> Differences within the populace with regard to risk tolerance and perception doesn't tell you anything about systemic issues.

How we deal with it as a society does though - some people don't mind going fast but we as a society decided to impose speed limits on roads, especially around schools. Some people don't mind the smell of cigarettes but we as a society decided that indoor smoking shouldn't be allowed in general. No one likes paying taxes but as a society, we accept that we need it to function, however imperfect the process may be.

This is where US feels like a dysfunctional society when viewed from outside. If US views occasional mass-shootings as a non-issue, sure. But if it does see it as a problem and it's not able to deal with it because for whatever reason (culture, freedom, constitution etc.), I think that's a problem.

You can burn a lot of words for sure. This culture also exists in other places and owning an automatic military grade gun in the society is perfectly acceptable. Want to know the name of this place? It is Afghanistan , Sudan and a host of places like that. They may be highly cultural but not exactly civilized society as per our norms and not something we ever aspire to be. We want to reach for the mars ? First let us learn to not empower people to kill each other.

Scared of guns or not, they seem to be willing to put "guns" before lives. children's lives. Unwilling to make even the smallest compromise to prevent mass shootings like so many other countries have.

I think Ray Dalio does a good job talking about the decline of the American empire, but I'm not sure his huge bets on the rise of China are well-placed. India also appears to have a good case for "next big empire" and it is often the case that when two world powers fight, they destroy each other. For example, the UK and Germany in WWII - the UK won the war, but ended up in huge financial trouble that caused its decline.

With all due respect to you and Ray Dalio: Ray is examining patterns within a relative short timeframe and we can always expect a "this time is different" moment or we are in a radical shift in patterns, a black swan or whatever we like to call it. This is just an hypothesis: things follow a pattern until the pattern changes and we are living in an incredible moment when science and technology are accelerating and could solve many human problems that we see impossible now. US is in an incredible position if you compare it with other countries in the world.

US has a lot of issues but we can see it as a platform offering more chances to succeed than other (countries) platforms. You don't need the entire population to succeed, with only a few outliers (Google, Facebook, open Source, an NGO) you can structurally change US and the entire world. I don't want to sound positive about US but more negative about other countries in the world. You cannot take apart the military aspect (even after disastrous wars) the weapons are there in the US. A crisis is completely possible but the gap between the US and other countries is amazing AND US is a talent atractor.

You have him already.

If only. We’re trying to skip the empire phase and go direct to collapse

I mostly don't use cash and throw small coin change into a drawer or whatever. In the last 10 years I've probably dealt with like 300 pennies. The horror!

Like it would be fine if they did just disappear, but it's also a pretty "meh" issue day to day.