The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

by George Friedman

Large corporations can hire lobbyists to change the engineering process itself. But individuals have no recourse. They have lost the political boss who interfaced with the government. The price for honesty is impotence.

In the fourth institutional cycle as I see it the technocratic approach will be dramatically modified to permit the intent of government to be rationally administered by each level. Rather than vast regulations that few have read and fewer have understood, the concept of common sense will have to be reintroduced.

government fails to anticipate the all-important exceptions and fails to empower the citizen to petition his government in a human way and to a human being.

The end or modification of the student loan system will suddenly limit not only how much universities can raise costs but whether they can maintain them.

More money can be saved by drawing a line between teaching faculty and research faculty.

The loss of fantastically expensive facilities and the creation of a division of labor among faculty appear to be extremely radical changes.

All cycles change something that seems unshakably permanent.

The university is the home of technocracy in the sense that it nurtures expertise and credentials as a basis for judging merit and is constructed in such a way that there is a hierarchy of credentials.

Over time that will break the tendency of the socially connected to have their social status affirmed at Stanford or Harvard. Two benefits accrue. First, upward mobility is facilitated by stripping the dubious claim that a Yale or Harvard education is superior to other schools and shifting the credential values. Second, it would permit different classes to mix more freely, as they did in and after World War II. And that would explode the barriers.

The financial problem that will frame the sixth cycle is a surplus of money in the economic system and its distribution. The surplus arose from the success of the fifth cycle and the maturation of the microchip economy.

Given low interest rates on money, it makes little sense to hold that money in banks or in bonds that pay low interest. Rather than holding money, investors decide to buy things, such as real estate. Therefore, home prices, commercial real estate, and rental properties are surging in price.

range of diseases must be eliminated, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and others that render the elderly not only non-contributors but drains on society and the economy.

As the obligation of men and women to each other changes, so does the meaning of earning a living, saving for the future, and so on.

What are the obligations among people when life stretches to nearly a century and children are one option among many others?