This might be a lil civ/grand strategy brained but to me the whole point of civilization is to come together so we can build cool stuff. How much cool stuff a country builds should be a serious metric for success. China is the undisputed cool stuff building champion of the world and not enough people are talking about it. a market economy will never build as much cool stuff as a centrally planned one.
I think we’ll see some wild stuff coming out of China in the coming decades. They’ve basically just caught up with the west technologically, and now we’re just starting to see them push past the western cutting edge tech. I expect this process will only accelerate as technology tend to be self reinforcing. Meanwhile, it’s going to be difficult for the west to keep up because of a smaller population, lack of focus on education, and lack of central planning mechanisms necessary for directing productive development.
