# The End of the World Is Just the Beginning ![rw-book-cover](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71cv5r1IGYL._SY160.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Peter Zeihan]] - Full Title: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning - Category: #books ## Highlights - The laptop I’m tapping this down on has more memory than the combined total of all computers globally in the late 1960s. ([Location 70](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=70)) - The human condition has similarly improved. During the past seven decades, as a percent of the population, fewer people have died in fewer wars and fewer occupations and fewer famines and fewer disease outbreaks than since the dawn of recorded history. Historically speaking, we live in an embarrassment of riches and peace. All of these evolutions and more are tightly interwoven. Inseparable. But there is a simple fact that is often overlooked. They are artificial. We have been living in a perfect moment. ([Location 72](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=72)) - The world of the past few decades has been the best it will ever be in our lifetime. Instead of cheap and better and faster, we’re rapidly transitioning into a world that’s pricier and worse and slower. Because the world—our world—is breaking apart. ([Location 76](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=76)) - The crux of the problem we all face is that, geopolitically and demographically speaking, for most of the last seventy-five years we have been living in that perfect moment. ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=93)) - What is often forgotten, however, is that this alliance was only half the plan. In order to cement their new coalition, the Americans also fostered an environment of global security so that any partner could go anywhere, anytime, interface with anyone, in any economic manner, participate in any supply chain and access any material input—all without needing a military escort. ([Location 96](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=96)) - The Americans’ postwar Order triggered a change in condition. By shifting the rules of the game, economics transformed on a global basis. A national basis. A local basis. Every local basis. That change of condition generated the world that we know. The world of advanced transport and finance, of ever-present food and energy, of never-ending improvements and mind-bending speed. ([Location 104](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=104)) - The American-led Order is giving way to Disorder. Global aging didn’t stop once we reached that perfect moment of growth. Aging continued. It’s still continuing. The global worker and consumer base is aging into mass retirement. In our rush to urbanize, no replacement generation was ever born. ([Location 109](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=109)) - The 2020s will see a collapse of consumption and production and investment and trade almost everywhere. ([Location 112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=112)) - The coming global Disorder and demographic collapse will do more than condemn a multitude of countries to the past; it will herald the rise of others. ([Location 127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=127)) - Fourth, not only despite the global churn and degradation, but also in many cases because of it, the United States will largely escape the carnage to come. ([Location 134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=134)) - The 2020s are not the first time the United States has gone through a complete restructuring of its political system. This is round seven for those of you with minds of historical bents. Americans survived and thrived before because their geography is insulated from, while their demographic profile is starkly younger than, the bulk of the world. They will survive and thrive now and into the future for similar reasons. America’s strengths allow her debates to be petty, while those debates barely affect her strengths. ([Location 143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=143)) - The center point of this book is not simply about the depth and breadth of changes in store for every aspect of every economic sector that makes our world our world. It is not simply about history once again lurching forward. It is not simply about how our world ends. The real focus is to map out what everything looks like on the other side of this change in condition. What are the new parameters of the possible? In a world deglobalized, what are the new Geographies of Success? What comes next? ([Location 152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=152)) - The biggest restriction of this new industrial era was no longer muscle, water, or wind—or even energy in general—but instead capital. Everything about this new era—whether it be railroads or highways or assembly lines or skyscrapers or battleships—was, well, new. It replaced the infrastructure of the previous millennia with something lighter, stronger, faster, better . . . and that had to be built up from scratch. That required money, and lots of it. The demands of industrialized infrastructure necessitated new methods of mobilizing capital: capitalism, communism, and fascism all emerged. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=371)) - The American story is the story of the perfect Geography of Success. That geography determines not only American power, but also America’s role in the world. ([Location 409](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=409)) - The post–Cold War era is possible only because of a lingering American commitment to a security paradigm that suspends geopolitical competition and subsidizes the global Order. With the Cold War security environment changed, it is a policy that no longer matches needs. What we all think of as normal is actually the most distorted moment in human history. That makes it incredibly fragile. And it is over. ([Location 647](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=647)) - A precious few countries have managed a high degree of development while simultaneously avoiding a collapse in birth rates. It is . . . a painfully short list: the United States, France, Argentina, Sweden, and New Zealand. ([Location 1000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=1000)) - In 2019 the Earth for the first time in history had more people aged sixty-five and over than five and under. By 2030 there will be twice as many retirees, in relative terms. ([Location 1085](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B09C65JNPF&location=1085))