Over the past several decades, I have had a front-row seat to the transformation of the Western world—both through my work in corporate travel and through my involvement in faith-based institutions. That unique positioning allowed me to see something most people missed: the changes we are living through are not isolated or accidental. They are coordinated. They are arriving everywhere, all at once, and they are fundamentally reshaping our economic order, our political structures, and even our religious life. As I watched these trends unfold—in airports plastered with Sustainable Development Goal insignias, in corporate boardrooms, and among religious leaders—I realized that the West is being intentionally maneuvered into a degrowth model, a system designed to suppress liberty and abundance in favor of centralized control.
What is happening right now is nothing less than a meta-system change. We are being transitioned away from a free-market, merit-based economic structure into a model that contains elements of distributism and techno-feudalism, where obedience matters more than innovation, and where personal liberty is treated as an inconvenience to the goals of global planners. Under the banner of “net-zero,” “sustainability,” and “the common good,” we are told we must accept reduced energy, reduced production, and reduced consumption. Artificial intelligence is being positioned as the arbiter of truth, behavior, and even governance. Jobs across journalism, law, entertainment, and clerical work are quietly being declared obsolete. And all the while, the message is simple: prosperity and liberty are relics of the past—you must learn to live with less.
Meanwhile, China is moving in the opposite direction. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has been building infrastructure, forging global alliances, and expanding its influence across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Their growth model is aggressive, expansive, and intentional. They are opening new coal plants, expanding nuclear power, and securing the mineral and data rights of developing nations. By contrast, the West—under the pressure of global agreements, ESG frameworks, and political elites—is dismantling its own energy capacity, discouraging innovation, and weakening its economic competitiveness. The result is predictable: China ascends while the West descends, and those who cheer the “multipolar world” fail to understand what it means to live under the orbit of an autocratic system.
The consequences of this shift are not just theoretical. I witness them every day in the global travel industry. Hotels across Europe are being converted into government-subsidized migrant housing, compressing room supply and driving prices to unsustainable levels. A four- or five-star hotel in cities like Dublin or Paris can now cost $1,000 per night, putting middle-class tourism out of reach. Local businesses—restaurants, pubs, gift shops—that once thrived on steady tourism are now closing their doors due to the lack of mid-market tourists. This is not a natural market fluctuation; it is the direct outcome of policies that privilege ideological dogma over economic vitality. When the “common good” becomes the supreme authority, entire industries are sacrificed without hesitation.
At the same time, we are watching the rise of quasi Neo-Integralism, a fusion of political and religious authority that demands ideological conformity. Corporations now publish “statements of faith” in the form of ESG and DEI commitments. Religious institutions—from Catholicism to Protestant denominations to Islam—are adopting the Sustainable Development Goals as moral imperatives. Even cruise lines, hotels, and secular companies are being compelled by banks and global bodies to adopt identical belief systems. This is no longer about environmental stewardship; it is about coercing behaviors and reshaping the moral framework of society to align with a top-down global vision.
All these trends—the erosion of individual liberty, the economic collapse of the middle class, the rise of authoritarian environmental dogma, and the consolidation of global power—are converging toward a single outcome: a fractured United States, stripped of its economic strength and re-ordered into a compliant participant in a globalized governance model. What we are experiencing is not a series of disconnected crises but a deliberate push to shrink America’s power and transition the West into a system where prosperity is rationed, dissent is discouraged, and obedience is rewarded. My hope is that by exposing how these systems function—economically, politically, and spiritually—we can still chart a path forward rooted in liberty, merit, and truth. But first, we must recognize the scale and intention of what is happening and learn how to throw sand in the gears of the machine that is being built around us.
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