9. In Cycle We Trust

Throughout history, cycles and cycle-like phenomena have shaped the dynamic behaviors of human civilizations. The United States has had a long period of prosperity, and its zenith occurred in the early twenty-first century. Since then, however, the US economic progress has been hindered by its democratic processes. During the past three decades or longer, China’s economic growth miracle has been accompanied by the worsening economical corruption and political abuses by the Chinese Communist Party government officials at each level. None of the above phenomena can be explained by the so-called Washington or Beijing Consensus. Nevertheless, all of them are determined by the nonlinear or cyclical laws that had been set when the first riverine civilizations were created thousands of years ago. More broadly, from the long-run perspective, the poverty of humans is the major incentive for them to create more wealth, and past success is the major hurdle for nations to achieve further growth and development.