This is neither a rhetorical question nor an expert comment. Nobody knows the future.
The reason I bring up the question is because I've recently become conscious of the impact of the World War I on Europe. Up until 1914 Europe was a rapidly growing center of commerce as well as culture, technology, the arts and a fully integrated society for Jews in the northern latitudes.
Thirty years later, 1945, Europe embarked on a different course, socalism. 100 years later, Europe is stuck on that course. Europe is steadily moving towards second and third class status.
Europe is no longer an important factor in technology, commerce or the arts. It nationalized all of its important commercial industries and remains in a slow growth pattern decade after decade. Thanks to its Muslim labor imports, a negative reproduction rate and dependence on Russian oil, Europe has a grim future. Maybe no future.
If one century and two wars can do this much damage to a 300 million person population it gives one pause to think about how much damage socialism and war can do to the United States and its commercial world.
The mitigating factors are that:
* Over the past century the number of big corporations has gone from a dozen to many hundreds.
* The number of businesses has grown at a similar geometric rate.
* While government has grown in the United States in proportion to the total GDP it is not popular with the majority of the population and in the absence of government meritocracy it is held in low regard among thoughtful people.
My main source of optimism, if there is any, is the magnitude of commerce that has penetrated the society and become normative thinking. Most people prefer the life they have today, with technological and health innovations. Most people prefer their life with relative freedom to choose occupations and with a wide range of lifestyles that are delivered by commerce.
Most people prefer a society that is meritocratic rather than one with an hereditary elite or unionized.
I simply wanted to recount the issue because we have a rather grim environment in the United States. We have a president, a White House and leaders of the Democratic Party committed to doing violence to our world of commerce. They push damaging minimum wages, horrendous government employee wages and benefits, unreasonable expansion of rules and regulations, unreasonable government control of health care for the population and a vast symphony of sycophants in academia and the media.