Book discussion of Peter Zeihan this coming Monday; and Boston meetup?

I will be in and out of Boston much of the next few weeks. If there are readers there who would like to try to arrange a meetup, leave a comment here. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you probably cannot comment here. On any subsequent post you can comment to express interest.

Because of the randomness of my schedule, I am afraid that our Zoom discussion of Peter Zeihan’s The End of the World is Just the Beginning has to be sooner rather than later. It will be this Monday, June 27, at 8 PM NY time over Zoom. Don’t feel obligated to finish the book by then. See if you can pick out some main themes by skimming, or by surfing YouTube.

I’ll give away some of my thoughts on the book right now. Zeihan sees the end of the world coming from two forces. One is demographic patterns, as the proportion of elderly rises and the proportion of young workers declines, pretty much everywhere. The other force is de-globalization.

In my view, de-globalization is preventable. But the Russia-Ukraine war, along with the response to it, really showcases Zeihan’s scenario. As to demographic shifts, I think that their impact will be relatively gradual, and humans are an adaptive species. So I expect that the impact will be less dramatic than he claims.

The format I plan is to ask people to state the issues pertaining to the book that they most want to discuss. Based on those, I will organize the rest of the discussion. The Zoom link, for paid subscribers, is below.