I think the topic of a declining/slowly collapsing society needs serious research. How do you definitively measure if a society is progressing or regressing? If you measure by infrastructure the US probably hit its peak in the 60s and has been declining since then.
Step one is defining a target condition. The problem is that people have different target conditions. The enormous rise in inequality since the 1960s [1] makes clear that some people have a target condition of "I personally own everything".
its pretty objective if you measure it in terms of infrastructure.
- rate of new miles of roads
- rate of increase/decrease in potholes per 10 miles
- number of bridges that need fixing
- number of people on government assistance
- percentage of population in jail
- peoples test scores on standardized international tests
its not like things are unmeasureable... just that politics awards those who ignore these things
Not objective at all. There are a lot of values and politics embedded in the things you chose and the implicit direction that is healthy for infrastructure. And it should be, because “objective” metrics are inevitable gamed and their value is gone.
https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/