environments are more opposite than similar—e.g., the peaceful/boom periods are opposite to the war/bust periods
—the periods people face later in their lives are likely to be more opposite than similar to the ones they
encountered earlier in their lives. As a result, they are typically ill-equipped for them unless they can learn the
lessons of history. That causes them to handle the cycles poorly, which makes the downs in the cycles deeper and
the ups more overdone, hence the boom-bust nature of them.
Together these four forces interacting with the circumstances that we inherited are the main drivers of the changes
in our internal orders and our behaviors and the outcomes we get.
How the Circumstances That Exist and the Forces of Change Work
Together to Produce Changes in Domestic Orders—i.e., How the Machine
Works
I have found that seeing what is now happening as just the current episode of the constantly unfolding story in
which a) current circumstances and b) the big forces that impinge on these circumstances together produce
changes in what exists and what will exist, with reference to analogous periods in history, is the best perspective to
have. One can then see that each order and each group of people operating within that order will change things
based on what they are like; it is very helpful to see that the different orders and different people in countries that
face different circumstances will determine what comes next.
For example, while each country has its own way of choosing new leaders, in all cases leaders are chosen by both
the existing system (i.e., the existing order) and the people operating within the system, so the outcomes depend on
what they are like—and what they are like is due to the previously existing system and the previously existing
people who shaped them. For example, in the US system the president is chosen by both 1) the democratic system
set out in the Constitution and 2) today’s people operating within the system, so how well the system works
depends on what both the system and the people operating within the system are like, which came about from their
prior determinants. Because the people now dealing with the system are different from those in prior generations
who dealt with the same system, we should expect different outcomes than those in the past based on how the
people are different. Not recognizing such differences and not having historical perspectives are bad handicaps.
PS: A Bit of Advice5
I’d like to pass along the following two suggestions about how to produce the best results given your
circumstances:
You individually, and those who are leading, need to have a realistic understanding of the circumstances you
are in, the range of possibilities that exist given these circumstances, and how to make decisions to produce
the best possible outcomes given these circumstances. Because the circumstances that you will face will be
unlike those you encountered before, you need to learn the lessons of history and imagine how they might
apply to the handling of the circumstances you face. You also need to be very adaptable in order to do the
things you might need to do that are outside your current range of possibilities.
You can have a better future if you put deferred gratification ahead of immediate gratification.
Where do things stand now?
The following charts, which I showed before, are just a few that help to paint a picture of where the US is now in
relation to where it has been in terms of its debt and money, its wealth and income gaps, its political gaps, and its
power in the world. I won’t again digress into these and what they mean other than to say that the first charts
convey that the debt/money problem is the greatest since the 1930s, the two charts after them show how the wealth
and income gaps are the greatest since the 1930s, the one following them on the left reflects that the size of the
political gaps is the greatest since around 1900, and the one on the right conveys that the United States is still the
leading power but is declining and that China is a rapidly rising comparable power. I’m showing these charts just
to convey that the circumstances that now exist and have to be dealt with are not the same as those that existed
before so that it would be foolish to think that anything is possible without considering these and other
circumstances. It would be preferable to put where we now are in a historical context with reference to analogous

past periods. That is what the next section is about. In it I will describe what I believe are the six stages that all
countries go through that lead to their ups and downs. By knowing what stages different countries are in—which
can be ascertained by looking at their symptoms—one can know the range of possibilities that exist.
6
7 & 8
[1]While acts of nature (especially diseases and climate events) and changes in technologies are the two other big
forces that have always had big impacts—and promise to have even bigger impacts in the future—they will have
less-immediate impacts and I don’t have the bandwidth to delve into them right now.