As the USA is about to turn 250 years old, we face a spate of accelerating changes. Technological, climatic… Will our next age be more of the same, a dark age of subjugation and loss, or an age of miracles taking us to heights unimagined?

No one can predict what exactly will happen, but if history rhymes, we can look to another period of rapid change that befell a peaceful, growing society on their 250th birthday. Spoiler alert: their handling of the new period kicked off the fastest period of human enrichment in history. Economists still use the word “miracle” to describe it.

Counterfactuals

• If Japan has more cool stuff to trade, maybe UK or France would have tried to subjugate them like China or India
  • in this world, Japan would be contacted BEFORE China and then CHINA would have the benefit of visibility into how Japan’s first response to Western imperialism went
• If Japan wasn;t so close to CHina with its cool stuff, maybe it would keep being Sakoku
• If Tokugawa wasn’t in a financial crisis,