Remember, the rise of the US 1854-1944 was accompanied by the rise of Standard Oil and the dominance of the oil economy by the US. I think we don't appreciate the extent to which unipolar and bilpolar world orders were an artifact of oil competition.
Conversation
There is still resource contention over plenty of other things, but the structure of competition is unlikely to be that drastically convergent. More than a change in the competitive order of large political entities (countries, block, Stephensonian clades...) it is a "loosening"
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This is partially me seeking confirmation for a divergentist worldview. Things growing apart. Think "expanding universe" (as in galactic redshift, galaxies retreating from each other) model for epistemes and polities
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The US and USSR were in closely entangled competition 1950-74, matching each other's every move. So were the US and Japan 1974-90. But the US-China axis feels different. First, it's more cooperative than competitive. Second it is marked by divergence, not a circling-in.
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The previous ideological conflicts felt like wrestlers circling in a ring looking to grapple. This one feels like a live-and-let-live mutual retreat. You don't have to agree on most things. You share an economy, you share science and technology, you go your own way elsewhere.
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I started with a future-like-the-past analogy between the US and UK rise-and-fall, but the future is mostly not like the past now. The biggest difference is that we now live in a rapidly greying world. A retired world of aging populations.
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A good mental model of world of the next 40 years is:
1. Global divergence of civilizations
2. Energy transition (whether or not you believe in climate change)
3. Aging population
4. Technological progress decoupling from nation-states, and turning into a political commodity
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4. is huge and we're only now beginning to appreciate how huge. 1851 to 1939 was the heyday of World's Fairs, when technological prowess was synonymous with national identity. The World's Fairs went into decline after that and become a joke
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After 1939 the World's Fair stopped being some sort of national tech olympics and became a kind of boring bureaucrat show (something similar is going to happen to the sports olympics soon...).
Tech became a political commodity after 1939, not a way to build national identity.
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Replying to
Not true, the 1962 Seattle World's Fair built the Space Needle, the unofficial (non-BIE) 1964 New York World's Fair was probably the greatest of the century.
The 1970 Osaka World's Fair was the last great one, and began a 22-year hiatus.
wtfhappenedin1971.com
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The tech showcase era ended with 1939. It became more of a culture fest after. The greatest ones IMO were probably 1851 London, 1893 Chicago and 1900 Paris. Even 1939 which had GM futurama exhibit was mostly marketing jazz.

