Hey man, thanks for the well-thought-out comment. I don’t really have time to reply to the whole thing, but if you have a better article I’d love to read it
Do you know the parable of the blind men and the elephant? We've got an elephant. It's called "decline." We've got a bunch of blind men - and every single one of them has written a book or an article. They've all got their arguments but assembling a whole elephant out of all their observations takes a lot. And the problem is, what you discover is that when resources get scarce, people get mean. Sky-high view? Our fundamental understanding of economics has been biased towards 1920-2000 and from the long perspective, 1920-2000 are pretty anomalous, economically speaking. But since it takes a long time to learn anything when you're talking about economics, and since it effects everyone, changes take generations. I do recommend the Bruce Cannon Gibney book. It's a great read and he covers a lot of history.