Book on Collapse by Peter Zeihan. The premise is that the US stops influencing most of the current economic and safety order around the world. It evaluates the current demographic situation and what would happen around:

  • transport
  • finance
  • energy
  • materials
  • manufacturing
  • agriculture

I find the rationale for the premise strange. As if the US lost its will to enforce globalisation or it was somehow caused by the demographic changes. Changes in population that according to the author affect less the US than most other countries.

All chapters follow the same structure: Historical context, the now, and the “after order”.

The after order is a loose prediction based on the current country geography, demographics and assume how they would fare shall the chapter topic and previous chapters collapsed.

One thing that seemed missing on the predictions are the political changes that would happen immediately after a big collapse. Some countries would invade others, most of them would suffer some splits.

There are noticeable biases and inaccuracies in this book. The lack of citations and depth on certain topics were distracting and detracted from its value.

I thought that the relationship between France, Spain and Portugal was blurry and slightly inaccurate because the current good relationship is distorted by the EU membership. The portrayal of mosts navies seemed outdated too. I doubt that Japan is in such advantage when compared to china.

The author had an anti china bias. It is hard to believe that all these years of surplus and power accumulation won’t have any affect on their local politics. He seems to think that the demographic aspect will outweigh any other aspect.

Even more glaring is the pro U.S. bias. Although there is a solid argument for its resources, energy and population advantages, it can go wrong for many reasons. Politics, climate change, other actors.

On the individual chapters:

  • The premise was off. Demographics was good
  • Transport was good in the history/ context. It described how Just in time and containers work. Predictions were a bit off as countries would likely have incentives to keep the order.
  • Finance was very shallow. The only real prediction was “less capital”
  • Energy assumes that it will be as available as it is now. This is incompatible with declining EROI. It discounts renewables which could offer a low energy modernity option.
  • I had trouble trusting the materials chapter despite it extensiveness. Same reason than the energy chapter.
  • Manufacturing was very short and I thought in real life it would take a long time for it to have any effect. Factories take time to move.
  • Agriculture was more interesting and scary. It relies on all other chapters so I couldn’t take its predictions too seriously.

Overall I don’t recommend this book as an information source. It is well written and entertaining, and both the historical parts and general predictions are plausible or close enough.