Naysayers have been predicting the demise of everything for the whole of human history. They&#x27;ve been almost entirely wrong, because even when they happen to be correct about the date they&#x27;re almost always wrong about the specific details.<p>Nevertheless, most institutions that have existed through human history no longer exist.<p>Naysayers being wrong isn&#x27;t a data point. It&#x27;s barely even noise.<p>There&#x27;s no realistic world where China rises smoothly with no setbacks along the way. It&#x27;s all but mathematically impossible by the nature of complex systems. It is reasonable to be concerned that their rise up to this point has also been unrealistically smooth. Communism has a track record of producing this apparent growth curve, after all.