tells
you you have diabetes. You can live a
long and healthy life with diabetes, but
not if you don't change your lifestyle.
If we don't change our collective
lifestyle and mend our social fractures,
here's what's going to happen. One,
there will be a loss of shared
legitimacy. When factions stop accepting
the same authority or election outcomes,
the government's legitimacy itself
dissolves. In Rome, citizens stop
trusting the Senate. In Weimar, Germany,
they stop trusting elections. When half
the population sees every outcome as
rigged, laws lose their power. The
government still exists on paper, but
only as a brand. The social contract
that actually gives the government
authority is broken. Two, the
accelerated escalation of political
extremes. I hope that sounds familiar.
Moderate voices disappear as
polarization rewards purity and
ruthlessly punishes disscent. Each side
justifies extraordinary measures to save
the republic. Violence moves from fringe
to mainstream politics. First in
rhetoric, then in action. We've
experienced both. Remember, if civil war
broke out, it wouldn't be for the first
time. People act like this couldn't
happen when it's already happened.
Three, the normalization of violence and
retaliation. Political murder and mob
justice become symbols of loyalty. Each
act of violence invites retribution,
driving a cycle that leaders cannot
control. Public fear then creates space
for authoritarian consolidation. Late in
the Roman Empire, Rome suffered from
many political assassinations. The
French Revolution was made even more
horrible by its purges. And then there
was open violence in the streets of
Germany as the Weimar Republic fell
apart. With Antifa, which I'll call
today's brown shirts, and the recent
spree of political assassinations, we're
already seeing foreshadowing of just how
bad this could get. Four, there's a
centralization of power and the erosion
of liberty. Citizens trade freedom for
order, and institutions surrender
authority to a strong hand. The
bureaucracy grows while accountability
shrinks. Temporary emergency powers
become permanent. governance. Looking
back, you saw this with Napoleon's coup,
Lenin's emergency powers, and Hitler's
enabling act. All right, that's where
history tells us we're going to end up
if we don't repair our social fractures
now. So, how do we do it? Here's the
recipe. One, reward free speech, not
conformity. Truth does not come from
decree. It comes from debate. When
people are free to argue openly, bad
ideas die fast and good ones evolve,
getting better over time. Censorship
does not protect society. It freezes it
in ignorance. And this is important, it
requires violence to maintain. If you do
not allow free speech, it will require
violence to stop. Two, rebuild a shared
pro-american
narrative, one centered on innovation,
family, entrepreneurship, and
self-reliance. The very things that made
us such an extraordinary country on the
global stage. Three, indoctrinate, yes,
indoctrinate school age kids with a
growth mindset, first principles
thinking, and a focus on problem
solving. Eliminate the victim mentality
and teach people to dream again. Four,
build economic literacy. Teach everyone
how money, saving, and investing works.
Stop turning kids into easy marks for
debt and credit. They are so easy to
manipulate because they do not
understand how money works. Five,
focus media reform on transparent
algorithms and give people algorithmic
control, not censorship. People should
be able to have whatever algorithm they
want, but they shouldn't be blindly
manipulated by a tech company. Six,
revive purposedriven institutions,
faith, family, service, and innovation.
We need those purpose-driven
institutions to be robust. And maybe
most importantly, Americans need to be
unified around the inalienable right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. And we need to remember that
happiness itself isn't a right, merely
the pursuit. And given the architecture
of the human mind, if you want to
achieve happiness, you'll need to
understand it is not the transient
feeling you get when eating a bowl of
ice cream. It's the profound sense of
well-being you get when you work hard to
gain a set of skills that allow you to
make progress towards an honorable goal.
If we did all of that, we could honestly
begin stepping back from the precipice
and begin healing the division in
society. But that's only one of three
areas that we need to heal. So, welcome
to part two. Political chaos, an empire
in freef fall. More than 80% of
Republicans believe all of Trump's
criminal charges were clear cases of a
weaponized legal system. More than 80%
of Democrats believe Hunter Biden's
cases were the same way. Startlingly,
the US ranks 43rd globally for public
trust in election integrity. That is
wild. And for the last decade and a
half, congressional approval ratings
have hovered in the teens to low 20s due
to polarization, gridlock, and
shutdowns. And that's not to mention
that the US government has failed to
pass a federal budget on time. In nearly
three decades, distrust in the American
government is skyrocketing, and it's
starting to manifest in dangerous ways.
In less than a decade, credible threats
of violence against members of Congress
have more than doubled with another 50%
increase projected in just the next 12
months. Policies matter and when the
government lacks real leaders with a
clear and economically sound vision for
prosperity, politics devolves into
populist theater. Shutdowns, debt
sealing standoffs, and impeachment
threats have become seasonal productions
of a play I hate. They are predictable
spectacles that serve no purpose beyond
assigning blame and creating drama and
political leverage. That's where we are.
Politicians are all trying to play the
strong man by promising their
constituents that they're finally going
to get everything they want. The other
party is demonized and blamed for all of
our woes. Spoiler alert, everyone is to
blame. There is so much money in
politics and so much anger in the
populace that the policies are designed
merely to get the politician elected and
then plate the donors and we the voters
surrender our will and determination to
the government in exchange for free
It doesn't matter if the
politician is a Democrat or Republican.
Everyone is promising more free stuff
because that's what we the voters demand
of them if they want our vote. The big
beautiful bill was passed which was
already fiscally irresponsible.
And then the Democrats shut the
government down because they wanted to
make it even more irresponsible. The
bureaucracy has metastasized and is
growing unchecked like a tumor. Each new
law or emergency program creates another
department, another layer of regulation,
another dependency, and the odds are
that they're never going to be undone.
Politicians promise to reduce the size
of government, and they may even
eliminate some departments, but then
they keep deficit spending in record
numbers. And the bigger the system
grows, the less anyone is accountable to
how it actually performs. And the faster
we hasten our own economic decline. It's
as if we have lost all sense of cause
and effect. We become so fearful that
our voting patterns are purely
short-term thinking. What's best for me
right now, today, tomorrow, that is
somebody else's problem. And that
mentality condemns us to ensuring that
the problem only gets worse. And while
this all starts as mere theater, history
proves that it quickly escalates into
something far more serious. Every nation
that ever lost its republic began
tightening its grip on power with the
justification that it was needed to
write the ship and survive the chaos. It
starts with lawfare weaponizing our
institutions against political
opponents. that turns every indictment,
every congressional hearing, every
impeachment into war instead of justice.
And everyone is forced to choose a side.
If that doesn't sound like an accurate
description of what we are going through
right now, I don't know what does. And
when trust in the courts dies, the rule
of law dies with it and then the
government loses its last ounce of moral
authority. From there, it doesn't matter
who's right. All that matters is who
holds power. And whoever does hold power
will expand executive control and that
makes each election existential. You can
already feel this happening. Each
election brings fresh prosecutions of
the outgoing administration. If a
declining country isn't careful,
emergency powers become the norm. And
once a government learns it can bypass
consent, good luck getting it back.
Julius Caesar didn't start out as a
dictator. He became one. Napoleon didn't
start out as emperor. He became one.
Every democracy calls a change like that
temporary. Then the bureaucracy
consolidates. Policy gets made by decree
and democracy officially dies. So how do
we stop all of that from happening? Very
simple. We have to limit the size and
scope of the government. The people must
rembrace civic duty. We need to engage
with the issues and make our voices
heard. I know I never thought I'd be
recording a video like this, but the
reality is that we have to remember that
prosperity is not a right or a law of
nature. It is something that must be
earned every single day. We have to
think for ourselves and avoid taking
partisan shortcuts to get easy clarity.
Being clear on how to vote based on what
your team says is not the same as
actually understanding the issues. We
have to think from first principles.
Aka, we have to map real world cause and
effect. And we rediscover virtue, the
act of doing what is morally excellent
even when it hurts us. Now, I know how
cheesy that sounds and I know how often
I fall short, but we need a guiding
light. We need something that we at
least are aiming at. We need something
that makes us think about the long-term
well-being of the country as a whole. We
have to rediscover boundaries and
limitations. We have to rediscover
fiscal responsibility and personal
responsibility, not to mention
compromise. We have to understand that
opposing views are useful. They're meant
to sharpen and temper us. Free speech is
valuable precisely because it forces our
ideas to encounter opposition. Now that
we've covered all of the symptoms of the
disease, the things that people can
already see and feel, let's talk about
the underlying cause of the disease.
Welcome to part three, economic decay,
the foundational problem. Inflation has
eroded 25%
of people's purchasing power in the last
5 years alone. Because of globalism and
unchecked immigration, real wages have
been flat for half a century, 50 years,
while productivity has more than
doubled. All political parties
dramatically overspend, leaving the
government at 122% debt to GDP. And
every country except one that has ever
gone over 130% debt to GDP for any
meaningful period of time has ended up
in revolution or civil war. To avoid
going over 130%, the government will
have to print more money which will
drive more inflation which will make the
economic life of young people that much
more impossible. The only way to escape
the state sponsored theft of your money
via inflation is to own assets.
Unfortunately, the only asset that
people intuitively understand is a home.
And housing prices grew by approximately
48%
from 1985 to 2023, while incomes only
rose by roughly 240%.
Set another way, in 1985, the median
home cost roughly 3.5 times the median
household income. But now that ratio has
shot up to 5.3 times, and interest rates
are higher now than they've been for
nearly 30 years. So young people have
literally been priced out of the
American dream. And without anywhere to
hide from the devastating effects of
inflation, they feel hopeless. Economies
are gamified. You do a thing and you get
a reward, money, and you use that reward
to buy a thing you want, let's say a
house, and that feedback loop keeps
people playing the game. So when that
reward feedback loop breaks, people just
stop playing the game altogether. And
that is where we are today as a country.
Unemployment is skyrocketing. People are
just pulling out of the game. And
increasingly, young people are looking
to scrap the current system entirely
because they just want to move to
something better, whether they know what
that is or not. And the problem is, for
the most part, it's not. Their proposed
solutions, such as socialism, will only
push assets further and further out of
reach, accelerating
the economic death spiral that has led
them to want socialism. We'll get back
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to the show. And that's why legendary
hedge fund investor Ray Dallio says that
we're in stage five of a sixphase big
debt cycle. This is the phase that we're
in right now that he calls internal
disorder before necessary deleveraging.
For reference, if we're in phase five,
phase six is total collapse. So, this is
the last stop on the train if we're
going to make a non-traumatic change.
We'll make a change. That is guaranteed.
But it may come after a whole lot of
bloodshed, pain, suffering, and things
that we do not want to go through
because things will get worse, much
worse. If we don't do something to
interrupt the current trends, the way we
are headed, the middle class will get
almost entirely hollowed out. The half
that understands assets and own a
meaningful percentage of them will get
pulled into the upper class and the
people who don't own or don't understand
assets will get yanked down into the
lower classes because of inflation. And
when a government deficit spends, it is
forced to borrow just to cover the
everinccreasing amount of debt that
they're racking up just to cover the
interest on the debt it's already racked
up. This is known as a debt death
spiral. And it leaves the government in
an increasingly weakened position where
debt is constantly stacking up endlessly
until the debt burden becomes so extreme
that the country tears itself apart from
the inside out of frustration. or some
politician finally shows up that has the
balls to balance the budget and
alleviate the debt burden by making
brutal unpopular decisions that are
ultimately necessary to save the
economy. And I don't see anybody like
that on the horizon. It is absolutely
critical that we stop this runaway
process before it ends in default, which
would be catastrophic and would
certainly spell the end of the dollar as
the world's reserve currency. Now, how
do we actually do that? The way is
pretty straightforward, but is anything
but simple. We'd have to enforce fiscal
discipline, increase taxes, but not so
much companies slow down. We'd have to
print money and restructure debt, but in
a balanced way that doesn't crash the
economy or birth runaway inflation. Ray
Dallio calls this very delicate and
tricky path out of a debt crisis a
beautiful deleveraging. Most countries
execute an ugly deleveraging. But if we
were going to do it right, it would look
something like this. We'd balance the
following four levers so the system
deflates the debt burden without blowing
up growth or igniting runaway inflation.
The four levers are as follows. One,
austerity. We have to spend less than we
earn. We're going to have to slow
government outlays so debt stops
compounding. This is the one that people
really do hate the most. And if you push
this one too far, you end up with
violence in the streets just because
people are mad. Two, debt restructuring.
We're going to have to extend
maturities, lower rates, or write down
bad debt so that the load becomes
finally serviceable. In fact, you're
going to have to do all of those things.
You have to be careful though, as one
man's debt is another man's asset. So,
when you write off bad debt, you are
destroying someone's hard-earned money.
And if you do that to enough people, you
will put the country into a crippling
depression. Three, money printing done
very carefully. Use liquidity as a
bridge, not a lifestyle like we do now.
Offset deflationary shocks without
debasing the currency. Now, this is a
little bit like telling a heroin addict
that if withdrawal ever gets too tough,
go ahead and just take a little heroin.
To do that, you have to have very strict
rules around the use of money printing
or you're just going to end up right
back where you started, strung out on
money printing. We're also going to have
to do redistribution. You're going to
have to shift relief towards productive
activity, work, investment, building
rather than pure consumption. So, demand
survives and capacity expands. Now, if
we can pull all of these levers in an
extremely balanced way, balance the
budget, and use deregulation to
stimulate growth, we have a shot at
driving debt down as a share of the
economy and stopping the debt spiral
that underlies all of our biggest
structural problems. In addition to a
beautiful deleveraging, balancing of the
budget, and growth, we need to fix the
following practices to ensure that
moving forward, we don't just redig all
of the same holes and jump right back
in. One, we must increase real wages.
Let me say that again. We must increase
real wages. And to do that, we've got to
make it possible for workers to
negotiate well. Now, that doesn't mean
unions unions don't track closely to
wage increases. But what does is to
bring back the millions of manufacturing
jobs that were sent overseas. We also
have to stop exporting jobs to the
cheapest countries and we need to stop
importing the cheapest labor. Two, make
housing affordable again. Start by
deregulating housing to stimulate
building and increase the available
supply. In areas like Houston, Texas,
where it's easy to get a permit to
build, housing prices have remained
reasonably stable, as other areas of the
country have gotten completely out of
control. Three, ensure people have
access to hard money. Unless we abolish
the Federal Reserve and do away with
fiat currency, that's what allows for
money printing, there's no way the
government is going to stop money
printing. As long as money printing
exists, the government has a moral
obligation to allow people the refuge
from inflation that a hard money
provides. Given how hostile the previous
administration was to crypto, a form of
hard money, it doesn't take a genius to
figure out how quickly we could return
to being hostile to hard money under a
new admin. We cannot let that happen if
we want to avoid another debt trap. Debt
is exactly how empires fall. Debt, money
printing. It really is that simple.
People who try to hide that factly
want you confused. Four, we've got to
re-industrialize America in critical
areas. Energy, AI, semiconductors,
advanced manufacturing, and defense are
the spine of sovereignty. build
refineries, reactors, fabs, shipyards,
and drone supply chains. Every strategic
job you return to America is two risks
you remove. Foreign independence and
domestic despair because finally people
have jobs again. Five, teach financial
literacy. Keeping people financially
illiterate is how you keep them poor.
Now that AI exists, there is absolutely
no excuse for not teaching young people
financial literacy aggressively and on a
loop. A failure to do so is an immoral
act. I can't say it any more clearly
than that. Six, educate kids. Educate
kids. All kids. Ensure that one zip code
has little to no bearing on their future
success. Again, with the power of AI,
there's no excuse for education not to
be universal. The greatest teacher in
the world is AI. Nobody needs to suffer
from poor teaching. Six, dramatically
reduce the welfare state. Teach hunger
and self-reliance. America will only win
if we are truly willing to compete on
the international stage and not just
ride on the momentum of past glories.
And if you don't do that, you're never
going to be able to balance the budget.
None of what we've just talked about is
going to be easy. But all of it is
possible. But it's going to require
America to wake up, get focused, and
understand that, as the saying goes,
success cannot be owned. It's least, and
rent is due every day. America will not
win in the future unless it goes harder
than everyone else. Don't believe me?
Part four. America's decline is in the
numbers. In 1995, US GDP on a nominal
basis was 10x China's. By 2025, on a
purchasing power parody basis, China had
grown so much, it is estimated to have
surpassed the US by roughly 34%.
In the mid90s, China's global
manufacturing share was roughly 3% and
jumped to about 29% in 2023. During that
same period, the US share declined to
roughly 16%. In the 90s, the US ranked
anywhere from first to third in
infrastructure quality, but today it has
plummeted to 13th. China's share of
global patents filed in 95 was less than
1%. But as of 2023, it skyrocketed to
47%. Over the same time period, the US
fell from 25% to 20%. 70% of global rare
earth output is controlled by China. The
bricks plus nations, you know, the guys
trying to move away from the US dollar.
Together, they now represent 45%
of the world's population and over 30%
of global GDP. Middle Eastern funds
currently sit at roughly $5.6 6 trillion
of assets under management and that
number is expected to grow to
approximately $8.8 trillion by 2030.
That's less than 5 years from now. In
2024 alone, they deployed
136 billion globally, which is more than
the entire US VC market combined.
Additionally, Asia and Middle East
created over half of the world's new
billionaires in 2023. If you want to
know how America's economic, social, and
political wos could get worse from here,
here's the biggest looming threat. A
rising China and a divided United States
get sucked into Thusidities trap and
collide with each other in a kinetic
war. The idea is unfortunately not at
all far-fetched. The ancient Greek
historian Thusidities wrote that when a
rising power threatens to displace a
ruling one, war becomes almost
inevitable. That is the Thusidities trap
and it's one of the most reliable
patterns in history. Athens rose, Sparta
reacted, the Pelpeneisian war followed.
Napoleonic France challenged Britain's
dominance in the early 19th century and
Europe was engulfed in decades of war.
Imperial Germany rose against the
British Empire and the world plunged
into World War I. The United States and
the Soviet Union. They emerged from
World War II as rival powers and the
Cold War nearly ended in nuclear
annihilation. In total, 12 of the last
16 times a rising power challenged an
established hegeimon. The confrontation
ended in open conflict. That is the trap
we're in danger of falling into right
now, and it would be catastrophic. Take
Taiwan. China's leader Xihinping has
expressly stated that China does not
renounce the use of force and reserves
the option of taking all necessary
measures. Additionally, Xi has told his
country directly to, and I quote,
"prepare for war." Speaking directly to
the US when Trump first threatened China
with tariffs, a Chinese official said,
"If war is what the US wants, be it a
tariff war, a trade war, or any other
type of war, we're ready to fight till
the end." The jockeying for power
between the US and China has been going
on for quite some time. At the start of
this century, 85% of global trade was
conducted in USD. Today, that number has
dropped to under 60% and it's declining
every year. And as Kevin Rudd points out
in his book on Xi Jinping, China's
leader has fundamentally changed the
nation's posture since taking power in
2012. Xi has abandoned the cautious hide
your strength and bide your time
diplomacy of Deng Xiaoing. and he's
replaced it with a doctrine of assertive
rejuvenation, reclaiming China's
historical place as the central power in
Asia and ultimately a co-equal or
superior to the United States. China is
not the quiet rising power it once was.
Xi has centralized control, purged
rivals, and written his own ideology,
Xihinping thought, into the Chinese
Constitution. He's fused the Communist
Party, the private sector, and the
military under one strategic mission,
national rejuvenation by 2049. And that
means openly challenging the US. That
shift from humble participant to
aggressive competitor explains much of
what's unfolding right now. And even if
Xi is losing power in China, we don't
know that he's going to be replaced by
anybody that would feel any differently.
A multi-polar order is emerging. China
is consolidating regional influence
through trade, infrastructure, and
security networks, filling the void
that's been created by America's
internal chaos. Capital will eternally
migrate towards regions with growth,
hunger, and discipline. And the west has
grown very comfortable and many factions
inside the US body politic are openly
hostile towards capitalism and
prosperity itself. We no longer
celebrate success. We demonize it. Our
people debate fairness while other
competitors chase greatness. Make no
mistake, countries like China and the
UAE are playing to win. And if America
doesn't reignite its own passion for
innovation and global dominance, we will
fall back in the pack. The UAE is
rapidly becoming one of the most
businessfriendly jurisdictions on Earth.
A title formally held by the US. They
know oil's future is limited. So they
are using today's profits to establish
tomorrow's industries. finance,
technology, tourism, logistics, sports,
and entertainment. They are attracting
capital, founders, and talent from every
corner of the world. And they're not
apologizing for it. And not to be
outdone, China has mastered a kind of
statebacked capitalism the West still
underestimates. But the truth is, they
studied our playbook. They copied our
best ideas and scaled them with the
precision of a command economy. And
they've proven that ambition,
discipline, and hunger can and will beat
complacency. So what would happen if
that all came to pass? If we collided
with China in Thusidity Strap, what
would happen if America doesn't fix its
economics, doesn't heal its divides, and
doesn't get back to the business of
playing to win on the international
stage? What would there be quite
precisely after America if she actually
falls? The honest answer is the country
most able to amass economic and
political power becomes the new America.
And just as America has gotten their way
internationally since the end of World
War II, whatever country seizes a crown
will get their way. They will be able to
forcibly promote their values and their
agenda. Now, don't get me wrong. It's
not like America would cease to exist.
That's not what's going to happen. But
like all falling empires before them,
once the empire disintegrates, the
country becomes a shell of its former
self. Here's something to remember.
Italy, as we know it today, is younger
than the United States. It's not like
Rome fell and modern Italy took its
place. Italy was fractured for a very
long time. As for England, they went
rapidly from the most powerful nation on
earth to getting swallowed by debt and
being reduced to an also ran nation that
for decades had to group up with the EU
to have any significance on the world
stage. When the collapse comes and a
country like the US loses their status
as the world's reserve currency,
here's exactly how it plays out. One,
the dollar's exorbitant privilege
disappears when your currency is no
longer the world's default. You can't
borrow cheaply. You can't run deficits
or export your inflation. All of the
things that we are doing right now to
have the American way of life that would
go away. Interest rates would jump. Debt
service is going to crowd out
everything. and the silent tax of
inflation will not be silent anymore.
Two, imports will get expensive very
fast. A weaker currency means higher
prices for energy, food, medicine,
technology, basically everything. This
causes living standards to fall. First
at the bottom, it will hit the poorest
the hardest, then in the middle. Also,
the political center will not survive
sustained price shocks. More extremism
will therefore rise. Three, capital is
going to fly out of the country and so
will talent. Money moves to
jurisdictions with stability and a high
yield. Founders, scientists, and top
earners are going to go where their work
can compound. What's left behind is
lower productivity and higher
resentment. And then a real downward
spiral begins to set in as the country
can't borrow or generate the capital
that it needs to grow. Four, the
sanction weapon dulls. If the world
doesn't need your currency or your
banks, it doesn't fear your economic
penalties. Right now, America gets its
way on the world stage largely through
economic might. We leverage money with
countries to get what we want from them.
And that soft power would disappear very
rapidly once we're not the reserve
currency. Swift pressure, secondary
sanctions, export controls, everything
loses its bite. Nobody's going to care
anymore. Rivals are just going to trade
around us. Allies would hedge against
us. Five, alliances become purely
transactional. Security guarantees look
less guaranteed. Regional powers are
just going to rearm. The rules-based
order that we have now becomes a
dealsbased scramble and your hand in
controlling how international rules and
laws are even written is just going to
go away. Six, domestic austerity becomes
mandatory. When no one wants to buy your
debt anymore, markets stop funding your
deficits at friendly rates, forcing you
to cut even into entitlements and
defense spending. you just don't have
the money to sustain it. Services
shrink, but your obligations remain.
Seven, institutions are going to take
the blame. As growth stalls with no
investment, trust is going to collapse
even further. Courts, agencies,
universities, and the media become
targets. Politicians can no longer
promise things for free, at least not
without risking hyperinflation. and
internal tensions skyrocket as people
understand they are legitimately now
fighting over a shrinking pie. Eight, in
the worst case, the map holds, the
borders are the same, but the state
itself devolves. If it all goes to hell
in a hand basket, we don't necessarily
split as a nation. The flag can stay,
but authority is bound to shift to
something more local. States and cities
will improvise parallel systems for
energy, security, and finance. The
empire basically becomes an archipelago
of semi-autonomous islands. If America
falls from its hedgeimony, it doesn't
mean that we become irrelevant, but it
does mean we become a shadow of what we
once were and we struggle financially.
We struggle to wield power. We are no
longer going to be able to call the
shots or have the incredible advantage
that we have had for so long now. We'll
have less money, less opportunity, less
power, less prosperity, and far less
control. Now, if you're one of the
people who has lost faith in America or
has grown cynical about success itself,
then maybe all of that sounds perfectly
fine to you. But if you've grown
accustomed to your quality of life, time
is legitimately running out. What
happens next depends entirely on whether
we choose to rebuild or keep stacking
debt and ignoring the fact that we have
enslaved our own children. If you want
to stop the collapse, the formula isn't
complicated. It's just hard. Balance the
budget and delever the debt. Get honest
about what we can afford and stop
spending more than we collect. It will
be politically brutal. I get it. But
pain now beats ruin later. Shrink the
government. Cut the red tape that
strangles economically valuable
production. Bureaucracy does not create
wealth. It absorbs it. Cut the fat.
Simplify the rules and make it possible
to build without begging for permission.
Bring real jobs home. Reonshore the
critical sectors. Things like energy,
chips, defense, advanced manufacturing,
and drones to name a few.
Once we're making things again, workers
will finally have more leverage, which
will help them drive real wages up. And
if we stop money printing, the middle
class will stop dissolving. And for the
love of God, ensure that people have
access to sound money and a home they
can afford. Stop punishing savers and
forcing people to gamble in the stock
market. If the Fed won't protect the
dollar, our government has a moral
obligation to give people access to
systems that can, Bitcoin, hard assets,
etc. And above all, rebuild the story of
what America is. We have to have a
shared narrative, a shared belief in
what this country is and what we stand
for. We have to reunite around
innovation, ambition, and global
leadership. Remember who we are. An
experiment in freedom. A government that
believed the people know best, not some
dictator or king. We are the nation that
courted the world's most adventurous
freedom seeeking people. We didn't
promise that everyone would win. Only
that everyone would have a shot. And
from that, we built the most successful
country the world has ever seen. Every
generation hits a crossroads. This is
ours. We either rediscover discipline,
hunger, and purpose or we accept manage
decline. No one is coming to save us.
Not Washington, not Wall Street, not
Silicon Valley. It's up to us as
individuals. So pick up the tools,
build, create, compete. If we do that,
we can still write the next glorious
chapter of this country ourselves. And
if we don't, history will write it for
us as yet another cautionary tale of an
empire that let debt and decadence tear
it apart. All right, if you want to see
me explore ideas like this live in real
time, if you want to be a part of the
conversation, a part of the debate, make
sure that you join me live Wednesdays
and Fridays at 6:00 a.m. Pacific where
we go live on YouTube, Twitch, and X. I
will see you there. Until next time, my
friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.
If you like this conversation, check out
this episode to learn more. In 2018, an
autonomous vehicle hit and killed Elaine
Herszburg in Tempe, Arizona, marking the
first time a human was killed by an AI.
In 2020, according to a contested