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Comment by 23B1 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the interesting thing is that we're doing it to ourselves despite our (ostensibly) global supremacy.

Having spent a lot of time looking at what unwinds a country – and I'm no sociologist or geopolitical expert – it generally seems to me that the institutions upon which we depend are unwinding. Pick any – government, business, the economy, the press, the concept of truth.

Maybe those weren't perfect to begin with, but I always tell folks that it's a great opportunity to rebuild those institutions better, instead of sitting around waiting for the apocalypse.

I'm very happy, for instance, to see all the new thinking around the institution education. We all knew it was going to become undone with the democratization of information via the internet, but thanks to COVID, a lot of people are reflecting on the value of sending their kids to (globally underperforming) public schools, or going into debt for college.

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> I always tell folks that it's a great opportunity to rebuild those institutions better

One of the big problems right now is that it's easier than ever to just burn down institutions for the sake of a little social or financial profit-- far easier than actually building them up. It's no wonder most people take the easy and profitable road instead of the challenging and unrewarding one.

It's not that this potential didn't exist before, but it is more frictionless than ever thanks to the democratization of information afforded by the internet. There's probably a Turchin-esque "elite overproduction" angle to it as well, where previously the institutions had enough slots to absorb all the talented people who might go this route and give them rewards consummate with their status of keeping the machine running; now there aren't and so people who get left out turn to burning it down instead.

And the lack of antitrust enforcement. It used to be that the power to increase prices was a bust-able monopoly then it somehow all became perverted under Reagan to where actual increased prices are all that matter but those increases are always years later. The bad guys won. Only now are the tides starting to turn.

I was a high school level teacher for about ten years before shifting into tech last year.

To whatever degree we are seeing renewed attention on education due to the Covid disruption, I have trouble sharing your optimism. I feel that we have, in large part, lost the thread on the core responsibilities of public education (leading to unfocused initiatives, weakened internal processes/expectations, wasted resources, reduced teaching candidate quality/numbers, etc). It’s also hard to discuss public education in a productive manner because the circumstances, funding, student population, social problems, etc. all differ so much town-to-town, state-to-state, and so on. The job I did as a HS English teacher in a competitive, wealthy Suburban school district is almost entirely different than the work of my sister teaching Special Ed in a struggling Florida elementary school.

Even here, I hesitate to comment because the conversation is Too Big to adequately engage in this format. My short thesis: we need to do less, much better with higher expectations for everyone involved.

The term I've heard is 'empire fatigue' - what happens when a global empire is so good at funnelling resources towards the center that the easiest way for anyone trying to get resources for themselves is to get it from inside rather than outside the empire. The fall of Rome is an excellent example, once warring with neighbours became a net cost even in victory, Roman politicians switched to warring with other Roman politicians at an alarming speed.

As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us.

— lincoln

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