Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

In this Discussion

Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

    Support MFO

  • Donate through PayPal

The Fourth Turning

beebee
edited April 2021 in Off-Topic
Revisiting history by looking at generations and the process of creative destruction:


Comments

  • edited April 2021

    https://www.businessinsider.com/book-steve-bannon-is-obsessed-with-the-fourth-turning-2017-2

    I don’t subscribe to theories of inevitability and gloom be they political, cultural or financial. Nor do I as a boomer yet find myself “fumbling around” out of touch with society as the moderator indelicately suggests. Yes, history is replete with the rise and fall of civilizations. However, to suggest an underlying unalterable code and sequence of inevitability and sameness across continents, civilizations and cultures since the dawn of man is sheer buffoonery.
  • beebee
    edited April 2021
    @hank,
    I took this interview quite differently...maybe naively so. It didn't feel to me like a message of doom and gloom as you suggest.

    I didn't see this as a discussion about threats, but more an understanding of systems and that creative destruction happens all the time and it drives both natural and man-made systems. Systems and cycles work this way. Hopefully along the way things evolve and improve.

    My interest in posting was less about Bannon's view and more about Gundlach's view (he mentioned Howe in his interview posted in the link below).

    https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/138001/#Comment_138001
  • edited April 2021
    Note: I’ve not listened to entire interview.

    @bee - I hope you don’t take it personally. You have every right to post the interview / book promo. It’s hard for me to take it seriously. Yes, there’s a scintilla of truth there. The themes of death and rebirth / creative destruction pervade the universe, whether that be the hours-long life of the lowly mosquito or the billions years lifetime of a stellar galaxy. An element of nature, man and his inventions are of course a part of the cycle. When you drill down into how and why great civilizations collapsed, you’ll uncover a plethora of reasons including war, natural disaster, climate change, corruption within, unstable leaders, plague and complacency. One size does not fit all.

    To a degree it’s a cop-out to buy into the inevitability of any one cause or course of history. It makes it easier to deny our role and responsibility as citizens of Planet Earth to seize the initiative and shape our own destiny - instead of succumbing to the preordained prophecies. That’s where I have the issue. This type of dogma tends to breed complacency and acceptance of the way things are rather than appealing to our better angels to promote the common good.
  • edited April 2021
    "...instead of succumbing to the preordained prophecies. That’s where I have the issue. This type of dogma tends to breed complacency and acceptance of the way things are rather than appealing to our better angels to promote the common good."

    I have not, admittedly, heard that podcast, but am picking up on the conversation, so far. What leaps to MY mind is the slow, drip-by-drip, lethargic, glacial-speed reality of the decline of the USA, since perhaps the early 1970s. (I'm a "boomer," too. Born in 1954. Age 66.). I don't see my assertion here as fitting a goofy pre-ordained prophecy. Instead:

    *Following WW 2, we were the only one left relatively unscathed. The only developed "civilized" country "still standing." (Apart from Canada? But Canada was never a superpower, like the way the USA developed.)

    *Then there came the Breton Woods Monetary arrangement. But for better or worse, that arrangement is now behind us, in the past. The re-development and revival of the countries which were utterly destroyed was going to happen anyhow, but the Marshall Plan certainly sped-up the process. It gave the then-dominant USA consumers and Markets to sell stuff to, besides.

    I'm not saying the decline of the USA is another instance like Ancient Rome, and that Rome serves as a paradigm for a phenomenon that is too convenient and simplistic. We were taught that it fell apart from within, "morally." Unethical, undependable leaders. And then there were the other peoples attacking at the borders of the empire. By the 5th century, there was much less hegemony, as is the case today, re: American hegemony.

    Someone told me years ago: "The US will have to get used to paying MORE, to get LESS." He was right. And not just as a result of inflation. I could go on. Dumbed-down academic standards are another symptom, as well. None of this had to happen, except for the unfolding of history, and the interplay between all sorts of complicated movements and events. But here we are. Declining in power and influence.

  • P.S. Just barely began to listen to that podcast. In only just the first few moments of the Introduction, in which that fellow appears in old black-and-white, I could smell and identify a Malthusian approach. I am not a fan. It's too mechanistic. Here's one particular website's "take" on it:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
Sign In or Register to comment.