Introduction
Wim Naudé
Chapter Chapter 1 in The Economic Decline of the West, 2025, pp 1-19 from Springer
Abstract:
Abstract This book argues that the West is in economic decline due to three interrelated factors, described as the Guns-Oil-Oligarchy nexus. This chapter defines fundamental concepts featured in the rest of the book, and the historical context of the West’s economic rise is discussed as a necessary background. This includes the Industrial Revolution and the Great Acceleration, which were marked by accelerating economic growth. This discussion foreshadows the discussion in Chap. 2 on how the West has fallen into a Growth Trap that has caused ecological overshoot and socio-political instability. The Growth Trap is shown to have two salient features that form the cores of Chaps. 3–5: the concentration of economic power in the hands of oligarchs, the world’s dependence on oil, and the rise of the military-industrial complex. This book shows why the Guns-Oil-Oligarchy is a simple explanation for the West’s economic decline, and how its understanding offers a simple solution to avert further economic decline: the oligarchs’ grip must be broken.
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-82299-5_1
Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031822995
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-82299-5_1
Access Statistics for this chapter
More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().