Changing Orders

(man whistles) (machine beeping) Over the last few years, three big things that hadn't happened in my lifetime prompted me to do this study. First, countries didn't have enough money to pay their debts, even after lowering interest rates to zero. So their central banks began printing lots of money to do so. Second, big internal conflicts emerged due to growing gaps in wealth and values. This showed up in political populism and polarization between the left, who want to redistribute wealth, and the right, who want to defend those holding the wealth.

And third, increasing external conflict between a rising great power and the leading great power, as is now happening with China and the United States. So, I looked back. I saw that all these had happened together before many times and nearly always led to changing domestic and world orders. The last time this sequence happened was from 1930 to 1945. What exactly is an order? You might ask. It's a governing system for people dealing with each other.

There are internal orders for governing within countries, typically laid out in constitutions. And there is a world order for governing between countries, typically laid out in treaties. Internal orders change at different times than world orders, though whether within or between countries, these orders typically change after wars. Civil wars within countries, international wars between countries. They happen when revolutionary new forces defeat weak old orders.

For example, the US internal order was laid out in the constitution in 1789 after the American Revolution, and it is still operating today, even after the American Civil War. Russia got rid of its old order and established a new one with the Russian revolution in 1917, which ended in 1991 with a relatively bloodless revolution. China began its current internal order in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war.

You get the idea. The current world order commonly called the American world order, formed after the allied victory in World War II when the US emerged as the dominant world power. It was set out in agreements and treaties for how global governance and monetary systems work. In 1944, the new world monetary system was laid out in the Bretton Woods Agreement and established the dollar as the world's leading reserve currency.

A reserve currency is a currency that is commonly accepted around the world, and having one is a key factor in a country becoming the richest and most powerful empire. With a new dominant power and monetary system established, a new world order begins. These changes take place in a timeless and universal cycle that I call the big cycle.