Thoughts on Coming Apart and the Coming Great Reset
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Kit Webster
Themes and Theses
Why I'm Contemplating Out Loud
(Initially formulated in the early 90s, following decades of reading history, philosophy, religion, psychology and a lot of contemplation, particularly on the subject of cycles. In the end, this is a relatively straightforward story about human nature and of history rhyming.)
The US will enter a period of crisis in the early 2000s. In the late 90s, I incorporated Strauss' and Howe's terminology of the Fourth Turning (without incorporating their generations paradigm) and agreed with Howe that the end stage of the crisis began with the Great Financial Crisis and would last into the early 2030s. We are now at the beginning of the end stage of the crisis.
The crisis will be serious and could be existential.
Internal strife will increase, up to and including secession and civil war.
International conflicts will increase as the vacuum created by the weakening of the US is filled by other players.
There will be many threads to the crisis, but the primary thread will be debt, deficits and entitlements. Other factors include, eg, demographics, a loss of meaning and myth and a loss of self-discipline.
Politics will move leftward as citizens look for some refuge from the chaos. The US will become increasingly susceptible to a (man) on a white horse, who can come from either the left or the right.
Inflation, as the most likely way to address debt since austerity is not politically acceptable, will significantly lower standards of living, exacerbating the civil crises.
Eventually, the dollar will be inflated away and lose its reserve status.
Once the old rot is cleared out, and assuming continuity, there will be the basis for the establishment of a new order.
There will be what Strauss and Howe calls a First Turning . It will be constructed out of the physical infrastructure, wealth, energy sources, thoughts and values in the culture at the time. At this point in time, those components are unknowable. We can anticipate that the next future will be increasingly chaotic. We can anticipate that there will be destruction, and then reconstruction from some level. We cannot yet anticipate the form of the reconstruction or the level from which it will begin.
(Added in the early 00s) While humans are contributing to global warming, policies implemented to address manmade global warming will create a significant energy crisis, probably toward the end of the Fourth Turning.
(Added around 2020) The loss of faith by our youth in our founding principles means that the new order will at least partially be based on new principles. As yet, I have no visibility as to what those principles might be.
(Added in 2023) The lowering / elimination of standards in education, the judiciary, law enforcement, the military and other segments of our society will create a population unable to adequately comprehend, do or respond to the challenges of democracy and culture.
(Added in 2025) China has won - at least for the next 5-10 years. The US is dependent on China for the materials it uses to create defense items. We literally cannot fight China without China's help. China's industrial base is impressive; the US has to rebuild. China is out-innovating the US. China is turning out more engineers and scientists than the US by far. This does not mean that China does not face challenges - demographics perhaps being its primary challenge. The US military remains stronger than China's, but in an age of drone warfare, that statement means less than it has historically. The US still has bargaining chips and will need to use them to maintain any kind of status quo.
(Added in 2025) AI has the potential to profoundly affect human culture. However, AI faces several significant hurdles, including the demand for massive amounts of electricity, which may not be available, and a cultural revolt against its existence. Since it could be existential, and since China is pursuing it, the US has no alternative, at least in the short term.
(Added in 2026) Maneuvering for control of critical materials will be a primary driver of geopolitics for at least the next decade.
Fixing Education
October 2, 2026
Quotes to Contemplate
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. - Thucydides
When you think there’s no hope left, remember the lobsters in the tank at the Titanic’s restaurant. - Anon
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time. - Voltaire
The question we all must face as the glimmers of the approaching long-awaited dawn of the post-Trump era become visible is: How will we respond to the deformed institutions he leaves in his wake? I have no confidence either party has leaders with the courage and skill to remedy this new abnormal. I don’t even have much hope that many of them will have the desire. Our politics is dominated by politicians who think they are servants of the noisy grasshoppers, and the great cattle under American oaks choose to tune out the noise, oblivious to the fact that the din of the grasshoppers might be drowning out the locusts to come. If and when they do come, the locusts will eat the prairie and the oaks bare. - Jonah Goldberg
Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue
Our education system is unfixable within our current culture. However, there are things that can be done around the edges.
We are waiting for the other shoe to fall in both Iran and Ukraine. There are indications of a broadening of both wars.
Fixing Education
I have been very interested in our education system and its failures for most of my life.
If teachers made any money, I would have been a teacher. As it turns out, I was a lecturer at several schools, including the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and MBA school, getting in some teaching here and there. I taught calculus in a community college (nobody cared - almost cured me of the desire to teach) to entrepreneurship and other courses at UT (a lot of fun).
Anyway, once upon a time, I was also a member of a group called Leadership Austin. We basically learned about all the functions of the city, including education, at which Austin is currently failing terribly.
I was struck when Austin's teacher of the year came to give us a talk. Something she said stuck with me. She was asked how to make our education system work. She said that the primary challenge is the home environment and the parents. If you get that right, you have a chance. If you get that wrong, nothing else matters - not money, not infrastructure - nothing.
We raised our kids in an upper-middle-class-to-wealthy suburb of Austin. Every parents' day, every meet-the-teacher, the parking lots were overflowing.
I made it a point to go by Austin schools on parents' night. Parking lots - much smaller parking lots - not even close to full.
I believe what she said is true. We have a cultural problem and a discipline problem.
(Because we had a learning-disabled child, we understand that there are other challenges.)
But those are difficult to fix, so we have to come up with some other ideas.
In technical terms, we are mostly screwed, but there are some things we can do to make it better - see Mississippi.
Following is an article from The New York Times by Sarah Mervosh, Francesca Paris and Claire Cain Miller. I'll start it off here and then finish it at the bottom of this post. Long read, but well worth it. (Dot colors are explained in the second part.)
U.S. schools are facing a daunting problem. Students simply can’t read or do math as well as they used to.
Student test scores have declined over the last decade, in an academic slump that started before the pandemic and has continued since. Compared with 2015, reading scores are down in 83 percent of districts, and math declines are nearly as pervasive.
But improving student achievement is notoriously difficult. Do schools need more money? Better teachers? More standardized testing? Less?
What could actually help turn things around?
We asked 37 top academics and researchers who study education to rate a range of ideas for both effectiveness and cost, on a scale of 1 to 7.
Overall, no single idea was enough on its own, experts said. And no idea would be successful unless it was executed well. But the results showed there are a number of ideas that can work.
We asked experts to evaluate each idea for its impact on academic achievement, which is generally measured by standardized test scores.
Lots of other things matter, too, including enrichment activities like the arts, teacher work satisfaction, and student excitement about learning. Children also have other needs beyond academics, including mental health and well-being.
But given the results of the last decade, we were interested in what could lift student achievement, which is tied to many later life outcomes, for students, society and the economy.
(Continued at the bottom of this post.)
So, You Say You Want A Revolution?
> Barclay's view of the Trump-Xi meeting: "The Trump-Xi summit was primarily about stabilizing relations rather than resolving disputes. Beyond a short trade-truce extension, progress was limited. The absence of Chinese CEOs suggests China viewed the summit as a strategic dialogue, not a deal-making exercise,"
> The National Center for Education Statistics found that U.S. reading and math scores have fallen to their lowest mark in a quarter century.
> Department of Education cuts student loans for degrees with low earning potential.
> Zeihan on AI - worth the watch here.
> And on the electric grid here.
> Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declares data centers are now called “superintelligence factories.”
> I detest Hegseth, but he must be doing something right - U.S. Army Recruiting Command confirmed that both the U.S. Army Reserve and Special Forces met annual recruiting targets for the first time in at least a decade.
> How low can we go? Today's pissing contest. Newsome declared that artificial intelligence be called artificial intelligence in California. Some state should call it something like, Ralph, and see how that plays.
> Hispanics probably bounce. Trump to an Hispanic group touring the new ballroom area: "So be very careful. Don’t fall over the edge, ’cause it’s a long way down. And only a Hispanic could survive that fall. So I’m not overly worried.”
Election Interpretation - Data Centers
I've been talking about planks in election platforms that are emotionally driven or irrelevant, but high on politicians' lists.
Today's topic - data centers.
This is a long, complicated topic, so let's just hit the high points:
This is mostly hysteria. That's what we do best. Predict doom for something no one understands.
Democrats and Republicans - politicians are catering to the crowd instead of leading.
And, No one wants to live next to a factory or a garbage dump or a refinery.
And, everyone is scared of AI.
But, there are more than mere kernels of truth in here.
The cost of electricity is going up because data centers require a LOT of electricity. Clearly, you require them to pay their incremental cost.
Much fuss over water. Require them to recycle. It's for cooling and does not need to go anywhere.
Noises and bumps in the night - real concerns. They need to be remote, although that can create other problems.
But we have to have data centers. Only it is difficult to discuss how to best do that in the midst of a hysteria.
We'll get through this - after the elections.
But, it truly is a knotty problem.
(The remainder of this article has been presented in previous editions of this newsletter and is reproduced at the bottom of this edition.)
The Market
We are in the retracement in the stock market that should lead to a resumption in the bull market.
The Iran War and the Ukraine War
> Waiting for the other shoe to drop in both wars. Are Iran and Russia going to broaden the conflicts?
> From my Claude daily update on Iran, today: "The deal is down to sequencing — while Trump re-arms the alternative. The "phased deal" reported last Friday matured into a formal Iranian proposal: a seven-day plan for phased reopening of Hormuz in exchange for release of ~$12B in frozen assets, lifting oil sanctions, and ending the port blockade. Trump rejected it Saturday — publicly because Iran offered to open only "some aspects" of the strait — but the process survived the rejection: Washington delivered a formal counter-response through Qatari mediators in Doha Tuesday evening, Araghchi reviewed it in Tehran Wednesday, and Jordan News reports the remaining disagreement concerns the sequence of steps, not the content — the plan being an enhanced version of the June MOU. That is as close to a deal skeleton as this war has produced. Around it, Trump ran his full rhetorical register in 48 hours: Iran is "ready to fold up," he doesn't think "you could ever have peace" with Iran, and "the time has come" to make a deal or "maybe blow them up" — plus explicit threats of post-midterm attacks, the clearest statement yet that November 3 is the war's operational calendar. The hardware matched the words: thousands more troops and another carrier deploying, oil settling up more than $4 Wednesday on the news, EU states convening on diesel stock releases, Chinese refiners pausing October fuel exports, and French escorts working Bab al-Mandeb. Treasury added sanctions on Iran's rail and automotive sectors — targeting the transport alternatives the blockade forced Tehran onto."
> From my Claude daily update on Ukraine, today: "Putin rejected the energy ceasefire — and both sides opened the winter campaign. The answer to last week's four-channel peace architecture arrived at Valdai Wednesday: Putin ruled out a ceasefire on long-range strikes, acknowledging Ukraine's refinery campaign has cost Russia 1% of GDP — a remarkable admission — while promising Russia is "responding in kind," restating maximal aims (a "neutral" Ukraine), and threatening nuclear defense of Kaliningrad if the West squeezes the exclave. The response-in-kind is underway: Russia launched its biggest assault on Ukraine's grid in months Wednesday — Kyiv called it the opening salvo of the winter heat-and-power campaign — forcing cuts across Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Rivne, and Kirovohrad, with a Kyiv school among the targets. Zelenskyy answered by signing off on an expanded October deep-strike plan, with upgraded drones now ranging 3,000 km into Russia; this week Ukraine hit a Samara oil facility, a Russian Black Sea vessel, and depots in Oryol and Bryansk. The diplomatic residue: Foreign Minister Sybiha disclosed four partner ceasefire proposals — India's (energy + Black Sea combined), Turkey's (Black Sea, for grain), Egypt's (food corridors), and the US energy-only plan — with Kyiv insisting energy and Black Sea must come together, while Germany pushes the grain corridor on spoilage urgency. Net: the Gulf war is converging on a sequencing dispute; the Ukraine war just divorced from the same template — Moscow calculates its grid campaign beats Ukraine's refinery campaign through one more winter. The 1%-of-GDP admission says that calculation is closer than the Kremlin admits."
> Global food prices surge to their highest level in nearly 4 years.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Profound - stop and think about it -
There were a lot of things that only worked because there's a limit to the rate at which humans can operate. We're about to find out what all of them are, as they break.
Short Takes
> Japan hikes permanent residency fees for foreigners by 1,900% amid a sweeping immigration crackdown.
> The rape case at Cornell is terrible and despicable. However, most are missing a key point: New York law says victims can’t claim to be “mentally incapacitated” if they are voluntarily intoxicated during an assault and therefore unable to consent.
> Ain't democracy great? - D.C. council member Trayon White was allegedly so corrupt that he was caught on camera in 2024 accepting cash in exchange for political favors, authorities say. It was really well documented, as far as crimes go: According to prosecutors, an FBI informant paid White $35,000 on four occasions, showing that he was accepting cash for helping to extend government contracts. His fellow council members dutifully ousted him after that. And then I need you to know that in the subsequent special election, his district reelected him to the open seat.
> Give me a headline that says we are in 2026 without saying we're in 2026 - Transgender NYT exec shot dead by Chinese parents of estranged lesbian wife.
Gallery
Those who do not study Econ 101 are doomed to reap the logical conclusions of Econ 101 -
Miscellaneous
But, but, but ... none of them are white. That counts for something, right?
Continuation of New York Times Article on Education
Most effective: Tutoring, science of reading
Two ideas surfaced as most effective: frequent small group tutoring during the school day for students who need it, and the science of reading, a systematic approach to teaching reading that puts a focus on phonics and other evidence-based practices.
Both of these ideas are already being carried out in schools, to varying degrees.
Other ideas deemed highly effective? High-quality preschool, which can help close early gaps that develop even before students start school. And paying effective teachers more to work at high-poverty schools, a strategy that is not widely used but can help encourage the best teachers to work with students who are most behind.
Notably, the most effective ideas were some of the most expensive. Some changes — like paying more for certain jobs — may also need to be negotiated with local teachers’ unions, a potential sticking point.
And all of these ideas came with an important caveat. We asked researchers to rate effectiveness “when done properly.” In the real world, a lot can fall apart because of the details.
We’ll get to more on that below.
Best value: Accountability, curriculum changes
When we compared effectiveness and cost, other ideas rose to the top.
School accountability — giving schools a rating, like an A-F letter grade, and requiring underperforming schools to make changes — emerged as highly cost effective.
It is also an approach that the federal government and many states have backed away from since the end of No Child Left Behind, the federal school accountability law from 2002 to 2015. The law was seen as punitive and overly reliant on standardized testing. In recent years, though, some states have used a model of accountability that focuses more on student progress, not just whether they’re on grade level, and gives underperforming schools support to improve.
Our experts also liked requiring schools to use research-backed, high-quality curriculums, vetted by a state or school district (as opposed to having individual schools or teachers select their own materials, the approach in some places).
Offering more access to advanced classes was another cost-effective idea.
This doesn’t mean just sorting students into gifted and talented programs, but offering more students advanced classes, such as eighth-grade algebra, or Advanced Placement classes in high school. Experts recommended expanding access at low-income schools, which tend to offer fewer college-prep classes, and choosing qualified students based on their performance, not just parent or teacher selection.
These cost-effective strategies had something in common: a focus on increasing academic rigor for more students.
Worst value: Vouchers, smaller class sizes
Some politically popular ideas — on both the left and the right — ranked as both costly and less effective, at least when it came to improving student achievement.
One high-cost, less effective idea was private school vouchers, a leading reform put forth by conservatives, now available in a growing number of states.
In this model, all or nearly all families are made eligible for taxpayer money — for example, $8,000 or $9,000 — to help pay for private school or home-schooling.
While competition can help spur broad improvements across schools, most experts said that vouchers come with minimal academic benefits, particularly compared with the cost.
In places that have tried vouchers, much of the money goes to students already in private school. And there is little evidence that students who transfer into a private school do much better academically. The subsidies can drive tuition increases, and often do not cover the full price, leaving the top private schools out of reach for many students.
On the political left, smaller class sizes are often talked up by parents and teachers, who envision less stress, better working conditions and more attention for each child.
But experts were skeptical that classes can realistically be kept small enough to reap the academic benefits, which research shows happens somewhere around 15 students. In New York City, a state law has tried to cap class sizes at 20 to 23 students in elementary school.
To reduce class sizes, districts also need to hire many more teachers. That can lead to issues with teacher quality, experts said, detracting from the benefits.
Worth a try? Going lower tech
In some cases, there was little empirical evidence that an idea was academically effective, at least not yet. But experts believed that it could work. In cases where the idea was also not expensive, they saw few downsides to trying it.
Going lower tech — limiting screen time in school; restricting A.I. in the classroom, especially for younger students; and banning cellphones — fell in this category.
We also asked experts for other ideas not on our list. Their ideas included allowing high-performing charter schools to expand and limiting children’s social media and tech usage outside of school.
Several experts also said that schools should think beyond test scores and focus on making learning less boring and more engaging — less passive listening and memorizing for tests, for example, and more open-ended research and project-based learning.
“How do we get an education system that promotes high academic achievement, but is also a place where kids really want to be?” said Chris Torres, an associate professor at the University of Michigan.
Most likely to succeed: The idea executed well
So what should be done?
The results suggest that any meaningful change will probably require multiple evidence-backed strategies, with a focus on executing them well for the long term, and based on the needs of the students and teachers in each place.
That is what has happened in places like Mississippi, which has climbed in the national rankings, and in Louisiana, which is making leaps. Both states have used several strategies our experts deemed effective, including the science of reading, school accountability and a focus on high-quality curriculum.
“The reality is that improving education at scale is incredibly hard work, but there are a lot of things that can move the ball down the court,” said Matthew Kraft, an education professor at Brown University.
It also takes a “relentless commitment to troubleshooting,” he said.
If there was one thing our expert panel agreed on, it was that how well ideas are carried out matters.
Take universal preschool, an expensive idea that our experts deemed effective. Lori Taylor, a professor at Texas A&M University, noted that “high-quality pre-K is highly cost effective,” while “low-quality pre-K is basically subsidized day care.” (It also needs to be paired with high-quality instruction in elementary school so that gains are not lost.)
This emphasis on quality helps explain why education debates can seem so intractable, and why what works in one place may not transplant easily. Success often comes down to a visionary leader — a school principal, superintendent or state chief — who can lay out a plan and stick with it.
“In practice, simply doing anything well may matter more than any handful of interventions,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “Implementation is everything.”
Election Issues Summary
Maybe you are seeing a trend here. A lot of emotional arguments by candidates that, as a practical matter, cannot go anywhere. People are upset, so candidates promise they can do something about whatever is upsetting you, when they actually cannot do much.
Not only can these problems not be solved, they are, imo, the wrong problems in the first place.
What do I think the most important issues facing the US are? What should we actually be talking about?
1. Debt and deficits - there is a severe decrease in living standards in our future. This is the inflation problem, but no one is discussing it in these terms.
2. AI's impact - it is probably both inevitable and life-changing. We need to begin to figure out what that means.
3. The shared premise that election results, court rulings, and the neutrality of enforcement are binding on the losing side. Both coalitions currently believe, sincerely, that key institutions have been captured by the other — which is exactly the condition under which legitimacy erodes fastest, because each side's defensive measures confirm the other's suspicion.
4. Demographics and immigration - getting control of the borders was important, but now we have to create a viable immigration system. Primary points of discussion include that we are not replacing ourselves and we need skilled and knowledge workers.
5. Healthcare - our system is expensive and dysfunctional. We literally need to tear it up and create a new one. "Medicare for all" is not only a bad idea, it is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are no other ideas on the table.
6. Redefining our role in the world. We cannot afford to rule the world. The world will become an increasingly unstable place once the US begins withdrawing. And it will fracture into power zones. It is not clear where the US will end up over the next 5-10 years when the first iteration of this change will take place. This process will likely encompass one or more wars of varying magnitudes.
Social media, crime, drugs, loneliness, climate change etc., are important, but don't make the top 6. Also on that second list is the dysfunction of parts of the black community. We are wasting a lot of lives and generating a lot of crime, but not as fundamental as the top 6. Another of my hobby horses - the incompatibility of Western values and fundamentalist Islam - is just now beginning to pop up in the US. Far from important now, but the world may look different in 5-10 years.
People running for Congress are doing so on unrealistic, all-but-irrelevant platforms at a time when Congress is not doing much of anything, anyway.
In the meantime, the beginning of the end of my predicted end game has officially begun.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men" and we are now caught in it and have lost most of our ability to do anything but go with it.
Scorecard so far - political position vs. the real world:
Doing away with the Electoral College - all but impossible.
Doing away with the Senate - all but impossible.
Packing the Supreme Court - doable with control of both Houses and the Presidency and elimination of the filibuster.
DC and Puerto Rico statehoods - Huh?
Doing away with inflation - our economy will have disinflationary and maybe deflationary periods, but the inevitable end game for our debt and deficits includes higher inflation and a lower dollar. In general, allowing for volatility, inflation is inevitable. Look for typical, self-defeating, political tactics like rent and price controls to make everyone feel better as pressures increase and foundations rot.
Medicare for all - highly unlikely and, if implemented, a total shock to the system as severe rationing of health care sets in. Our healthcare system badly needs significant reform, but this is a very, very big, complicated problem.
Taking down prisons - kinda fringy, some justification in the sense of reforming prisons. Overall, bad idea. Expensive and resource intensive.
Shut down ICE - Fundamentally changing immigration law is up to Congress. You can throw actual ICE overboard, but someone will have to take up the slack. Practically, the call to shut down ICE is an emotional response to real events and not a viable platform. Meaningful reform of immigration will take a lot of work, however, the process can be much better managed.
Climate change, in spite of being a valid concern, is falling off the election-subject-matter map.
Gun control - going nowhere anytime soon.
Insider stock trading by Congress and the President - common knowledge corruption; voters do not like it. Any useful bill is unlikely to be passed. But candidates can virtue signal at will.
Term limits and gerrymandering are on the laundry list of pro forma-but-required virtue signals that will go nowhere.
Data centers - hysteria everywhere. Real, knotty problems will likely be addressed after the elections.