The author points out that the decline of great civilizations and/or nations is sometimes accompanied by an effort to wall itself off from the world. Is this what the US might be doing in not only building a border fence, but in restricting free trade pacts?
I found this part especially interesting:
The psychological impulse to protect a nation's wealth and culture from foreign contamination is an example of what behavioral economists call "loss aversion" - the idea that people are more concerned about what they might forfeit than gain from change. History tells us that with great power comes great loss aversion.
Take the fate of Ming China, the world's most fabulously wealthy civilization in the 15th century. The empire cut itself off from foreign trade after the 1430s, an action urged by Mandarin bureaucrats in order to clip the power of the merchant class, their rivals at court. Court intrigue is also revealed by the extension of China's Great Wall, and the abrupt termination of the voyages of Admiral Zheng He, both reflecting the Confucian attitude that foreign barbarians offered nothing of value. The following centuries saw China transform into a weak and isolated time capsule.
Are forces in American politics driven more by fear of losing current benefits than the promise of future gains? Will these lead to a static society and, ironically, future loss?
The author ties a similar episode Britain faced a couple centuries back with American independence:
Britain itself is a particularly interesting frontrunner to the U.S., but not because of its reputation as the birthplace of free market economics. During the peak years of empire, Britain's Parliament neglected to extend citizenship to its colonial subjects not once, but twice. The first time it fumbled a continent full of human capital was in North America in the 1770s. The second time was in the 1880s, when a fear of declinism stymied progress.
Prime Minister William Pitt (the elder), who led Britain during the 18th century, recorded his own expansive dream of a Greater Britain in his personal papers. Pitt's "scheme for better uniting" proposed that there be four members of Parliament to represent Virginia, four for Pennsylvania, four for Massachusetts, three for Jamaica, three for New York, two for Canada, and so on. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations made the same appeal. And yet it never came to pass. In 1707, the English Parliament added Scotland's representatives to its chamber. Northern Ireland was given direct representation in 1800. Conspicuously absent was an offer to the Americas during the decades in between, or the Indians later.
Later, at the dawn of the 20th century, the British Empire was fading relative to other European nations. British economic power was roughly double that of France and triple that of Germany in 1820, a lead that eroded over the following century. Leaders in Parliament were puzzled by the relative decline, and began to question their historical "laissez faire" policies. Rather than reform its colonial structures, as Cambridge professor John Seeley called for, prime ministers debated which trade barriers to erect and how high. Decline followed.
