There are orders, you know, there's a monetary order, there's a domestic, political, social order. Um there's a global world and they go through tend to go through a cycle um in which they break down and you have new orders. So a good example would be let's say 1945, we have a new monetary order, we have a new uh all those orders.Um, and then when they break down, um, you wipe out a lot and you have a new beginning and everybody remembers the trauma of the past and then there's the building up of credit, th ...

While in the top phase, most of these strengths are sustained, embedded within the fruits of their success are the seeds of their decline. As a rule, as people in these rich and powerful countries earn more, that makes them more expensive and less competitive relative to people in other countries who are willing to work for less. At the same time, people in other countries naturally copy the methods and technologies of the leading power, which further reduces the leading power's competitiveness.For example, ...