Is it James F. or Thomas Barnett in the Bear Suit?

Violating Hume's problem of induction, invoking Popper's falsification of conjecture and invoking Trey and Matt gets me to this.
-------------------------------------

After reading 'When China Rules the World' I ponder the next forty years as a continuation of past trends. On that, it seems that by the end of the present decade the PRC will match the US GDP but spread it out over three times the headcount. By 2050 (induction alert) the US GDP will lag by 1/2 the PRC GDP from various estimates on the internet which I carefully chose to align with my confirmation bias.

But I just read some great long form journalism about coal and it prompts this conjecture. The US is a thermodynamic system that produces more entropy per person and more entropy overall today by rolling fleets of Prius coal burning passenger cars. Okay, to be fair 30-40% of them are fueled by natural gas but they do not run on clean electricity. What will bring the PRC to parity is my reluctance to do the math along with their rational materialist approach. They aced the Thermodynamics final and might keep the lid on riotous exuberance at the big bonfire. Not overall but according to headcount. But again they are not getting stronger while we weaken - they are getting stronger faster than we are getting stronger. It's the entropy.

In other words no country spends more and gets less than the one I drive around in with my big body V-8 Ford.

Thermodynamics: it's not just a good idea; it's the law. And notice how I didn't talk about 380 ppm of Coca Cola fizz. When I talk to my brother-in-law the Petroleum Engineer we stick to thermodynamics to calm the tension over initial conditions in nonlinear systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Like going from 350 to 380 ppm over the Christmas Holidays.