Thank you for bringing a structural, informed approach to this. I'm getting a little tired of the tendency to handwave blame "cultural decline" rather than actual looking into the policies and details.
Aren't policy and details a product of culture? If a group of people, be it a team or nation, dont have have a solid culture then surely they cant achieve solid results. And indeed it would appear that gradually there is a decline in achieving great results from countries that have historically achieved such results. Dont get me wrong, the US is still doing great, but maybe when the rest of the world keeps raising red flags then criticism should be taken on board as not all is ill intentioned.
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence'
Thanks for the kind words. I'm just someone sitting in their armchair with a lot of curiosity, but I do try to work hard to understand the world in cause and effect structure, for topics like this.
Even more important to understand that we humans as a species are extraordinarily poor at understanding complex systems. Larger, older organizations will become complex over time, and complexity increases at higher than linear rates. This is why a lean, happy startup at 50 employees often becomes an unmanageable disaster at 200 employees.
Human societies have become incredibly more complex over time, and development of communication has contributed to it.
The point I am trying to make here is that this is not cultural decline, but rather a society that has grown incredibly more complex, while we humans have not learnt how to deal with it.
