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PaulHoule · 2023-09-14 · Original thread
There are two other theories that cover the same set of observations.

(1) Followers of Howard Odum and Charles Hall would say this was a turning point of the Energy Return on Investment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

when there was the peak of conventional oil production in the US with the monetary angle that the system had to change so the that the US and Europe could import large amounts of oil..

(2) Integration of China into the world economy which could be dated to Nixon’s 1972 visit and of course has big monetary impacts, like the above, the answer to the situation was the US having increasing trade deficits while also having substantial inflow of financial investment which made the former possible. (e.g. when money “went” to Saudi Arabia it never really left the U.S., or went to the U.S., because the Saudis kept the money in U.S. bank accounts)

People generally interested in periodization would also be aware that something happened in 1968

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Last-Time-Chris-Harman/dp/189887...

which manifests in numerous ways, for instance I used to think “Gee there were a lot of books published in 1968” and sure enough I extracted publication dates from the OPAC at an academic library and sure enough there was a definite peak at that time.

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