Hidden in all of this is the issue that all countries really have are their people, factories (or centers of production) and bombs. Non-western countries have improved the condition of their average citizen via immigration, providing havens for offshoring, and remittances, but the conditions for average western citizens are deteriorating.

I am afraid all of this is going to be unsustainable because non-western countries don’t have productivity centers, but they have workers (who work for companies producing jobs outside of their own country), and when their quality of life or standard of living goes up, so does the cost of doing business in those places, which companies will offset by firing people. This already happened, this is part of why inflation went up so dramatically post-COVID, and the end result is mass firings and layoffs, disguised as “AI taking jobs”.

In some terrible scenarios this means keeping standards of living down in some countries to ensure populations don’t ask for more worker protections or other types of rights, which is the main driver of increased costs of doing business in western countries. But if your population keeps getting richer because of offshored jobs or remittances, then you’re on a collision course with forces beyond your control.