Huarache1
Usually, most healthy societies have enough places to reasonably allow well educated, competent, people to achieve a high status, regardless of political structure. But as more and more well educated, competent people begin to compete against each other and their predecessors, many Elite Aspirants will become Counter Elites.
Anakin Skywalker ironically fits this perfectly, as he was an overworked child prodigy, born to a slave mother who was killed, and still did not reach the level of Master due to collective mistrust by the (wealthier and detached) older generation, who told him not to worry about his mother as she was being killed.
Behind every Anti-Intellectual movement, is a well educated individual. True for the Oath Keepers and Stewart Rhodes, the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Mao etc. Even if the face of the movement isn't well educated, someone else in the party often is.
The Disintegrative phase of the Secular Cycle will continue, unless the Wealth Pump is addressed, and Asabiyyah (Social Cohesion) is restored, either by the Left or the Right.
There exist 2 fairly good types of government-economical ties in this world, and both of which are fleetingly rare, with only one type actually growing consistently.
I would say they are, in no particular order, the "East Asian Values" model as created/noted by Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, and the Mondragon Corporation by Father José María Arizmendiarrieta.
The "East Asian Values" model is often used for Singaporean or Chinese style state capitalism, but the Japanese and Koreans have also had a similar economies, and Taipei has flirted with some part of it through TSMC (although they don't own the company outright). This model is pretty good for getting a country rich somewhat quickly, but it does implicate a strong central government.
The Mondragon Corp on the other hand, while technically a private sector business, it's a full Co-op owned by the workers themselves and has a lot of relations with the Spanish Government. This arguably is the less "exploitative" type of government-economical system, but it also implicates a semi-homogenous society, at least one high trust enough to reasonably and responsibly manage a co-op, even in the most rural areas of Basque Spain. The only other similar economies, perhaps are the Ayllu system in Peru, tequio in Mexico, or other often informal collectivist (but certainly not communist) systems.
It should be noted however, that although the Basques were extremely poor, Spain was still a European society, and as such, did commit a lot of gunboat economies, most notably the conquest of the Americas.
Wealth creation, by definition, is somewhat exploitative. The good news, is that this type of exploitation therefore, unlike colonialism, actually gives a lot of power to the exploited over time as wealth is created over time.
My (mostly indigenous) grandparents were lucky to have worked in factories in order to escape farm life, but there were multiple close calls. I imagine it's something similar with all Industrializing societies, wherein a nation commits to an almost Faustian bargain of getting wealth at the cost of brutal working hours. But at some point, "Fordist" thinking prevails, where people either through protests, unions, and also to increase overall economic consumption, people get paid more, they start to live more comfortable lives as many begin to focus on skilled labor and intellectual work. It's not a simple overnight process, but wealth creation does imply first-world like living conditions might come fairly soon to a lot of nations, especially those that started in mass production based factories.
So if you're writing about "cute" racoons in a relationship, either they have to be the most ragebaity, most anger inducing, most obnoxious stereotypes of people like Lesbian Space Princess, or be 100% Bland and show absolutely no nudity, no relationships, and just be blank slate cute racoons. Ironically, only being 50% committed to some ideology is the new Bland.
It works both ways too, see the Instagram Comments section, or even just Instagram.
But Spain is lacking jobs, and so are most European countries. The heavyweights of France and Germany aren't doing so well either.
Like Japan in the 80s, or Korea in the 2000s, Poland currently. It's a slow and painful process, but given a good enough government such as Singapore, it's possible to grind your way into a fairly well developed society given punitive laws, good infrastructure and public services, and a massive emphasis on intelligence.
Remember that not too long ago, children worked in factories in Britain and other developed countries, but they got rich enough to ban children from working so they would study for higher paid, intellectually challenging jobs.
In multi-Ethnic nations, the solution is to forcibly move different ethnic groups with each other, as noted by Singapore's LKY, to prevent Diasporaic cultures from forming. But the Belgians didn't have to be a multi-ethnic society, nor do the natives seem to tolerate that. It really depends on the society and its willingness to do so.
It's classically liberal to allow anyone to follow their religion, it's not classically liberal to restrict freedom of speech for the sake of religion, much less for the sake of a foreign religion.
The Maya, despite the Spanish, still exist today. You can even eat their foods, like Poc Chuuc, Xec salad, Tikin Xic, Cochinitas Pibil, Sikil Pak, etc.
It still needs more investment in education and companies, but besides that it's doing very well.
Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe. (Highly recommended)
A Fire Upon the Deep (Either you like the Tines or the Skroderiders)
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Borges (Is reality imbued with our ideas?)
Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard (Not unlike "the Greeks" of modern fic)
John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (perhaps the first true modern fic)
Understand by Ted Chiang (Most of his short stories are good, or provoking)
Xeethra and the Zothique Cycle by Clark Ashton Smith
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
This led to their decline within 200 years, compared to China or the Roman Empire. The Chinese had to deal with the incompetent Qing, but luckily they survived as a culture, and learned a lot from Deng Xiaoping.
England at its Victorian era looks like an overpowered Brazil than anything even close resembling the US now.
That being said, mercantile navy based nations never really last beyond a few hundred years compared to the nations near the Steppe.
And if they weren't brown, they had some disability or even different sexuality.
I'm not racist, but I am brown.
If the US releases so much CO2 in the air, then perhaps its not overpopulation like Nigeria, but production instead of having families.
Infrastructure is much better than over here, which still looks like Shanghai in the 1980s.
Food though is questionable, there isn't any real "bread" section besides those cut up in loaves. We're not even European, nor do we eat that much bread (in the Andes region) compared to rice, potatoes, or even quinoa, but even we have fresh bread aisles too.
Burgers are nice, even if the cheese or rootbeer tastes off.
The stereotype that it's easier to talk to people, or find an SO elsewhere is very true, going back to how Americans rarely feel "open".
Maybe Pagan and Axial age beliefs have a reason to be, perhaps both as hierarchical tools, but also having hidden meaning, or even a way to repent and change.
Getting drafted is terrible, but at least you had a nation worth fighting for, even in a pointless war. (Not mentioning how many drafted were poor, non-college educated people, of which even if we are poorer, much more of us go to college for worse wages and outcomes)
The only reason we aren't drafted, is because we, by every metric, are starting worse off health-wise compared to you.
Also, the threat of nuclear war never went away, we just stopped caring about it.
Again, I'm not blaming you specifically.
Participation was lower in the 70s (60%), due to most Women not entering the workforce. But ours includes most women, so your point is genuinely incomparable.
No, the kids aren't "all right". I'm not blaming you for this, just pointing out that yes, we have it much, much worse, not even taking into account just how lonely, sick, and poorer we are, per salary, per dollar, and our lack of homeownership (that's an entirely different set of data I'm not posting here).
There is this tremendous realization, for the few of us capable of not scrolling endlessly, of what we lost. I believe this is what's causing the immense political upheaval and anger between men and women. The System isn't working, and it's gotten so bad that I think trying to do anything is genuinely better than what it is now.
Yes, anyone can be recorded, which then dictates social norms for many who want to remain silent. This forces us to never be too open about our interests, and the few which are open about them, often are only doing what is acceptable within a subculture. And even then, it's likely to be laughed off by people not from those subcultures.
Now, because we are poorer, we mostly gamble what our meager pay gives us, on prediction markets and Gacha games. Some poor fellows even pay for steamers, or for Onlyfans girls and "believe the Sex Worker was into them" so to speak.
It's lonely, nobody wants to speak out publicly about their interests, those that do, often do so out of anger and are jeered off.
So, no wonder our mental health issues are terrible compared to the past. We're not even facing people most of the time.
But as a result, the sexual revolution brought about a great "romance famine", wherein the modern day has everything to favor different people to stay separate. The specific reasons of which vary between the sexes, but point is that both have more to gain by staying single. Therefore there is significantly less sex taking place in my generation.
Not only that, but screen addiction, political polarization, mass inequality, the prices of everything keeps getting much higher. Our Dollars are also worth much less than that of the Boomer era. This means we have to work much more for less pay, and less value for each Dollar.
The Hedonism of our times is more solitary, more lonely, arguably more self-destructive, but that's because we feel as though we have little to lose.
This comes into spending more on food, more expensive tea and coffee (since Alcohol is still more expensive than that). Gambling, gacha games, prediction markets. Pornography, chatbots, social media, anything to kill the emotional apathy. As for drugs, that's just Xanax, anti-anxiety medications that are abused, as well as weed and opiates to "slow" down the world since it goes by so fast. Vapes, Codeine (Purple Drank), carts, etc.
All of these forms of Hedonism are inherently very insular, and lonely, rather than going clubbing, Woodstock, going for Joyrides with friends, or even having sex.
Europe has no native "Diasporic" Middlemen Minorities, at least not compared to China or India.
It's possible that the Greeks and Phoenicians could have acted as this at one point, but they have no need to. There's nothing to violently uproot them from where they are currently. As an example, even the Scots did this in Poland for a while.
The Romans sacked the Second Temple, forcing the native Judeans to leave their nation in droves.
Usually, a Diasporic merchant class is often found in far away regions, wherein a well educated, immigrant people (Such as the Chinese or Indians) would act as "market dominant minorities" (named by sociologists) which would often fulfill a vital need in areas which have little amounts of merchants (Indonesia and SEA, Africa, etc).
The issue therein is that local people will almost always be tense against this new mercantile class, including the native Elites and Elite Aspirants which have much to gain (See Indonesian Ethno-nationalist Backlash against the Chinese, African violence against the Indian "tribe", The Atrocities of WWII, etc.)